Creative walks

Found myself walking round in unexpected places on the way to events, readings, plays and other more routine visits to the supermarket or dropping off the kids. A carpark in Newcastle, outside an old nightclub in Dumfries, randoming on the Glasgow subway and Galashiels late on a workday evening.

I like these spaces. The fruitful time I can spend between here and there. The commute. The unengaged freedom.

The way the streetlight might suddenly hit a mundane object. And make things quite curious.

The combination, the presentation, the hit of surprise. The stop I didn't expect to make.

A road that suddenly becomes a slab of light. Or a field becomes a pathway.

As you can probably guess I am in a writing phase. Right now.

wetlands, flow, and questions of scale

I am off to Dumfries tomorrow to take part in Borderlands 2 - a gathering that takes us first to the reserve Kirkconnell Flow to learn how to take a geological core sample. I will be bringing my binoculars too for this part. Good place for warblers I think. And then for a workshop in Dumfries the following day.

Looking at the peat layers in the sample feels to me like a very grounding activity. But I hope to be bumping into some different people and ideas too. Which likely will have the opposite effect.

These kind of days feel a little like an open door. And I am looking forward to walking through.

Borderlands describes its genesis:

For a number of years now, a few of us from northern England and Scotland have been making the trek into the deep south to attend an annual conference/symposium type of event, which brings together scientists, artists, writers and other creative oddjobs, to meet, share ideas and enthusiasms, learn and generally network. The common ground is nature, in the broadest sense – (without getting into questions of what is or isn’t natural!).
More information on this ongoing project led by environmental artist Kate Foster, Geoff Sample and Malcolm Green is available here https://borderlandsnetwork.wordpress.com/borderlands-2/

And will necessarily be also seeking out a bit of Burns once in Dumfriesshire too...of which more later

Playful writing tournaments at #CoWrite: the review

The last of a a run of posts on Cowrite as I have now played: time to report back.

I was a bit hesitant about joining the tournament but shouldn't have worried. Malie, the site creator, was a friendly presence and there is a chat box to the side if you have any questions or just fancy some banter. Once the game got going - half an hour for this tournament game with a minute each time for you to write your own sentence(s) and score your competitors - my writing urge kicked in. Although couldn't resist some slightly ironic entries!

Finally I was amused to come last - winning was not my main priority - but had been going well until I got scored minus 3 for the sentence "Jenny might have appeared younger than me. But in fact she was my mother." This didn't go down well with my fellow co-writers.

I couldn't fault the game - there is honestly no time to be self-conscious and a buzz when your sentence gets chosen by your peers. I will be back.

Have a go. For fun. Or this would make an ideal teaching tool for English students. Or for creative writers in need of inspiration or loosening up.

If you have enjoyed the Vogon Poetry Generator, you will love this too. You can find the tournaments here https://cowrite.net/x?sid=HSMPT3R

Lunar pull

Full moon fool that I am...to me there seems to be a special kind of creative force at work.

Tonight the moon just jumped right out of the sky at me through the window. Surprise. The sight made me want to write.

Insomnia, lunacy and werewolves. Science doesn't necessarily bear me out:

"Psychologists, however, have found that there is no strong evidence for effects on human behaviour around the time of a full moon. [] In one instance, the 23 December 2000 issue of the British Medical Journal published two studies on dog bite admission to hospitals in England and Australia. The study of the Bradford Royal Infirmary found that dog bites were twice as common during a full moon, whereas the study conducted by the public hospitals in Australia found that they were less likely."

But water, light - a kind of alchemy and transformation - take a look the child's causeway across the Huntlyburn above. Where will the path take you?

Cramped space and poetry

Ted Hughes said he did his best writing while working  in a kind of cupboard rigged up as an office. He had left the desk looking out of the window for his wife Sylvia Plath to write at. They were still getting on at this time.

Sometimes poems can come in the most unusual circumstances.

Some research has been done on workstations and whether sitting at a a desk at all is helpful to doing work. One tip is to only go to your computer when you have something to do on it. Just staring at the blank screen (like a blank piece of paper) doesn't help anyone get creative.

So here is an odd idea for a Sunday...go and fix up some thinking room in a place you never go in your home, garden or anywhere really.

I was orienteering yesterday and ended up on my back pinioned between the twisting branches of a fallen tree I had just fallen over engulfed by deep bracken. I was competing but lay there a little while thinking how good the sky looked. And that I never see it that way normally.

Thanks to Kenraiz for the use of this photo. 

Dale Spender on distractions...the cybary

Dale of course embraced the idea of distraction as part of computer use. Check out the bean bags and laptops...has anyone actually used them? Could be uncomfortable...

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The cultural consequences of the internet have not yet been acknowledged, Spender feels, and she is preaching them with messianic zeal. The worldwide web changes the whole nature of education. It means looking rather than reading, it means making connections (or playing) rather than studying a finished text, it means being able to access information at any time you want rather than attending lectures at particular places and at certain times. "Print literacy is about following an argument. It's about middle-class values - postpone the gratification until you get to the end. There's no ending online. There's no closure, no linear basis. It's about bringing it in, checking it out, constantly evaluating," says Spender.

To help teachers cope with the very different demands of digital literacy, Spender has developed an online professional development course for educators. The course will be interactive and will train teachers who can then go on to teach others. She has also persuaded the University of Queensland, where she is a professor, to replace its library with a "cybrary", complete with 500 computers and beanbags instead of desks.

More at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=109876&sectioncode=26

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The University of Queensland Library is still the top link on Google for cybrary by the way, and before you ask, yes , there are some others....

Watched by sabre tooth tigers

A slightly primeval feel to today's entry as I have been remembering an article from of all places The Financial Times I use to hand out during online information training. It explained that the screen refresh rate of computers (this being the 90s) was similar to the eye movements of a predator about to strike. And as a result, looking at the display triggered an atavistic fear response in users; an early warning system from primitive times pumping adrenalin and urging the user (potential victim) to hurl themselves away from danger.

Have you ever felt like that while working on a computer? That the thing was out to get you.

Distraction during the creative process, the man from Porlock, perhaps a more useful technique than we might assume? Not denigrating the power of pure slog but sometimes when you want to catch an idea that is hovering out of reach, maybe flicking through 10 other applications/social networking sites/answering a question about Blake's 7 and even feeling the fear and disruption is exactly what needs to be done.