BIG thanks for your contributions to our first ever write-and-chat: @lit4pleasure @Marcelavb3 @ChattyStaffroom  @one_to_read @katehitchings1 @gurevitchesque @thegiddyteacher @Citygoldfinch @smerchant13 @TobiasHayden @mcollino

During the chat we explored our own practice as writer-teachers with a focus on memoir writing. We referenced chapter 15 of Real-World Writers: A Handbook for Teaching Writing with 7-11 Year Olds by Ross Young and Felicity Ferguson.

 

 

 

Question 1

  • I think I’m going to write about spending the summer of 2004 on Brighton beach with my pals – playing volleyball all day, getting up to no good, and listening to Sublime and Roll Deep on Harry’s speakers.
  • I think that writing starts well before the pen touches the paper. I might have an idea after seeing something, hearing something or responding to someone’s writing. Very often the idea haunts me for days. And sometimes I rescue ideas that were forgotten or pushed aside…
  • I write to work out what I think about something, or because I want to remember something that feels important accurately.
  • I feel like a writer when I’m using the writing process as a tool to make sense of what is in my head. It’s at times like these that I feel like a writer. @DouglasKKaufman describes this collection of practices and experiences as ‘living the writer’s life’.
  • I agree. I mostly write poetry – it helps me process strong feelings that I am trying to make sense of, often when I am walking down the street (always in the notes section of my phone), then refine it later – sometimes months later
  • I leave things and return to them.
  • I often don’t finish them though – I don’t know whether it’s because the process of writing has scratched the itch, or because I lose the motivation for writing about that experience (but usually not), or just because I lose the rhythm.
  • Brilliant questions, very pertinent to a book I’ve written about migration and am tweaking accompanying activities for. My great granddad successfully escaped the pogroms of Russia on horseback wearing a cosack uniform, my grandma worked with the Italian resistance.
  • This is very true to me too Kate. Sometimes (actually most of the time) writing reveals stuff I didn’t even know was what I thought.
  • Me too and to entertain and record a lot of the time.
  • Whilst doing this exact activity on an Arvon course around a memory with food, I ended up bursting into tears over a memory of my Grandad who passed years ago, but it’s odd how it brings things out.
  • Even without evoking such personal memories, writing is always putting ourselves on the page. It can leave us feeling vulnerable in all sorts of ways.
  • Even without evoking such personal memories, writing is always putting ourselves on the page. It can leave us feeling vulnerable in all sorts of ways.
  • Also why, if we are running such workshops, we should have tissues ready and a kind, empathetic approach
  • Mine is the very recent funeral of my Grandma – don’t ask but it involved the family singing Python’s Bright Side of Life at her graveside!! She was a happy soul and produced 5 children who could sing for England!
  • We sung that at Dad’s funeral and ended up with the giggles trying to whistle. Sounds like she would have loved everyone singing that! Huge hugs xx
  • She sounds like a special person, I’m sorry for your loss.
  • It’s ok it’s a happy memory!
  • I write to work out what I think about something, or because I want to remember something that feels important accurately.
  • Memoir writing makes me wary; I never want to write something that would upset people if they read it.
  • I wonder if famous diarists write/wrote, knowing full well it would be read one day, or whether they write/wrote for themselves only in their mind. Alan Clarke probably former; Virginia Woolf the latter?
  • I often wonder if Anne Frank would have approved of hers being published – especially the parts about her mum and dad’s relationship and difficulties with her mother. It is such an important book but very privately written.
  • I love memoir writing with teachers or children. I don’t think any other genre allows you to reflect, entertain, teach and paint with words together and all at the same time…
  • I agree
  • It’s generally stuff I’ve read. I want to respond in some way to that. In class, it will be whatever the children are writing, so there’s an added layer of community there too.
  • Also why, if we are running such workshops, we should have tissues ready and a kind, empathetic approach
  • And it may be the first time the writer has truly considered those feelings, experiences, or looked at themselves from an outside perspective. Even if I don’t want to show anyone what I write (not a good example!) I recognise the words on the page as being there to be read.
  • Always lists. Ideally, a long list with coloured sections. I take the list-making very seriously; how else could I focus on anything else with all of these bits in my head?
  • I often write series of short poems to capture the essence of what I feel or think.

 

Write-and-Chat Tasks

Note: In the following section, contributors’ writing has been italicised.

I’m sitting on a plastic school chair in the middle of the mobile classroom. I’ve just told my teacher she looks like Jimmy Hill after she blew the whistle for the end of play. Mum and dad are on the way to collect me for an appointment at the speech therapist’s.

  • I love it when someone’s writing idea sparks writing ideas from others. I bet everyone could pile in on this. School stories can cover all of human experience and emotion!
  • I remember being in awe of home educated friends. One day I was off school recovering from something and I joined in their home ed. Their dad was a Dr and that day we learned to put on and spend the day in plaster casts to understand medicine and empathise with patients with broken bones
  • Haha! Did you get in trouble? School stories are always some of my favourites – they reveal a lot about a person Tobias!
  • Yes, I got told off mainly for being an embarrassment to my mum. I must’ve only been 6 and it was a well cheeky and quite cruel thing to say, but she had a big chin. She was probably thinking, “Yeah, well you’ve got a lisp you little sh*t.”
  • School stories are always some of my favourites – they reveal a lot about a person Tobias!
  • Yes, I got told off mainly for being an embarrassment to my mum. I must’ve only been 6 and it was a well cheeky and quite cruel thing to say, but she had a big chin. She was probably thinking, “Yeah, well you’ve got a lisp you little sh*t!”
  • Poor mum, I know the feeling!
  • I remember I told Mr Sutton-Smith to eat my shorts when I was 7 My dad years later told me that they both laughed about it in his office before both agreeing to come out and give me burning looks of disapproval…
  • Mr Sutton-Smith sounds like he deserved it.
  • The ‘plastic school chair’ is the thing that makes this for me, Tobias. The only bit that gets the most description. It’s like you’ve zoomed right in on that chair.
  • Yes, I was all alone wearing grey school shorts and sitting on my hands cast adrift on an ocean of Lino.
  • The plastic school chair said it all.
  • Did you get an itchy bum?
  • It was the texture of them that I remember.
  • Still going now. More’s the pity.
  • There are too many layers of bleak going on there – the tragedy of the mobile classroom! Thank goodness for your smart mouth: Jimmy Hill!

 

Beach today? What time? Volleyball yeah? Open my blinds, grab my bus pass, my pipe, and our mix tape. Every day the same and we love it. Never want this summer to end.

  • Now if this were Author’s chair, I’d be buzzing with questions for you!!!
  • The speech at the start reminds me of Jan Mark. Punchy little two-word phrases. She got dialogue so accurately. We need to take notice of how we actually speak in dialogue when writing
  • The hope was to orientate the reader as quickly as possible – clear it out of the way ASAP.
  • Yes! Though the pipe threw me!
  • This is one of the most special things about Summer holidays. Will something unexpected happen or (more likely) will it become a blur of hour upon hour of mindless joy?
  • You know how jealous I am of your beach time.
  • Pipe has got my reading tummy rumbling for more. I’m not gonna lie, the first thought that popped into my head was that you were perhaps a young Tony Benn fan.
  • Could be a great theme for writing actually – things your parents would tell you off for but did/do themselves!

Not poetic this one but good for a private memory. I like Alan Bennett – can you tell? My fave line of his was ‘Oo I do feel better for that banana’ Grandma said loads like that. Real dialogue so important.

  • It sounds like such a fitting send off! I hear you re dialogue, which tickled me, as did your Dad ‘in, well, Dad clothes’.
  • Bennett is a God to us both. Mum’s been quite vocal about her hatred of the new version of ‘Talking Heads’. I’m going to find it hard to watch now without her opinion in my brain. I met ‘Talking Heads’ in 1995 when I embarked on A Level English Lang and Lit. I introduced my mum to Alan Bennett and he’s featured heavily on her birthday book list ever since.  I’ll never forget mum opening an umbrella covered in tiny skulls and cross bones at a family funeral. I shot her such a look. Her response: “Well it’s raining isn’t it?”
  • Grandma once told a story about her posh friends’ son who was incredibly clever, had gone to Oxford, Risen in ranks of church. She ended with: ‘All that education, but he was still gay.’ + proper shake of head/what can you do action. We howled!!
  • Love the dark humour in these. Written in a Bennett-esque style but with more self-awareness than most talking heads.
  • Thanks Mark v kind.

 

“Everything about the room was slightly too small.” Interesting to look at the five openings. The order in which I think they go from best to weakest are: 4, 5, 1, 2, 3 (Though I think 5 is longer and I can’t quite get the words to ‘work’ together, so that could be the best with time.)

  • It’s interesting that you have written this. When I write memoirs, I usually remember things being so big!
  • Only after I wrote that I thought…that’s weird! Because I’d imagine it to be big, but it really wasn’t. Physically the room was too small, weird perspective.
  • I love the way you’ve established the narrative perspective so purposefully and powerfully. I see you aged 4 in a distant relative’s house for the first time; intrigued.
  • Oh!!! That is a surprise!

 

You would think that the fact my dad was wearing an Olive Oyl red shirt would help me to keep track of him. But it didn’t I was lost and now trying to find two people, Olive Oyl and my dad.

  • “I was lost and now trying to find two people, Olive Oyl and my dad.” This is very clever writing.
  • I agree.
  • In the eighties olive oil was a thing you bought from a chemist to pour in your ears. Nobody used it in food. I grew up watching Popeye and was alerted to the health benefits of spinach. Perhaps this was an early example of product placement by olive oil producers?
  • In Rio, influenced by Portugal we used olive oil in salads. Olive Oyl in Brazil has another name; Olivia Palito. You can translate it…

 

Nicotine-yellow isn’t the kind of colour often requested at DIY stores but it was this exact shade that adorned the ceiling above the head of the town’s most prolific passive-smoking asthmatic throughout his childhood.

  • This is great! Starting with ‘Nicotine’. Love it. (The opening, not nicotine)
  • Love this imagery
  • This brings back memories of the TV anti-smoking campaigns; it’s as if you’ve described a prison cell, where the ceiling represents the bars through which the cigarette smoke can’t escape.
  • This really conjures up memories.

 

I went off piste and started writing about my traveller grandmother. She puzzled me when young. I liked her. I didn’t always understand her. ‘How were you supposed to take this woman, decked in heavy gold, skin the colour of yew?’

  • I love a bit of off piste! Your grandmother sounds like the kind of person you could write about for the rest of your life. I love the way your opening encapsulates the way you saw her: ‘She puzzled me when young. I liked her. I didn’t always understand her.’
  • Yes!! All this!!
  • She comes across as an enigma. It’s as though you fully realised she was different to other grandmas, and loved that, but couldn’t, at that age, fully understand why. (Excuse the clumsy syntax)
  • No, you are spot on here. No, as in not fussed about syntax!
  • COR! I love that, especially ‘decked in heavy gold, skin the colour of yew’. The rhythm there is so strong!
  • Thank you – no grand design, came to my mind quickly, while cleaning my daughter’s teeth! But my grandmother was such a character – so easy to write about
  • It’s the yew phrase. It’s so unusual. And there’s a folk element to it too. And a feeling of something long-lived. I really love that phrase.
  • I know what you mean – the ‘decked’ also makes me think of a really solid person (in character).
  • Solid in many ways! That’s helped my thinking about her. Thank you.
  • This is the power of the writing community in action! Gold.

 

Write-and-Chat Main Task Reflection

  • I liked that as we talked and shared so many themes came out that anyone could have found a way in with. – Memories of eccentric family members. – The feeling that your parents could do things that you’re not allowed to as a kid. – Getting in trouble at school.
  • Yes lots to think about and good to have family memoirs! I enjoyed it once figured out how to respond and write simultaneously!
  • Some lovely language – I was more in ‘talking heads’ zone tonight!
  • I was distracted, then dithered, despite the lines appearing quickly in my head. What is interesting is that others’ responses clarified my thinking and brought memories to the surface again. Thank you.
  • The power of the Writing Community. Love it.
  • Focused on what I wanted to get across but spent too long obsessing over the best wording.
  • How can I find out about then writer/chat events? I missed out but would love to participate if possible next time??
  • Hi Sam, it’s #WritersByNight today (Sunday). We’d love you to sign up and contribute to our free and supportive writer-teacher #WritersByNight community here: https://thewritingweb.org/teachers-login/
  • I’m still learning how Twitter works, so found myself looking for posts to see what was coming next. I did manage to focus on a general area of memory but was not satisfied with what I was writing. Then I found something I’d written recently and saw what I could do.