Spring and Early Summer Work

I’ve had a busy and enjoyable few weeks mostly facilitating writing retreats and creative writing for academics workshops (with a conference paper thrown into the mix too): 

Academic Writing Retreat for colleagues from the Institute of Education, Sciences, University of Plymouth (14^th-15^th May 2025) 

Academic Writing Retreat for colleagues from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Greenwich (2^nd-5^th June 2025) 

‘Auto/Biographical Reflections on Death and Loss Across the Lifecourse (some personal reflections and discussion of publishing opportunities)’ (Workshop) Centre for Death and Dying (CDAS) University of Bath Annual Conference (13^th June 2025) 

‘Creative Writing for Academics: methodologies, motivations and impacts’ Workshop for the International Security and Sustainability and the Gender Research Group, Nottingham Trent University (17^th June 2025) 

You’re a Woman who Writes: Workshop on navigating your writing identity (with Bethan Michael-Fox, Open University and Halle Merrick, Falmouth University) Contemporary Women’s Writing Association Conference, Falmouth University (18^th June 2025) 

‘Living to Write or Writing to Live’: one woman’s reflections’ Paper presented at the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association Conference, Falmouth University (18^th June 2025) 

More to come in the next few weeks… 

If you are interested in knowing about Retreats and Workshops please take a look at my website www.gayle.letherby.co.uk OR email me at: gayle.letherby@plymouth.ac.uk enquires@gayle-letherby.co.uk 

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I often start Retreats and Workshops with a free-writing exercise. Free-writing has many benefits and can help the writer to:   

•      Get something on a blank page / warm up the writing muscles

•      Overcome inner censors

•      Follow a stream of consciousness without trying for logic

•      Move away from other kinds of writing (academic, correspondence, professional etc)

It can enable us to:  

•      Find the/OUR ‘self’ in our writing

•      Discover thoughts we generally keep deeply hidden

•      Write Ourself/ves out of a block or bind

•      Get to know a character / play with a new idea 

The writing doesn’t need to make sense, can be clumsy and cliched, repetitive and contradictory…. The ‘aim’ (but as I’ve said there are no rules) is to keep writing including … or ‘I’m stuck’ or similar, rather than stopping. Free-writing can be done with pen and paper, or on a phone or a laptop. It can include images in addition to words. 

Sometimes, as I’ve written previously, I follow this exercise with one were participants use some of the words shared by others to write a piece of memoir or fiction, a poem or a song… Here’s the piece I wrote at one of the workshops above with the words of others underlined: 

It’s a beautiful afternoon; full of sunshine, seagulls and lawnmowers. I’m indoors, not stuck, but happily so, not engaging in procrastination, but writing alongside my workshop participants for this exercise I’ve set: ‘write something, anything, using at least eight words from others’. I’m on Teams. The workshop participants are together in a room at their institution. We’ve got past the inevitable technical hiccup and all in quiet and calm. There’s cake for them.  I’ve just expressed my feelings of disappointment at not being able to share in the treat. It’s enriching to be with people in this way. To be working together, thinking together like this about different ways to work, to share beyond the traditional quoting and counting. To find order or bring creative chaos. Everything, anything is possible. What a positive way to spend an afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing ‘Consequences’ at Writing Retreats and Workshops

Do you remember playing ‘Consequences’ as a child, or maybe even more recently? In case not, and briefly: each player is given a sheet of paper, and everyone writes down the first line of a story. They then fold the paper over so their words cannot be seen and pass the paper on to the next/another player who writes the second line of their story … and so it continues until a decision is made to read the stories out. There are variations, which are a bit more prescriptive with reference to characters or events for example. There’s a picture version too; the first person draws a head, the next the top part of the torso and so on until the knees and toes are reached and the ‘person’ is completed. Not surprisingly it’s also possible now to play the game online. But the paper and pen ‘let’s create a free-style story’ is the version I remember playing myself.

At a Creative Writing Workshop I facilitated at the Fish Factory Arts Space in Penryn, Cornwall, towards the end of last year I decided to adapt the ‘Consequences’ game I remember as an warm up exercise. I asked participants to:

•      Write a little about yourself: For example, your interests, job, passions, favourite place, food, hobby…

Fold and pass on.

•      Write a couple of sentences about you motivations for coming to the workshops and your hopes for this evening…

Fold and pass on

•      Write or paraphrase a line or two from a favourite book, poem, film, song…

Fold and pass on. Reveal and read.

It worked quite well as an icebreaker and a few participants read out the 'story' in front of them before we moved on to other exercises. I wasn’t completely satisfied though and felt that more might be done with the game.

A few weeks ago I facilitated an Academic Writing Retreat for Medical Education colleagues at the University of Plymouth. I always include two or three ‘creative interludes’ in more traditional writing retreats and have found these to be useful in a number of ways; not least in pausing from academic writing convention and shaking up the writing muscles a little.  Mid-afternoon on the first day of two the interlude was a game of ‘Consequences’. This time the instructions were a little different. Thus:

Write about three aspects of your academic story. After completing each part fold the paper over and pass to someone else (not necessarily the person next to you).

 

•      Your job title, or a previous one. 

•      A sentence or two on your current role. 

•     A short paragraph; three or four sentences, on what you are working on today (and tomorrow) …

Next I asked participants to pass on once more before revealing the story of the composite person in front of  them. 

There was a second part to the exercise this time. Thus: 

In EIGHT MINUTES Write something, for a non-academic audience, about the ‘story’ in front of you…

•  a press release
• a review
• a piece of fiction/poem/song
• OR?

The results were amazing and included an advert for a wellness retreat as well as songs, poems and more. Here is a Rap written by my friend and colleague Tracey Collett:

AN ODE TO SCHOLARSHIP

I’m an AP* in a Medical School.

I teach Anatomy,

from the toes to the head.

But that’s not all.

No I’m a super human being.

I’m the roots of the Anatomy scene.

IN-CLU-SI-VI-TY,

is the name of my game.

TECHNOLOGY,

things will not remain the same.

 

I’m an AP in a Medical School.

I’ve got an MD.

I’m an AP in a Medical School.

I’ve got an MD.

But, it hasn’t gone to my head.

 

I’m thinking about the humans that I see

Working and developing a new Philosophy.

What do students value?

How do students learn?

My work is going to lead to an educational turn.

 

This is an ode to the scholarly ship.

It’s leading to change and it’s really the pip.

*AP – Associate Professor

 

A week later towards the end of a Creative Writing Workshop with a group of community food researchers (again in Plymouth), I asked participants to respond to the following (again hiding their writing from view before passing the paper on to another person in the room), this time introducing drawing, sketching, time-lines and body maps alongside words:

•  A fact about you that people here might not know about. 
•  A sentence or two/image from one of your pieces today. 
•  A short paragraph or pictorial representation of –  your particular passions and concerns with reference to the issues we are focusing on today (or  not).
• PASS ON and REVEAL. 

 And then: 

Produce something (using words and/or images) for a non-academic audience, about the ‘story’ in front of you…

• a pen portrait
• an I-poem / a life/body map 
• a piece of fiction/poem/song

 

Again the results were wonderful, creative, thought provoking, emotionally evocative.

 

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Playing ‘Consequences’, and playing with the idea of ‘Consequences’, has reminded me yet again how much fun creative writing/working can be and that the possibilities of what we might do and how we might do it are endless. Why not get a group of friends together and have a go…