Sideways comment Tim: into what receptacles do you bottle your Philosophy Jam? And have you patented the brand? 'Philosophy Jam' . . . it is a brand, surely?
Kind of creepy, but I like that! The actual exercise itself also has a lot of pot-boiler plot potential. No doubt written a million times, but still interesting.
Ah so that's what happened to the Faber & Faber course participant that Tim happens (conveniently?) to forget. He never came back because he was a character who, losing his plot, ended up as fresh broiled meat stewed slowly in a pot-boiler and consumed, well seasoned, by some denizens of that other, rarely seen or spoken of, 'London Underground'. Which reminds me of the tale Tim tells of the character who fell down a mineshaft deep plot hole someplace out in the desert boondocks of America. Did he escape the snakes? If he didn't did the snakes find he tasted good?
The ghost of the Faber student is now haunting the tube stations on the Circle Line. He lingers at the bottom of the stairs, a copy of one of Tim’s novels in his cold pale hand, gazing up to the daylight that shines down from the street. It is the London Underground of our nightmares. The one we can never leave. And the student - the foolish innocent - can only watch the strangers, knowing he will never write again.
Ah. I think you are on the money Alexia save that the text he the ghost, name of George, clutches close in his cold pale hand is a galley proof of Tim's, hopefully, forthcoming jaunt into autobiography: 'Mid-Lister Easy'. Word on the grapevine is that Clare Alexander, reading just the first three chapters, thought it such a transparently honest hoot that she couldn't put it down and then, on reaching the last full stop, decided there was no need to put it out to her cadre of hard-eyed and harder-boiled professional readers.
The ghost of a former student carries a copy of Tim’s second autobiography in his hand? I’m scared, Rob. We’ve unleashed a narrative beast. It’s a monster. What have we done??
Neither too creepy or to impractical to use either in a group or as a personal learning exercise.
Your account - of how you brought the exercise into play, how the course participants bought into it and how they clearly made gains from doing so - is not just crisp and clear but enticing.
What I also see is how inclusive this exercise can be, thinking particularly about how it lends itself to adaptation for those writers who may be less mobile or confident than others. Plenty of characters to be 'kidnapped' on a visit to a museum or art gallery, or while sitting in close observational mode in a cafe.
I recall listening to a writer who'd been commissioned to conjure a short story tell her audience that she'd decided to go visit Lichfield, stroll about a bit to get the sense of the place, then take a seat by the window of a cafe and see what story arrived after allowing her mind to observe the people coming in and going out of the premises. Didn't take that long for one spark of possibility to catch her imagination, morph into a seed which had not only germinated but grown to blossom as the first -which turned out to be close to finished - draft of the short story she read from. If memory serves the one near glitch in what seems to have worked out a perfect writing day was that, so pleased with the fruit of her writing labours as she was, it was only as she stepped out onto the street that she realised she'd not settled her bill!
This is gold dust. I’m often sat in a community cafe eavesdropping, but this adds a ‘pointy end of the pencil’ goal to it. I’m a social researcher by qualification! Thank you
Sideways comment Tim: into what receptacles do you bottle your Philosophy Jam? And have you patented the brand? 'Philosophy Jam' . . . it is a brand, surely?
Kind of creepy, but I like that! The actual exercise itself also has a lot of pot-boiler plot potential. No doubt written a million times, but still interesting.
Ah so that's what happened to the Faber & Faber course participant that Tim happens (conveniently?) to forget. He never came back because he was a character who, losing his plot, ended up as fresh broiled meat stewed slowly in a pot-boiler and consumed, well seasoned, by some denizens of that other, rarely seen or spoken of, 'London Underground'. Which reminds me of the tale Tim tells of the character who fell down a mineshaft deep plot hole someplace out in the desert boondocks of America. Did he escape the snakes? If he didn't did the snakes find he tasted good?
The ghost of the Faber student is now haunting the tube stations on the Circle Line. He lingers at the bottom of the stairs, a copy of one of Tim’s novels in his cold pale hand, gazing up to the daylight that shines down from the street. It is the London Underground of our nightmares. The one we can never leave. And the student - the foolish innocent - can only watch the strangers, knowing he will never write again.
Ah. I think you are on the money Alexia save that the text he the ghost, name of George, clutches close in his cold pale hand is a galley proof of Tim's, hopefully, forthcoming jaunt into autobiography: 'Mid-Lister Easy'. Word on the grapevine is that Clare Alexander, reading just the first three chapters, thought it such a transparently honest hoot that she couldn't put it down and then, on reaching the last full stop, decided there was no need to put it out to her cadre of hard-eyed and harder-boiled professional readers.
The ghost of a former student carries a copy of Tim’s second autobiography in his hand? I’m scared, Rob. We’ve unleashed a narrative beast. It’s a monster. What have we done??
Are you Jekyll to my Hyde? Or is it that we are situated quite vice versa?
I don’t know. I’m a Capricorn, with Uranus rising in my solar bungalow. What are you?
Neither too creepy or to impractical to use either in a group or as a personal learning exercise.
Your account - of how you brought the exercise into play, how the course participants bought into it and how they clearly made gains from doing so - is not just crisp and clear but enticing.
What I also see is how inclusive this exercise can be, thinking particularly about how it lends itself to adaptation for those writers who may be less mobile or confident than others. Plenty of characters to be 'kidnapped' on a visit to a museum or art gallery, or while sitting in close observational mode in a cafe.
I recall listening to a writer who'd been commissioned to conjure a short story tell her audience that she'd decided to go visit Lichfield, stroll about a bit to get the sense of the place, then take a seat by the window of a cafe and see what story arrived after allowing her mind to observe the people coming in and going out of the premises. Didn't take that long for one spark of possibility to catch her imagination, morph into a seed which had not only germinated but grown to blossom as the first -which turned out to be close to finished - draft of the short story she read from. If memory serves the one near glitch in what seems to have worked out a perfect writing day was that, so pleased with the fruit of her writing labours as she was, it was only as she stepped out onto the street that she realised she'd not settled her bill!
This is gold dust. I’m often sat in a community cafe eavesdropping, but this adds a ‘pointy end of the pencil’ goal to it. I’m a social researcher by qualification! Thank you
"Gold dust." I receive, I sense, as an accolade of a sort Rob: care to unpack and build on your comment Rob?