Creative Writing at the Malago WI

The monthly meetings always have a theme to entertain and educate the group members. This month’s theme was Creative Writing and Glenn Carmichael, tutor, performer, poet, host and novelist put on his hosting hat to run the present the evening's theme. As a writer myself, I have been to many writing events and was curious to see how this very brave man would deal with a room full of more than fifty ladies wielding sharpened pencils.  Would he talk about his writing experience? Present a selection of tips and tricks to producing a successful short story? No – Glenn Carmichael had something entirely different in store for us all.

 

After handing out sheets of A4 paper containing the rudiments of a short story, or a succinct recipe for success. Glenn formed us into groups, gave us the theme of ‘The First Step’ designated each group with a genre, such as, dramatic, funny, horror etc. and said ‘go!’

 

This had the desired effect, we all scribbled away frantically until Glenn commanded us to stop and pass our papers onto the next person. We were then given a few minutes respite to read the story so far before we picked up the thread to continue weaving the tale. Scribble, scribble, scribble, on we went until there was another command of ‘stop!’ from the man with the flip chart at the front of the room.

 

The tea break was missed entirely and the table groaning with delicious cakes went unplundered as many hands flew over many sheets of paper. 

 

Now, we had a beginning and middle to all the stories being passed around, and it was getting trickier as the different personalities in the room were turning the tales this way and that. When we reached the cliff-hanger section, heads were being scratched; groaning was heard in the far reaches of the hall as the good ladies were finding tying up the loose ends was like knitting in sheepskin mittens. Once more the stories were handed on for the penning of the conclusion. After the final ‘stop!’ we all sat back and tried to make sense of the tales that had been created. Apart from deciphering the handwriting - some of which was flourishing to the point of Sanskrit – we had to pick the best tales to present. Four stories were selected and read out to a roomful of exhausted ladies, who were by this time, suffering from RSI and carpal tunnel. One of the readers was so skilled with her inflection and dramatic inference she had us all enthralled. Gasps rebounded around the walls, until we all sighed with relief at the surprising ending.

 

Two previous meetings, Swishing! - and knitting have resulted in much giggling, loud discourse and general good natured banter. During the Creative Writing meeting you could have heard a pin drop. In fact, at some point a pencil was dropped onto the wooden floor, the noise echoed and resonated startling everyone away from their deep thought and penwomanship.

 

I look forward to the next meeting.