Caroline Reid Writes

I'm thrilled to be invited back to Mockingbird Lounge to teach the Creative Writing classes. There are two classes: 1. Casual Writing Group (first Tuesday of each month, 7-9pm) Casual and low pressure, this group is all about generating new work. I'll guide you through two hours of writing and you'll walk away with a whole lot of new stuff plus exercises to practice at home by yourself (or with a writing buddy). Surprise yourself at how much you can get done in 120 minutes. 2. Short Story Writing Course (Closed Group) If you're ready for a more immersive writing experience, then this one is for you. Held over 3 months (6 fortnightly sessions), you'll be guided through the fundamentals of storytelling such as characterisation, point of view, dialogue and metaphor. By the time you finish the course you'll have completed a polished piece of fiction, gained a deeper understanding of the writing process and learnt how to critique the work of others.  T...

Snowman, chalk on concrete I've recently been spending my Sundays with some wonderful folk in a park in Berri, South Australia. You can read details about the Manifold Project here and here,   but in a nutshell it's spearheaded by the innovative and enthusiastic Alysha, Hermann, and is an invitation for local residents to tell their stories in collaboration with professional artists (I'm one of those). Alysha sees this project as long term (as in, years) so we're only just scratching the surface. What I want to do in this blog is demonstrate how I harness that power of observation I've talked in previous blogs to create new work as part of a project. In this case, the new work is poetry. But first, a little context ... Berri is in South Australia's Riverland, and like everything else in the Riverland, Rotary Park on Manifold Crescent has been affected by the recent, severe drought. Water restrictions meant the council stopped watering the park. Tree...

Before I dive into some fairly intense or dense writing as I have been doing lately, it's nice to begin each day with a warm up exercise or two, in the same way that a musician does their scales and arpeggios before they begin practising the piece they're working on. This is one of my favourite writing warm-ups. I allow myself to write nonsense, be playful and if it's very early in the morning I also find myself reaching for the dictionary, especially with those last few letters. What you are going to do is write a story where each word begins with a new letter of the the alphabet (in order). Do it a few times to get the hang of it and to see if there isn't something in it you could use. (in my example below I was surprised and pleased by the term 'mournful night'). At the very least, like all good exercises, this one gets you thinking about specific word choices and how a single word can change the direction of a story. Enjoy! My example: Abalone balleri...

--> It took me writing a lot of words to find how to write the right words. What I mean is this: I've been writing in journals for well over a decade and that has been very useful. I still write in a journal most days. Even if I begin the entry by whinging and moaning, by the end of it I've turned things around (or the writing has turned me around) and I'm feeling inspired & ready for the day. I rarely re-read my journal. It's a purge for me, a splat on the page, an exorcism of sorts. But there is a different kind of writing that requires me to pay more attention, to notice, to look out into the world, to develop point of view. It's as simple as noticing what's around me and writing down those observations. I say simple, but like most good new habits, it does take a little while to get into the swing of things. In her address at the 2015 Humana Festival of New American Plays, Ann Bogart said: "I've written in a journal ever...

I've recently begun teaching creative writing at Mockingbird Lounge. As a result, I have revisited many writing exercises while also discovering new ones. I'm particularly interested in exercises that force me to think hard about how I use language and wha t the story is that I'm telling; I like exercises that push me out of my usual old patterns of writing.  Here is one that I'm loving at the moment: Write the story/biography of your life in 100 words.  Create limits/conditions for yourself such as: Use only single syllable words Omit the use of 'the' Tell lies  Write the story using only questions Create biographies of your characters This month I challenged the Mockingbird writers to do this exercise using only single syllable words. This created a different kind of voice than the one they were used to writing in. One writer slipped into a child-like voice and automatically began writing about a significant moment in her childhood when her...