Creative Writing
We have used creative writing on a couple of occasions during the In/Visible project. You can see our Shopping List to Change the World here. We've tried free and automatic writing as both a warm up and as potential source material. It's always useful to look back at automatic writing for phrases or words that you like, can save or use as a stimulus for a piece of writing. Images, lists, memories of women who've made a difference to us, shining lights, travels, younger selves, and times which have made an impact on us have also been used as starting points for writing.
Lynne Mcfarlane
In 1980 I moved to Oxford. Those were the days where you could send a trunk in advance, the idea being that it would be waiting at the destination train station. I had a small bag with me, probably food, books, money, chalky blue eyeshadow and pearl pink lipstick. I was the last off the train, and I expected a uniformed porter, cap set at a jaunty angle, to be waiting for me. He wasn’t. It wasn’t. Everyone was clambering on bikes, whistling, shaking hands, embracing waiting parents. No one and nothing waited for me. It was August, so although it was after 8pm it was still warm, and I had directions to my shared house in Jericho. Maybe my trunk was there, already delivered by a uniformed porter, cap set at a jaunty angle.
In 1980 I moved to Oxford. Those were the days where you could send a trunk in advance, the idea being that it would be waiting at the destination train station. I had a small bag with me, probably food, books, money, chalky blue eyeshadow and pearl pink lipstick. I was the last off the train, and I expected a uniformed porter, cap set at a jaunty angle, to be waiting for me. He wasn’t. It wasn’t. Everyone was clambering on bikes, whistling, shaking hands, embracing waiting parents. No one and nothing waited for me. It was August, so although it was after 8pm it was still warm, and I had directions to my shared house in Jericho. Maybe my trunk was there, already delivered by a uniformed porter, cap set at a jaunty angle.
Samantha Blackburn
Puerto Escondido, 1990.
Hot, dusty gravel roads set in a grid pattern marked out the small Southern Mexican town. Beat-up, rusty pick-up trucks lined up along the main street and imposing palm trees stood behind its low-rise shop fronts.
She got out of the taxi which had taken her here from the beach front hotel that they had called ‘home’ for the last week. She watched as the taxi’s tires kicked up a fine brown dust into the hot town air as it left her behind in the silence of the parched afternoon.
As she began her walk, she spotted a blue square pattern mosaic tiling decorating the floor at the entrance of a local news agents. Just outside the door: a tall, white wire rack hosting a selection of a surprisingly international selection of magazines: Scientific American, National Geographic and for the less academically minded, the News of the World newspaper were all available to the wanting tourist. On guard, a geriatric black and white spotted chihuahua sat in a woven basket just inside the entrance to the shop, gazing back at her with its buggy, watery eyes.
She had taken the taxi from their resort hotel – located more than a few miles from the town – to escape from her other half who lay sweating and nauseous in their cool white ceramic tiled room; he, making regular trips to the bathroom, bringing back up the remains of last night’s chicken enchilada dinner and too many complimentary pina coladas – on tap as part of their all-inclusive deal – one of the few perks his hard working mother had received and donated to the young couple; his mum was a single mother, in mid-life, working full time for their home country’s national airline with a second part-time evening job teaching Spanish at the local high school.
She’d entertained walking down to the sprawling beach where the rumble and roar of high crested waves carrying surfers to the shore could be heard from their room on the cliff top. Far too hot to venture down there today.
The hotel staff and fellow guests had warned them not to venture down to the beach at night – access via a set of spindly wooden steps – 160 of them in total, snaking their way down from the edge of the hotel pool to the sprawling white sands. Threats of late-night muggings on the shore and in the dense shrubbery surrounding the shoreline had kept them away for now.
She had received no such reservations from the hotel staff for her solo visit today, to the small rural town which was having a soporific effect on her. Time to seek out a Corona beer and a comfortable bit of shade, she thought to herself.
Puerto Escondido, 1990.
Hot, dusty gravel roads set in a grid pattern marked out the small Southern Mexican town. Beat-up, rusty pick-up trucks lined up along the main street and imposing palm trees stood behind its low-rise shop fronts.
She got out of the taxi which had taken her here from the beach front hotel that they had called ‘home’ for the last week. She watched as the taxi’s tires kicked up a fine brown dust into the hot town air as it left her behind in the silence of the parched afternoon.
As she began her walk, she spotted a blue square pattern mosaic tiling decorating the floor at the entrance of a local news agents. Just outside the door: a tall, white wire rack hosting a selection of a surprisingly international selection of magazines: Scientific American, National Geographic and for the less academically minded, the News of the World newspaper were all available to the wanting tourist. On guard, a geriatric black and white spotted chihuahua sat in a woven basket just inside the entrance to the shop, gazing back at her with its buggy, watery eyes.
She had taken the taxi from their resort hotel – located more than a few miles from the town – to escape from her other half who lay sweating and nauseous in their cool white ceramic tiled room; he, making regular trips to the bathroom, bringing back up the remains of last night’s chicken enchilada dinner and too many complimentary pina coladas – on tap as part of their all-inclusive deal – one of the few perks his hard working mother had received and donated to the young couple; his mum was a single mother, in mid-life, working full time for their home country’s national airline with a second part-time evening job teaching Spanish at the local high school.
She’d entertained walking down to the sprawling beach where the rumble and roar of high crested waves carrying surfers to the shore could be heard from their room on the cliff top. Far too hot to venture down there today.
The hotel staff and fellow guests had warned them not to venture down to the beach at night – access via a set of spindly wooden steps – 160 of them in total, snaking their way down from the edge of the hotel pool to the sprawling white sands. Threats of late-night muggings on the shore and in the dense shrubbery surrounding the shoreline had kept them away for now.
She had received no such reservations from the hotel staff for her solo visit today, to the small rural town which was having a soporific effect on her. Time to seek out a Corona beer and a comfortable bit of shade, she thought to herself.
