I have a wonderful after lunch workshop with a group at the Univesity of Saskatchewan Bookstore’s grand re-opening.  We did some freewriting and then we wrote a short piece with the following heading:

The Time I Said Goodbye.

The work read outloud was very strong and moving.  Try the heading for yourself and see what you end up with on the page.

Literature festivals are a great way to meet writers and to get an idea about what weird and wonderful (or terribly ordinary and dull) creatures we are.  Here at the Festival of Words in Moose Jaw (great name for a place), I’m looking forward to listening to (and reading with) my old teacher Steven Galloway – author of The Cellist of Sarajevo.  He taught me during a fiction workshop sometime during the year before Life on the Refrigerator Door was published and he gave me ideas about writing that really made me rethink what I was doing.  I remember coming to festivals as an audience member and looking at the writers on the stage wondering how on earth they managed to get what they wanted to say on the page.  So, Steven gave me ideas about how to do that and now I get to read on stage with him.  Neat.

The whole thing about literature festivals is that they’re a kind of escape for writers who spend WAY too much time stuffed in lonely old offices deleting sentences.  Here in Moose Jaw, it’ll be good to meet with other authors, and to hang out at the spa where the festival puts us up.  Margaret Atwood was here a  few years ago and I’ve met more than one writer who loved swimming past her in the mineral baths here.

Friends of ours are joining us.  One of them is an emerging writer himself.  The festival will – hopefully – inspire him to keep going with his writing.  He can sit and listen to writers reading from their books, and chat with writers about their process and get ideas from them.  Or just hang out at the spa.

If any of you are in Moose Jaw, then come along and see some of the many readings and events happening over the next couple of days.  Writing festivals are an alchemical mix of established writers with their readers, and of emerging writers with their favourite authors.  Come along to get inspired yourself (and try to fit in a swim!)

I just finished teaching a group of teens at the Sage Hill Saskatoon experience.  Great group.  Great writing.  Great to be surprised by their work as the week went on. 

Here’s one simple exercise I used (modified) with the group for you to try – we did it on the first day to get words flowing:

DON”T LET YOURSELF STOP WRITING UNTIL THE TIME IS UP – even if you’re writing the same word over and over. 

Go: Freewrite for 10 minutes on your earliest memory.  Stop.  Freewrite for 10 minutes on someone you admire.  Stop.  Freewrite for 10 minutes on the word window.  Stop.

That’s 30 minutes writing all together.  Somewhere in the words you’ve got down there will be ideas and maybe even sentences that you can use later on.  Freewriting helps you discipline yourself to pour words out and stops you editing yourself before you’ve got something to work with.  Try it.