Caring @ Christmas # Creative Writing Project #

28th December 2010

During a volunteer shift at Bristol's Caring at Christmas Homeless Shelter, I was given the opportunity to take part in a creative writing workshop, facilitated by a lady named Khrysia. Participants, myself included, selected an image and a leading sentence. We then wrote freely for 20minutes, with reference to the image and sentence chosen.

Below is my piece. I chose a photograph of some red flowers in white vases and the sentence "when I was a child I was convinced I would be..."

As a child I was convinced I would be

A graduate

A success,

Totally free

A driver

No children

A one-bed flat

An artist, a scientist

Rid of my fat.

A countryside dweller,

A city girl

Detached from ignorance,

The colour red was very

Significant.

Hounds in gardens

Hounds in fields,

Wax jackets

Rifles

Not hair and nails.

Animals not people.

I do not know the name of these plants

But they were always there.

When I was a child

I was convinced I would be

Here right now, where I want to be.

It’s hard to write extensively

before it becomes fake and constructed.

My obsession with beauty and grammar stops

words flowing freely. 

My hands are cramping.

It’s cold and raw.

When I was a child I was convinced I would be

here right now where I always wanted to be

I was surprised at how easily those words came, how comfortable I felt, how real I was able to be when sat with three others, including two men visiting the shelter, who's struggles in life I can't begin to comprehend.

It's been a while...

A considerable amount of time has past since my last post,  partly due to a laptop sized hole in my life and partly because of the sheer volume of work I've had on. I was forced to take on part time work in Telephone Fundraising because money was tight and the stress was having a worrying impact on my work. But, the nature of cold-calling conflicts with my core values and beliefs, and with the therapeutic skills I am attaining through my course. Thankfully, I was able to quit that job, and I am now free to focus my mind once more. 


Creatively, I am bouncing high. My confidence has soared in recent weeks, and I'm genuinely proud of recent pieces of work I have produced. I'm chipping away slowly but surely at the inhibiting artistic values with which I was raised (note: i mean this only of my academic teaching, not of my personal upbringing). I am gradually losing the feelings of frustration that frequently haunted me until recently - frustration that stemmed from what I assumed was my struggle to produce work of high quality whilst being surrounded by peers who's work was creatively excellent.

One of my course modules, aptly named The Creative Process in  the Development of Self Awareness, has enabled me to ground myself, to slow my thought processes down so that I am able to work at a slower pace without feeling like I have failed somehow. I truly believe that the rapid development of skills in my creative work is a direct consequence of this.

I've discovered my most recent coping strategy for anxiety. It involves scribbles (usually created whilst in a low state of mind), which I then proceed to colour in when in a heightened state of anxiety (often days after the initial drawings are made) - I find that having boundaries on the paper and being able to create patterns quite mindlessly somehow enables me to calm myself.

That's all I can muster for now, but I'll be back later I'm sure!