SCABs

Caroline’s Writing Workshop – By @katiebcreates

Caroline’s Writing Workshop 

We had a great class with the lovely Caroline the other day. It felt really cool to be doing a writing session over Zoom. I thought I’d share a few of the bits I’d written in the class, using the techniques that Caz was throwing at us as we went. 

The first was to pick one of the sentences that she put up on the screen and use it as a sentence starter. I picked ‘It was getting too dark to see…’ She then started giving us random words that we had to work into our writing as we went. 

It was getting too dark to see and I knew that soon there wouldn’t be any light left. At all. Zilch. I could feel a pang of nervousness throbbing in my stomach. Looking out, I could see a warm pink glow across the horizon. It was almost comforting. Scanning to the left, dark shadows danced across the edge of the sky. A mass of cloud was billowing towards us. We were halfway there. We could turn back, we could face the impending hurricane of rage back home, or we could keep going, keep moving. I heard Jayne swallow, a deep, considered gulp. She grabbed my hand, held it tightly. I could see her clutching Mums old toy rhinoceros, her fingers tracing its shape from the outside of her coat. I knew we had to keep going. I could feel this wonderful excitement in me, I was feeling greedy for adventure. We’d been walking a couple of hours. Jayne had packed so much into her tiny rucksack, even her spellings from that week at school. I tried to remember some of the words she’d been practicing. Elbow. Trombones. Secret. I asked her if she could spell them out loud. She did. 

Another prompt was to free write about a memory of being on some kind of public transport. I thought of the time I’d been chatting to the lady next to me on a plane to Granada. 

She spoke of her daughters. They all lived back in England and she missed them. She wished it didn’t take so much planning to see them. Gazing out of the window I could see the coastline, the sparkling turquoise of the water, trees lining the beach. We’d been chatting for over an hour and it was nearly time to leave our seats. To part ways. The plane screeched to a halt. I looked at her and smiled. She had a look of pain in her eyes. As I wheeled my suitcase up the ramp I realised I hadn’t asked her name. 

Finally, we had to think of another memory on public transport, and begin by writing about what we could see, hear, taste, smell and feel. We then had to free write. 

I see all of the people around me. I feel the roughness of her cotton lead in my palm. I hear the train, a clattering sound. I smell nothing. I taste something metallic. I feel a slight pull from Molly’s lead. I see the pigeon. I hear it’s wings frantically flapping. I smell the coffee of the man next to me. It smells so good. I only have coffee in the mornings but it smells so rich and delicious and I’m craving that lovely warm sensation on the back of my throat. I look down at Molly. She’s sitting there, her ears relaxed, her tongue sticking out. She’s so good. She always makes me smile. I crouch down to her level and ruffle her chest, stroke her back, nuzzle into her cheek. She gives me a generous lick and looks away again. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading my words, and thank you Caroline! 

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