It’s a vital point about creativity: how can we unleash it? Furthermore, how can writers free themselves up so that they feel free to express themselves vividly and imaginatively? These were the central questions — amongst many others — that we explored at our conference, hosted by the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning and MA Creative Writing and Education, on Saturday 16th December at Goldsmiths. It was a lovely, intimate conference full of fascinating sessions and talks, attended by students from the college and also the general public.

The Booker-nominated author Rachel Seiffert gave a highly informative keynote focusing upon the theme, using the structure of poem to inspire delegates to write their own poetry, she was followed by a number of workshops run by alumni and current students on the MA Creative Writing and Education looking at the theme. The day was topped off by another keynote from the Young Adult Children’s author, Victoria Bolavino, talking about how she wrote her novel Not Good for Maidens.

Using Robert Boice’s article Writing Blocks and Tacit Knowledge (1993) as an inspiration, I’ve attempted to draw together the key lessons of the conference into four key lessons.

1. Engage in exercises with activate ‘automaticity’. This strange word tries to capture the activities which free us from our inner critics, such as freewriting, drawing without rules, leaving a voice note on your phone etc. Throughout the conference, activities like freewriting were widely encouraged. Freewriting is all about writing whatever you want to write within a time constraint, usually just a few minutes. Rachel talked about how difficult some school pupils found freewriting at school, and how they needed lots of practice and encouragement before they could do it, whereas adults often can do it relatively easily. She suggested a way around this was for students to use sentence starters, or existing linguistic structures which they already knew. She quoted a poem which everyone imitated the structure of, and this worked very well. In his workshop, teacher-writer-poet Sam Butler encouraged all of us to freewrite all the activities in a day we enjoy doing as a starter for his exploration on how we can find the butterfly moments within our lives. In her workshop on identity teacher & novelist Desiri Okobia encouraged ‘diagrarting’ (Gilbert 2022), a form of freewriting and drawing, as a way of charting one’s multiple identities. She also encouraged freewriting as a way of fostering creativity. Top tip: use existing structures such as lists, or certain phrases to get the creative juices flowing.
2. Develop a routine. This was a theme of that many of the talks focused upon. Victoria Bolavino in her lecture really encouraged everyone to develop the routine of regularly re-reading their work and thinking about how they might be engaging their readership better. Her talk really drilled down into the nitty gritty of redrafting. Not an easy process! She suggested that writers re-reading their work needed to repeatedly return to the concepts of character, setting and structure to make sure that all these elements were singing in their work. She illustrated some examples from her own novel, Not Good for Maidens, and showing us how the writing developed. It was very helpful to listen to her talk about her routine of doing this. Top tip: find a notebook and start writing your observations of the world, and/or carve a short space of time 3 or 4 times a week to write for 10-20 minutes.
3. Work with a community of writers who are kind and responsive. This was another theme that came through in the conference. Nick Bailey shared a powerful short story of his about a teenage boy who suffers a sexual assault. Nick put the other attendees at the workshop in a circle, and fostered a collegiate spirit as everyone thought carefully about the issues the story raised, and then wrote their own responses to it. Autumn Sharkey led a fascinating workshop where everyone wrote about their most embarrassing/shameful moments/thoughts and deliberately did not share them with anyone else. This weirdly fostered a sense of community amongst all of us, even though everything written was private and was destroyed either by painting over it, or ripping it up. Top tip: team up with other writers and encourage each other: form a writers’ group, share your work, motivate each other.
4. Use cognitive prompts. These are engaging activities which get the creative juices following. There were plenty of these in the conference! Siamak Khezrian, writer/teacher, used his story about a couple deciding whether to take in two refugees from different backgrounds and countries, as a prompt to get us thinking about the wider political issues of the day. This then led on to him encouraging us to write about moral dilemmas and issues in contemporary society which troubled us. Writer, teacher and poet, Aimee Skelton, asked everyone to consider the etymology of words as a source of inspiration for creative writing. Top tip: use recycled bits of paper, leaflets, newspapers etc as inspiration, cut them up, arrange them into poems, use them as prompts for stories.

Delegates’ feedback

In delegates’ evaluation of the conference, here are some of things they learnt and enjoyed:

The introduction of the concept ‘automacity’ was hugely liberating for me. I tend to overthink themes and ideas I want to write about, which ultimately slows the creative process. Automacity as a tool/technique really has the potential to change the rhythm of the entire writing process for me. I found so much of the day incredibly stimulating. Thank you!

The Freeing Creative Voice workshop was superb! I have learnt so many useful exercises to help free up my creative voice and to further develop my skills. In the past, I had lost confidence in my writing ability and this workshop helped me to reignite it again. All in all i had a fantastic experience and I’m very happy to have attended.

I learned about approaching vulnerability in writing, how to deal with it with care.

I learned about approaching vulnerability in writing, how to deal with it with care.

I loved the range of exercises , the enthusiasm of the teachers and just how all the exercises helped silence the noise inside that can interfere with the process of writing.

As a current student, it’s delightful to foresee myself by learning from previous students on this programme(MACWE). In addition, it’s good to learn more ways of free writing exercises outside of the class.

How to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, the importance and impact of specificity and the transformational power of metamorphosis.

I learnt lots of different approaches to my own creativity, felt amazing to try some new angles on places to write from.

The techniques and the pleasure of writing freely.

I really enjoyed the variety of workshops and activities used. I learned about some new activities and some adaptations of exercises I am familiar with. Really nice, warm, welcoming space.

I enjoyed the morning session writing the poem using the prompt ‘And now I am’, as I found it grounding. I enjoyed looking at what was produced. I learned a way to help shy or reluctant learners share by getting them to read the aspects of a piece of writing that most stood out for them and how this encourages connection. Also enjoyed the exercise that focused on writing down stuff and destroying it and the link to what’s hidden deep in our minds.

Excercises can help stimulate ideas and give structure to writing but also that freewriting is also a wonderful to get started with things. In some of the sessions we were asked to write which I found daunting and would have ordinarily avoided, but it was great to be put on the spot and I was pleasantly surprised by what I produced!

The videos

You can watch my introduction and Rachel Seiffert’s keynote workshop here:

You can watch Autumn Sharkey’s workshop here:

You can watch Aimee Skelton’s workshop on creative writing, etymology and the underworld here:

You can watch Nick Bailey’s workshop here where he shares a short story which provokes an interesting discussion and creative responses about issues connected with consent, trauma and identity:

You can watch Victoria Bolavino’s workshop here:

References

Boice, R. (1993). Writing Blocks and Tacit Knowledge. The Journal of Higher Education (Columbus), 64(1), 19.

Gilbert, F. (2022). Diagrarting: Theorising and practising new ways of writing and drawing. New Writing (Clevedon, England), 19(2), 153-182.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Carrie Sweeney (MA in Creative Writing and Education) and Stephanie Januchowski-Hartley (MA in Creative Writing and Education) for helping to organise the conference. Thanks also Carrie for monitoring the online side of the conference during the day. Thanks to Professor Vicky Macleroy for being so supportive in so many ways.