Tonight we had the last Writers’ Circle meeting before
Christmas. We planned our usual writing exercise for this time of year – a kind of
writers’ ‘consequences’ – each person writing one paragraph of a single
story. With nine of us in the room, we
decided on passing our paragraphs a maximum of five times. But to add a bit more challenge, we were all
given the same starting sentence, and had to include a different, randomly
selected word each round.
So – nine writers – nine different styles, five different
writers per story, each round just five minutes (seven for the last, time to
wrap it up!). Then they were all read
out. Steve laughed so much he could not
see to read and passed his story to me. I started laughing so much I could
barely read it either, especially when it came to the nose flying past the
face after the carrot exploded. Perhaps everyone can write down their stories, so we can share more. But in the meantime, here’s a summary that sort of tells you how RWC ‘do’
Christmas…
On the 15th of December, thus wrote RWC…
Nine
laughing writers
Several
explosions
Six soft
drinks (no alcohol needed!)
Five
household chores
Four brutal
murders
Three dead
pets (we want to rename the group ‘The Dead Pets’ Society’)
Two
prosthetic legs
One flying
nose
And a mouse
in a Christmas treeeeeeeee
Anyway, to give you an idea of how this mad exercise
actually works, here’s the story that I started.
‘Twas
the night before Christmas and the mouse was hiding. Fed up with being made to perform
every night, he hid behind the Christmas tree and the star. He could hear his
mother calling, “Alejandro!” but he ignored her and just hunkered down even
further. The tree was lit by small
twinkling lights that annoyed him. Sometimes they were yellow like the sun, or
red like fire, or green like the
tree. He liked the white ones a bit –
they were calm and unpretentious. “Alejandro!”
he almost jumped out of his skin.
Scurrying up the tree, he wove
his way through the decorations,
swinging on the tinsel, bouncing off a soft, portly Santa and eventually
arriving at the very top. He peeped out behind the star and chuckled at the
freshly shed carpet of tree needles he had created. The lady of the house would
grumble at how easily these trees shed nowadays when she came into the living room
in the morning. It was a very tall tree
but it was nothing to a daredevil like Alejandro. He stood on his hind legs and
surveyed the room.
But this
year for the first time, Alejandro lost his footing on the top branch and was
in danger of falling. The only way he could save himself was to wrap his tail
around the angel’s left foot. What was more disconcerting was that he was
now visible to the humans sitting around the cosy warm room drinking whisky and
other drinks.
He was sitting sprawled in the
chair, wearing the Christmas jumper depicting a jolly Santa laughing, hands on
his belly. “Oh look Mabel, that tree’s
swaying.”
“Oh Mabel, that angel’s got a pet
dog on a lead.”
“Oh my god, Mabel. MABEL! The dog
is pulling the angel off the tree!”
There was an enormous crack, a
tiny squeak and a loud scream. Santa’s belly could be seen no more, the human
was beneath the fallen tree. Alejandro
ran.
Talk
about complete chaos. When can we get the place tidied up? Think I’ll have a coffee
just to see if it gives me a new lease of life. Do I hear singing in the distance; is it the church choir doing a bit of
collecting for charity?
As you can see – nonsense, but imagine nine of
these mad stories, including everything from a Santa does 50 Shades to spooky
child murderers, and you get just a small insight into why the Royston Writers Circle is a great place to learn, to write, and to have fun.
