20 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Mick Scully is a great writer and this’ll be well worth getting your teeth into. I should know, we’re in the same writing group: the marvellous Tindal Street Fiction Group.
Following his short story collection ‘Little Moscow’ TSFG member Mick Scully’s first novel ‘The Norway Room’ will be launched on March 13th 2014 at Waterstones in Birmingham at 7:00pm. Flyer above. See you there!
20 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in creativity, Short Stories, Think Tank, workshops, writing
A huge thanks to all the staff and kids who were at the Tweeted Objects workshop on Tuesday. I was made to feel really welcome and was allowed to wander through the stored items in the warehouse, which has to be seen to be believed. Extra thanks to Lynsey for organising it all and for introducing me to Story Cubes. Here are some pics of the day.
Kipper ties!
Happy scribbler.
The cabbage hat.
Inside the vaults.
The kids produced some great tweeted fiction and managed to tell some marvellous stories in 140 characters or less. Tales of cabbage hats, of cats trapped in boxes and the bejewelled wonder of a jealous prince…
Check out the exhibition in May to see their work and to tweet your own. I’ll post full details nearer the time.
11 Tuesday Feb 2014
Posted in creativity, Event, teaching, workshops, writing
Tags
13-16yr olds, 140 charcters, Birmingham, Birmingham Museum, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Dollman Street Collection, kipper ties, make every word count, tweeted objects, tweeted stories, young writers
On Tuesday, the 18th of February, 2014, I shall be working with young writers at Birmingham Museum’s Dollman Street Collection.
This is a warehouse full of items that the museum is unable to exhibit permanently; picture the huge warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones’ Raiders of the Lost Ark, now bring the scale down a tad and instead of sealed crates imagine engine parts, huge, ornate clock brackets, antique computers and old prototype cars that never saw production.
Giddy up
You get a very rough idea from these pictures of the type of thing you can elect to discover there.
This workshop is open to children aged 13-16 and will allow the children to explore this great space and then to handle objects from the collection.
I’ve been sent some pictures of the objects and they’re rather marvellous: kipper ties, weird hats, strange cats and other stuff I can’t identify. I’ll be putting the kids through a series of warm up exercises and focused tasks that lead up to them writing about the objects in no more than 140 characters (that includes spaces, punctuation etc.) just like a tweet, hence the title.
I’m really looking forward to this. I think it’s a great idea and will help them to think about editing and getting to the heart of writing: make every word count.
Here’s a rough outline for the session:
12.00 Arrive at MCC
12.15-12.30- Tour of the stores
12.30- 1.00- Lunch
1.00- 1.30- Introduction to the objects by a curator
1.30- 3.30- Facilitated session to create the interpretive material 4.00- Collection by parents
Here’s the brief:
Outline
Participants will be working with objects from the ‘Patterns and Textures’ sec- tion of the exhibition including examples of textile, glass, carved wood and more.
I’m not sure who you contact if you have a young one who’d be interested in this project but you could try Dollman Street, just click on this link for details Dollman Street.
Cheers
08 Saturday Feb 2014
Posted in get published, Short Stories, Uncategorized, writing
Some sound advice from the Ideas Tap website on how to write short stories:
How to write a short story (and get published).
Garrie Fletcher 