Apparently that’s an image of “Medieval man writing”. How do they know it’s a Medieval man? Hands look very smooth to me. Could be a modern man or a woman.                                                                                           I’m getting off the subject.  There are two kinds of writing exercises or prompts – the sudden and the considered. The sudden I dislike and tend to avoid poetry or other groups that do this – without warning, all write about – I don’t know – HANDS.  The ones where you get your prompt and can take it away and think about it, play with it, or forget about it till the evening before – those can be interesting. Liking play with words as I do, I tend to try to find a way to twist the topic from its obvious meaning. In a fun Chelmsford writing group I go to, I took “AS THE DOOR CREAKED…” (Gothic, ghostly, threatening maybe) not to mean “as” in the sense of “when” or “while” (as the door creaked, I felt a shiver in my spine) but in the sense of “because” and started, “As the door creaked, I didn’t buy the house”. This time the prompt was “Dressed for success” – not really my thing, dressing up I mean, not success – and came up with a story involving a fictional River Drest in Sweden, the town named after the waterfall on the river (Drestfors) and the local brewery’s premium beer, Drestfors XS. This turned into a comedy of cultures, the cultures being Swedish and Japanese. Really interesting showing two different cultures interacting and misunderstanding when neither of them is your own.

The other efforts were downright brilliant. Many thanks to Tom the Mad Psychiatrist who organises it.