When I opened the blog this morning, I had to think carefully about what I was doing. You'd think that it would be second nature as I've been writing it since 2010, but I've been very slack for months now and my muscle memory is not what it used to be. Must do better!
Yesterday was the last day of the School for Seniors' Writing Group and I have decided that I won't be going back next term. I've been going for five years and it's been great to have an avenue for sharing my stories. The group has been very positive, the fellow in charge is terrific at suggesting new ideas and has introduced us to 'Flash Fiction' which suits me very well. However, several oldies have stopped coming, a couple off newbies have joined this term and the balance has altered. The expectations are that our stories will be no more than 800 words, or a page and a bit, have a beginning, a middle and a twist at the end. All good, and I have no trouble fitting in to that outline. But not everyone is so accommodating. One woman apologises every week that she couldn't limit her story to 800 words and routinely, churns out about 1200 words of uninteresting prose. Another doesn't write any more and entertains us with bits she wrote in her journal 25 years ago! One bloke is writing a history of his family and regales us with anecdotes about some ancestor who played football for Subiaco after the war (World War 2, I think). It's all too much. I'm not a whinger, but...
So, I'll have to find another avenue for my writing. And that's where the blog comes in. I intend to write something ever day. It might be just an anecdote about what we've been doing, or a bit of a story I'm playing with, but I intend to stick at it.
To start, I'll include the exercise we had at the group session yesterday. We were given three words and had to make them into a story. The words were: SUNSHINE ,, TAPIOCA .. REVELRY
Growing up in Australia in the 1950s was a wonderful experience. Oh, I realise I am looking at those times through rose-tinted glasses but what I remember is a time of sunshine every day, of carefree afternoons and evenings with no TV when revelry was the norm. I forget of course things like Mum serving tapioca pudding for afters when my brother and I were hoping for ice cream. You don ‘t see tapioca pudding any more; some famous chef like Jamie Oliiver has probably renamed it Four Spices Fondant or something which will better entice the taste-buds. But tapioca never done us any harm. I like to think that Australia is what it is today because of things like tapioca pudding, and Arnotts ginger snaps, and vegemite, and bread you had to slice yourself, and homemade soup using a bone you got from the butcher, and ….
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