There are as many types of programs on TV these days as there are stars out on a clear moonless night, from documentaries and journalistic truth-seekers, to soap operas of one kind or another, to Talk Shows and its latest variation, part of the all-new, all-improved Generation-Zzzz programming, reality television.
I was glad to see the back of dialogue (see below), and we adjourned for lunch. A simple exercise followed upon our return. The brief was to capture “our last meal”. We were given the following cue – your last meal – to capture the immediacy and wealth of the senses. I opted for a more perverse sense of “my last meal”. Here it is.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That was what I loved as a kid. That’s what I asked for last night.
The bread was stale, a little mouldy, a little joke the warden played.
But the peanut butter didn’t want to stay stuck on the ceiling of my mouth.
They say you don’t truly live until you face your own death. This was a meal that would put me off food.
This is a series of posts about a 2-day writing workshop that I attended in late March. I wanted to keep track of what I had scribbled on various pieces of paper and so decided to post the results of those exercises here.
After handling motivations (see below), we moved on to dialogue. I hate writing dialogue (you will never know how much), but I gave it a shot. It was made easier, to an extent, as Jane Camens framed this exercise with a “back-story”, so to speak. The background is as follows. A woman walks into her bedroom to find her husband making love to her sister. Distraught, she leaves him and manages to avoid him for a year until they chance into one another at a party. He begins the conversation with
I missed you every day. Why haven’t you returned my calls?
I missed you every day. Why haven’t you returned my calls?
The music turned to noise, the room cleared itself of all but the two of them.
Let me explain. … A minute, that’s all I’m asking for.
Her silence asked the question he dreaded.
It wasn’t my fault. … Things got out of hand
It wasn’t his fault, she thought.
I was … let me explain
He paused, as if seeking permission to continue. The excuses flowed. It was Diane, she was lonely, it was a mistake.The words “one-off”, “never” and “again” made it pass her aural defences and registered in her mind.
I had breakfast with your brother this morning.
she said, finally. He shifted, his hand withdrew from where it had previously nestled on her arm, now limp and lifeless at his side.
I ought to thank you, you know, for showing me the importance of family.
I must tell you all about the new kid on the block, Books2Anywhere.com (www.books2anywhere.com). Their website is basic, without screaming graphics or user ratings; you can’t read excerpts and individual book information (publishers, etc) is non-existent. Oh, and they “only” sell books.
But their pricing is very competitive and they don’t over-charge on shipping either, unlike that other, less-than-Amazing store on the web. What’s more, shipping is actually faster.
So tonight I shall be savouring Football Against the Enemy (by Simon Kuper), and David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day. Right now, it’s time to unwrap Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
I am old enough to remember when KFC was Kentucky Freid Chicken, when Colonel Saunders hawked his “secret recipe” fried chicken. Back then, in 70s Singapore, there was no concept of fast food, partly because as a child growing up, I didn’t know what “fine dining” meant. I don’t recall why I liked Kentucky Fried Chicken, as, looking back, none of the advertising was specifically targetted to kids, although I do remember the appeal of its “finger lickin’ goodness”.
I always imagined old Harland Sanders – the title is honorary – as an enlightened plantation owner who stole his recipe from one of the slaves. Not that this stopped me from liking them chickens: he probably shared his profits, right? Read More
Allow me to indulge myself in a rant.
One of the reasons why this site has seen little activity is due to the near completion of my new abode, The Berth. It is the first development on Sentosa, an island off Singapore. Unfortunately, the excitement in anticipation of finally moving into my apartment is being negated – daily – by those who hawk themselves as “interior designers”. The situation is dire indeed.
Their first failing is simply not listening. This is what is desired, but that is what is delivered. I suspect this lack of understanding is not totally ill-intended, but a result of an inability to conceive of what a non-Singapore residence means. Their template has been cast, their thinking, their creativity can be measured not in leaps and bounds, but in millimeters, as their crawl their way through pages of countless magazines in seach of what carries weight in the market. All different but yet all the same. This is no bad thing if the typical Singapore apartment or house is the pinnacle of style, the embodiment of aesthetic living. This is not the case. I shudder at the thought of these hideous, hideous domiciles and the impact they exert on the creatures living within them. Always the 42″ plasma TV, king of the living room; always the Zen/Resort feel, a perennial longing for something that their rat-race lives demands as meagre compensation, only to elude them; or, always the gaudy curtains and the little items of individation that litter the place, suffocating space.
The third failing is of course quite understandable. It is their inter-linking with contractors who implement their “vision”. Virtually all of these interior design companies, or “space planners”, are glorified contractors. They are the front end of a very base chain. Hence their preference to design and construct homes which are flooded with needless feature walls, raised platforms, where embellishments and profits take centre-stage instead of good taste.
And so … until the next update, when I shall report on the results of my own designs! How difficult can it be?
I stood next to the President of Iran this morning, as the Heads of State of the Eight Developing Countries that make up the D-8 toured briskly around the business forum. He’s kinda short.
We moved from motivations to context and were given briefs on locations in the home. I chose the bed-room as it seemed the most personal and familiar of spaces.
They had bought the bed only recently, while the mattress also was specially chosen. Neither survived their first year together. Once in equal measure sturdy and comfortable, it now sagged gracelessly, fully shorn of its majesty.
The wall now required replastering thanks in no small part to the nightly banging of the headboard, as if they were sending some secret message in Morse Code.
Motivations were next on the table. Characters need motivation to move, just as we are moved to write. There were options, but I chose this. I think I began to enjoy myself as I wrote this, again within a 10-15 minute time frame.
The thunderous roar of those dread machines was enough to make Mary Jane flinch. It’s a full moon tonight, she thought. Must be one from the Gulf that time. It wasn’t her unsteady hands that shook the coffee out of the pot, but the 18 wheels of masculinity that passed the diner. Nights brought out these creatures, as drivers sought to take advantage of lighter traffic and get the most mileage from the permissible 8 hour shifts.
No-one in LA was a waitress, nor a valet attendant, bouncer, cook; at least, no-one was ever only thus. LA was where she was headed, the end point of a crooked line that snaked back all the way to Bam Bam, Alabama. She hadn’t made it, though. The diner was thirty seven miles south east of the very out-skirts of Los Angeles, the City of Angels, on the intersection of I-110 and Route 5.
She yearned to sing, to dance, to become the best Elvis impersonator that ever was. Never mind that hip surgery had slightly stifled her version of the King’s shuffle, nor that she had been stuck these 37 miles from Hollywood for as long as she could remember. She devised ways to keep song and dance in her life. It had taken some months, but she finally cajoled the owner to submission; henceforth, in place of her dancing feet, she captured rhythm in the menu:
If you’re hungry and in a hurry
Try our spicy, Mexican curry
She would recite the day’s specials with much relish and such polished professionalism that her regulars would beam with pride:
Canines are Man’s best friend
We don’t eat them, you understand
Try it today, our famous hot dog
before you hit LA smog
I cannot see the point, actually; what’s the difference between writing for this site, during private, leisurely moments, and the writing that takes place during socially constructed time frames? In other words, what is the benefit afforded by the writing workshop? The person behind the writing is one and the same, with the identical grim isolation of one-ness compared to being amongst many-ness. The motion of the pen is somehow different, I think. There is a lightness when doing work, when writing, at a workshop. It is less suffocating, allowing a certain joyousness to escape.
Below is the first piece, hastily written during a frantic 15 minutes. This was actually the 3rd exercise that Jane set for us, after she found an unwilling and uncooperative class impeded by internal censors. The brief was simple: imagine a period in your life when you first encountered “creative writing”.
Mr. McLaughlin was already in class when we shuffled in that morning, a chilly morning with the radiator creaking into life after the weekend sabbatical. He announced a change of plans – that we would not be discussing the parliamentary system of government and the impact of the Prime Minister’s Office in shaping public agenda. Nothing could be more boring, and we sat in anticipation of the new subject to be covered.
The next words he uttered were the first instance of an encoupling that had until then seemed alien to each other and to the class.
CREATIVE WRITING
read the words on the blackboard, the very words he whispered upon turning his back to them. Our youthful optimism took a fatal turn as we realised our reprieve was short-lived, and our groans drowned the ever-creaking, ever-rattling radiator as it warmed to its task.
CREATIVE WRITING?
What rubbish! What is creative writing? writing is about truthfulnes, facts, history, theories and abstraction. Surely “creative writing” detracts from writing?
