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Sam van Zweden

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In!

On Friday morning I received the best news I have received in quite some time…

I got into the university I applied for!

No more Swinburne, with its grossly under-funded arts faculty and disgusting treatment of an education institution as merely a business… Onto RMIT, where money is kept flowing into the arts in the same way as any other “more profitable” degree, where my love of writing and sharing and learning will be welcomed and given a big warm hug.

No more creative writing classes full of psych or engineering students who “needed an easy HD”… Writing can be hard work, and the people I will be learning with next year will understand this.

I’m almost positive that my current image of the splendour RMIT has to offer is not quite what the reality will be, but I am also positive that the coursework is what I want from a university, and the attitude of the institution is what I would actually expect from a place of learning.

For those of you interested, here’s a link.

6

Floored by the Genius of 16 Year-Olds

Yesterday I went back to my old high school for a day to run a poetry-writing workshop. I did this with quite some hesitation, as I find the idea of “teaching poetry” really problematic, and my high school always seemed to breed a particularly feral kind of 16 year-old.

As soon as I walked into the classroom, kids started screaming questions about who I am, and did my piercings hurt, and am I a qualified teacher, or just some girl?

I was backed up by an ex-teacher and still close friend, so when the kids were told to settle down, we got to discussing poetry and writing some.

Discussions were mixed – some kids had some really good insight and ideas about the poems we looked at. Others really struggled with the idea of wordplay (multiple meanings of words, subtle punch lines, metaphors).

What really got me though, was the absolute loveliness that came from some of these young writers. A small group of boys were really keen to share what they thought the writers intended, and also to share their own writing with the class. Two quiet young ladies sat up the back and wrote really sweet poems about each other and their friendship – they produced the innocent highlight of my day. Working on the use of metaphor and similies, they wrote about how each was a great friend to the other. “Casey is a great friend who is always there for me,” wrote one, “just like my iPod.” In response, her friend described her as “a balloon you want to hold forever”.

One young man broke my heart, writing so honestly about his mother who is struggling with bipolar. I saw so much of myself in him, and while what he wrote missed the mark of the activities we were working on, I think it’s much more important for him to know that his writing is a valid way of expressing and sharing what he’s going through.

Overall, these kids had some really interesting ways of seeing the world, and produced writing stronger than a lot of the stuff I’ve seen from university students.

While my skills as a teacher (and crowd-controller) certainly need some work, I feel like those who were willing to engage in the work really took something away from this workshop. Thus, I feel like I did something good.

1

Dressing Down

When the decorative parts of me
Are forced away from the world,
I am little more than
A shrivelled Christmas Tree.

0

Am I Hitler?

Papers turn to confetti in my hands.
You tear my words from end to end,
A scritching switching of sympathies
From the days behind us
When you stuck them to your forehead,
Like a game of Guess Who.
Celebrity Heads.
Always the same questions –
“Am I alive?”
“Am I an animal?”
“Am I Hitler?”
“Am I Hitler?”
“Am I Hitler?”
Back then, you never were,
But everything since has changed.
Now my words are confetti, which I throw in some delusional celebration
And there is nothing on your forehead
But creases.

0

Five Moments

All the blogs I read seem to be awash over the last few days with questions and ideas around writer’s block.

My favorite exercise to move the blockage is an exercise which distills my writing, or anything, into a series of five moments. What results is usually a little poem, like a still life.  I can use this to make a vomit draft into something different, or to move a piece I’m writing onto somewhere new. I always get ideas where my mind is forced to fill gaps, and this distilling seems to create much stronger images between the lines than any large slab of my writing ever does.

Today:

Walk in –
Leans into me.
Kiss his dream-sweat head
“Thai food?”
Leave.

1

Poetry Workshop

I was recently asked by an old teacher of mine to return to my high school for a day early in December and run a poetry workshop as an end-of-year activity. I thought about it for a while – 16 year olds can be harsh. How do you teach poetry? What if they don’t buy my “I-know-about-writing” act?

Eventually I accepted though.

Uni is finished for the semester. I’m waiting on a call or letter from RMIT, started this new job, writing… So my spare time now is all about this poetry workshop.

I think the best way to do it is by going through a few conventions/techniques, and attaching an example and an exercise to each. The session only goes for 90 minutes so I can’t get too far into things, but they’re young’uns so that’s probably good.

What I’m struggling with is what to use as examples. These kids are 16, I don’t remember what poetry I studied (if any) at that age. I’m thinking about using some Robert Adamson stuff as an example of the use of metaphor, he does that ridiculously well. Other than this, I’m a bit lost as to what to use.

So if anyone reading this here fine blog remembers what they studied in the way of poetry at the age of 16, please oh please comment and let me know. I’d really appreciate some direction, I’d hate to confuse these kids with non-accessible stuff and scare them off writing, or discussing it with the class…

 

S

5

The Terror of Actually Writing

TheReaderCover-SmallToday’s post was prompted by John Pace’s article in The Reader (pictured left), titled “Re-Draft with Craft”. It got me thinking about drafting, something I truly struggle with (and I suspect a lot of people do… like Dan Brown, and Bryce Courtney’s more recent work?)

While Pace’s article is directed at screenwriters, I believe it applies to all forms of writing, or even all forms of anything that requires drafting.

Pace gives some fantastic advice about drafting (obvious, yet helpful – this is how most creative-type advice seems to be, especially the helpful stuff), such as cutting out unnecessary “hangover” words in order to write punchy, economic pieces. What stood out to me most about this article, though, is something that spoke to my constant fear of starting.

I have long embraced the term “vomit draft” to describe that first terrifying committment of word to page. I pussyfoot around a piece, thinking on it for too long, scrapping it before I even get it onto a page. Pace suggests the more apt rule, “be wrong as fast as you can”, coined by Andrew Stanton (screenwriter of Wall-E and Finding Nemo). “Just get it down,” says Pace. “Don’t worry about its merit”.

Yes, I needed to be told this. I’m not a brave writer.

Later in the reader, Simonne Michelle-Wells, (in “A Letter to my Younger Self (from the time machine)” ) sits her younger self down for a chat, saying:
“You didn’t draft enough. Drafting and editing are not the same things and you happily convinced yourself they are. Editing requires sweat. Drafting requires blood. Tossing out an errant comma and deleting reams of superfluous adjectives is a leisurely jog compared to the marathon of unpicking a rambling narrative arc or killing off characters in the name of expediency.”

For such a long time, I have convinced myself of the same thing. Pace talks about one screenwriter who sits down to re-draft in front of a blank page. No cut-copy-paste, this writer starts again from scratch, with faith that the ideas that count will resurface.

THAT is brave writing.

Monica Wood’s “Pocket Muse” tells writers, “you have to be willing to write badly“… and I think that’s the key here. Without a willingness to “be wrong, as fast as I can,” I can’t even start to get it wrong. I’m too safe, too much of the time.

4

The Reader

TheReaderCover-Small

Two days ago, I recieved my copy of The Reader. This is a collection of fiction and non-fiction pieces by people involved in the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

I have to say, I was so excited to get my hands on this, and though it’s quite a diminutive publication, it packs quite a punch. I’ve so far only read about five articles, but it’s got me laughing, thinking, and wanting to lock these little tidbits of writing wisdom away in some part of my mind. I know they’ll come in handy.

So over the next few blogs, I want to share with you the places I’ve been taken by The Reader, what it’s prompted me to think about and research, and what I’ve come away from it with.

Until then…

2

Barcodes

I just submitted a flash fiction piece, Barcodes on his Feet, to UK publication Mslexia. I’m not sure when I’m meant to find out. But it’s another piece out there in the world 🙂

To borrow Ms Yardley’s method:

Pieces out: 3
Goal: 5

2

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