03 Oct WRITING THE UNCANNY !
With ‘Spooky Season’ almost upon us, it was wonderful to be invited to facilitate an outdoor creative writing workshop exploring ‘the uncanny’ at the glorious but ever-so-slightly haunted Insole Court manor house, with Yr 12 participants from Ysgol Gyfun Plasmawr comprehensive school.
After a creative warm-up in The Drawing Room, participants were sent out to explore the grounds, taking with them a range of random everyday objects: writing prompts that included an artificial rose, a small Homer Simpson figurine, and a pair of goggles, which they placed and photographed in odd, unexpected locations in the grounds – using mysterious or surreal filters. Back in the Drawing Room, participants were then asked to imagine that they’d found these objects whilst on their travels, and discovered that they possessed supernatural, extra-ordinary qualities. In the writing workshop that followed, participants demonstrated an uncanny flair for … writing the uncanny! One participant imagined that the Homer Simpson figure that he stumbled across in an otherwise elegant topiary ball had a pulse, whilst another imagined that the fake rose ‘found’ tangled up in a wrought iron gate was as mouthy and creepy as the carnivorous Audrey II in ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ (Note to self: who needs sleep anyway?)
Miss Scarlett in The Drawing Room with the broken goggles, anyone?
More creative writing activities followed, with yours truly sharing literary tricks (and treats!) on how to defamiliarise the familiar in one’s writing, including how to tweak descriptions of everyday objects and experiences just enough to render them unsettling, eerie.
The workshop, part of a ‘Literature Wales’ programme aimed at developing creative writing programmes to promote wellbeing, was devised with participants’ wellbeing in mind, with plenty of in-built opportunities to connect with nature and the outdoors, write, laugh, share ideas and stories, and engage in endorphin-boosting physical activity. The theme also provided opportunities for participants to explore, share and write about their own fears and anxieties, within a safe space.
For more information on the creative writing for wellbeing workshops offered as part of Literature Wales’s ‘Writing Well’ programme, please leave a comment below, or email: amdrocymru@icloud.com
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