By Ros Woolner
Our March workshop was led by Jane Seabourne, a widely published poet, experienced workshop leader and long-time friend of Bilston Writers.
One of Jane’s initial points has definitely stuck in my mind: we are all different and will be motivated by different things. To demonstrate this, she asked us to say how we got out of bed in the morning, pointing out that you could divide people into ‘towards-ers’ and ‘aways-ers’, according to their answers. Towards-ers get up because they have things they are looking forward to; aways-ers get up because they have to. Applying this to writing: towards-ers would have no trouble writing and would not be scared of the blank page, but might not know why they were writing, might not finish pieces and might not have goals in mind. The aways-ers are more likely to be spooked by the blank page and have lots of reasons why they are not writing just now, but they are also likely to be more choosy, write because they set out to write and have a particular goal in mind. I could definitely identify with this, although the scientist manqué in me felt the ‘getting up’ experiment should have differentiated between those who were retired and those who were still working and getting kids up for school!
Through a show of hands, the group was also split (surprisingly unequally!) into tidy desk people and messy desk people. Lots of messy desks… Again, the message was that people are different and there’s no one system that works for everyone.
Our first writing exercise was to take the phrase ‘This year I will…’ and do some free writing. We then picked one item from what we had written and discussed it in pairs in breakout rooms – a very clever taster of what it might be like to have a writing buddy! Judging by the responses afterwards, everyone found it good to chat one-to-one about their writing and goals. Suggestions afterwards for how a buddy scheme might work included:
Buddying in pairs or in groups of three or four
Working out what we want to get out of the arrangement in advance and setting out clear aims and boundaries
Using the arrangement to work on joint writing projects, write to shared prompts, or put one person’s work in the spotlight for critique
Having an online ‘marketplace’ where people could ask for a buddy to help prepare for a particular project: practise for a performance, put a pamphlet together, etc.
Having buddying groups for particular genres
Using a buddy scheme as a way of meeting up to discuss writing in person, once the rule of six comes back in and while whole-group meetings are still online
The discussion definitely gave us plenty to think about as a group.
Going back to motivation, we read and discussed extracts from George Orwell’s 1946 essay on ‘Why I write’. In general, we felt that most of the reasons we write were covered by his four categories:
Sheer egoism
Aesthetic enthusiasm
Historical impulse
Political purpose
But Karen added another (good old-fashioned entertainment) and a few more became apparent in the writing exercise afterwards, where we could choose to write about ‘How I became a writer’, ‘My motives as a writer’ or ‘Next year I will…’ People mentioned writing to fill gaps, and as a way of processing thoughts and feelings, including grief.
Listening to what people had written, there were several mentions of the role that teachers had played in people’s writing journeys and the motivating effect of competitions and deadlines.
By the end of the session, we had looked back into our writing pasts, thought about what motivates us now, and set some goals for the rest of the year, and I certainly learned more about myself and why I write in the process.
Jane’s poetry collections, Bright Morning and Our Beautiful Scars are available from
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