Happy Christmas from Thoughttree

Seasons Greetings bloggers... we're all due a break, aren't we? (if only from Trump-manic nuclear arms race wish-thinking) so here's hoping we all have a great Christmas. Check out the cabaret dancing Santas on my Christmas cake (yeh I know... not thinking of cake decorating as a second career!
).

Only remains for me to say Happy Christmas one and all - and a Happy New blogging Year.

Love, Ali

Once upon a Christmas Time...

Christmas can be a thoughtful time of year - so here's a small offering to perhaps make us think a little more. A couple of you may recognise this: we're reading it on Sunday!

      Once upon a Christmas time…

A child looked into the twilight sky 

and saw a single star, shining in the west.

By its fierce light, the rubbled piles of white; 

the yawning, gaping blacks of bombed out blocks in the city 

where he and his brothers scratched out a living like rats in dust; 

in its light the skeletal shapes of his home

shone in Syrian silver.

Like a photograph, at night.

 Like a Christmas card, with glitter and snow.

He gazed into the night sky. What did he see?

Ecocriticism Explained...

Teachers and A Level English students: my study guide is now published:

Ecocritical Interpretation: The AQA English Literature A level Theory and Independence Component – a guide for students and teachers (Red Axe Books, 2016)

Suitable for both A level students and teachers new to ecocriticism, this invaluable study guide offers:

• Concise, clear explanation of environmental theory, or ecocriticism.
• Detailed ecocritical interpretation and analysis of a variety of texts suitable for study towards A Level English Literature
• Advice for students on using critical theory in the A Level exam

 Supports the AQA A Level English Literature Theory and Independence Component

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1911477285/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481746101&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=ali+cargilll

Snow Flurry

It's that time of year again...what better then, than to share a short piece of descriptive writing from one of our younger writers. This from Harvey, year 7:

Cloud streams across the amber sunset. Below, the trees of the forest are a dark blanket. The hills whisper in the distance. Then the first flakes of snow drift from the thickened sky as the snow dances to its silent, winter music. The frozen lake is a mirror. The snow-layered treetops stretch their branches down to shake hands with the hardened earth. The last leaf falls and is soon buried beneath the tumbling snow, like a small hand. Fingers, in iced crystal.

Thanks, Harvey!

Mayhem in Trumpton!

YouTube I love you! So many beautiful Trumpton stories now available to view... indeed a revival! Has anybody written the one yet where Captain Flack wants Windy Miller to be Ambassador? Unthinkable! Mayhem would ensue! Too many pints, Windy Miller! Didn't you know that drinking on the job makes you sleepy?

Love, Thoughttree

Control - or Resistance?

This week we've learned that it is (apparently) possible to control everything in our homes through a smart phone: I guess that's heating, washing machine, toaster, the dog... (only joking about that last one). And now we have Alexa arriving... actionable smartwear for the home. What's for tea, Alexa? Will I need an umbrella today? Are my knickers in a twist?

They are, a bit. This reminds me of writing. It's possible - and at times, necessary in the crafting process - to focus on manipulating the reader; controlling the pace, or mood.

But isn't it better, sometimes, to live a little? I think I'd rather find out if it's raining by - you know what? - going OUTSIDE to see. I might decide what to eat when I look in the fridge - and not a moment before. Are we really ready to disconnect so completely from the turning world that we need telling what to wear and what to eat? Can't we live with spontaneity any more?

I'm all for resistance, rather than control. And so it goes for writing. Yes, lets keep our awareness of what the pen is doing - but just occasionally, lets go wild and dangerous, and write outside the box! Might just find that we write something strong, powerful.

Might just find that we feel more ALIVE when we let our hair get wet. Better that than looking through the window at the rain... and asking Alexa to close the curtains.

Writing from the Self

Do you remember... a moment from your past, when something happened, and from that point, you realised that everything had changed? Could have been something momentous - or something quite small. Whatever it was, it was a turning point for you... and these kind of pivotal moments in story have been the focus for our latest Thoughttree 'coffee morning' writing workshop which Deb led this week.

Thoughttree Writing Courses are also underway through @yorklearning; ali is currently teaching 'Let's Journey On' - a course that supports writers of all abilities in developing their fiction writing skills.

And this Saturday Nov 12th in Explore York Library Ali will be leading our latest thoughttree workshop: Writing from the Self. Look forward to seeing you at @YorklibrariesUK

Feedback from Thoughttree courses in York

Here's a sample of feedback from writers following our latest York writing course:

'I am so happy I have found this... even it being at night I find it to be so inspiring.'
'I have learned so much in such a short time and long to continue.'
'Really enjoyable course. Great practical exercises. I've learnt a lot.'
'I enjoyed the course as it broadened by imagination and I felt encouraged and it gave me more ways of writing differently.'
'I felt supported and that my ideas were helped and had positive feedback.'

We'll do some more then!

More Thoughttree Courses on the way!

At Thoughttree, we're delighted to report that our York based course looks set to run on until Christmas - and our monthly 'coffee and cake' workshops are oversubscribed! We're pleased that so many writers are now sharing in our stimulating writing sessions; watch this space for forthcoming workshops!

Just an aside... currently exploring the novel Jane Eyre.. the way the descriptive narrative shifts from idealised pastoral to magic/fairytale... becomes suffused with eldritch qualities... in other words, having fun!

All best, Ali and Deb

Thoughttree - now in York!

Deb and Ali from Thoughttree are delighted to announce that we are currently running courses for York Adult Education!
'From Fact to Fiction' has been a great success; we have explored fascinating ways to generate 'raw' writing material; memoir writing; writing powerful description - now moving on to learning how to create some tension!

Our 'Let's Journey On' course, for writers of all abilities, is due to start early in November. Interested? Booking details below:

 www.yortime.org.uk

or phone 01904 552806 or email york.learning@york.gov.uk

Character Workshop - coming soon!

Greetings from Thoughttree!

Back from holidays and raring to go! Hope you can join us for the next inspiring Writing Workshop: 

                                          How to Create Convincing Characters

In this session we will explore the essence of believable fictional characters (with a glimpse at how the experts do it) and, step-by-step, develop your own character's personality - one that leaps off the page into the mind of your reader.

Date: Friday 21st October 2016, 10-12.30

Place: Village Paintpot Café, 55 Main Street, Elloughton, HU15 1JP

Cost: £18 (including excellent coffee and cake!)

Please book asap, as places are limited.

See you there!

Best wishes

Deb and Ali

Feedback from our latest 'coffee and cake' workshop:

Thoughttree

Setting: An upstairs room above a village teashop, furnished with an eclectic mix of vintage furniture and decorator’s paraphernalia.

Characters: Six men and women of disparate ages and appearance, among them two or three familiar faces but also some strangers, drawn together by an email invitation.

Plot: Starting from zero, an idea is introduced, individuals start to respond - recognising something familiar, draw into the conversation and gaining in confidence as others acknowledge their contributions. Within minutes the group are scribbling away, developing their own take on the theme and comfortable when it comes to sharing their writing. The creative work accelerates and the group marvel at how, in such a short space of time, everyone is enthused and inspired. The group reluctantly leave the little room, but each of them now eager and able to continue their unique texts alone. Until another Thoughttree email drops into their inbox.

Good to know our punters appreciate us - many thanks!

Greetings from Thoughttree!

It's September already - time for new beginnings and fresh challenges...so, come and join our next inspiring Writing Workshop: The Craft of Plotting Fiction

Consider this premise for a story: 'Four siblings go through a magical wardrobe into another world.' Intriguing, admittedly - but there's no plot. Add: 'They must defeat an evil queen who is enslaving the land.' This is the story's motivation. With it comes the possibility of choices, obstacles and unpredictable outcomes. In other words, a plot! How might you develop your idea for a story into a series of events and actions?

We'll dip into some great novels for inspiration and try out some step by step techniques for developing plot. As always, there'll be time to write and to share ideas in a friendly and supportive atmosphere.

Date: Saturday 10th September 2016

Time: 10am -12.30

Place: The Village Paintpot Café, 55,Main Street, Elloughton, Brough HU15 1JP

Cost: £18 (including excellent coffee and cake!)

All levels welcome. Please book asap as spaces are limited.

Hope to see you there.

Best wishes

Deb and Ali

Of Steinbeck and GCSE Grades...

Today's text: Steinbeck's To a God Unknown. Bring on the environmental theory! Landscape defined in terms of sensory detail as per Of Mice and Men (which came later, of course). Love the shift from benign to capricious - nay, omnipotent! - natural world. Actually, love the shift from Of Mice and Men to different Steinbeck text altogether as have seen M and M soooo many times when tutoring for GCSE Eng.

On the subject of which... congratulations to GCSE students. Star of the moment: Nick - shifted from C in lang and lit to A grades in both (with the help of a little tutoring). Fantastic achievement, Nick!

Ali x

On matters of Wolf

Environmental theory I love you. Afternoon today spent exploring the natural world and blurring of animal/human in Angela Carter's collection of stories, The Bloody Chamber. Current favourite: #The Company of Wolves. Challenging the anthropocentric view of the natural world by celebrating moments where the animal exists in the text its own right and is not referenced to the human. Like 'they cluster... round your smell of meat'. V good. But 'the wolf... he's as cunning...' V bad - too human! How can we say wolves are cunning? Human characteristic! And is derogatory, to boot.

A level Study guide to #Ecocriticism in the pipeline! Note to self: keep publishers happy: keep writing...

Ali x

Update on thoughttree courses

Two more successful Thoughttree writing workshops to celebrate, both held at The Village Paintpot Café in Elloughton. (Our thanks to them, as always, for fab coffee and cake!)

In June we kicked Writer’s Block into touch with some inspiring writing tasks and lots of tips on technique – we even wrote with our eyes wide shut!

On a recent Friday in July we huddled around the ‘painting table’ – welcoming several new faces to the gathering – to Kick-start our Creativity. How? By creating ‘tension at the dinner table’ (or wedding, funeral, birthday party - any claustrophobic get-together will do!)

So, one way of revealing more about your characters is to hold them captive together for a while and see what happens. The breakfast, dinner or tea table scenario is ideal for exposing relationship issues. It is a mostly static setting, where harmony and disfunction can operate in turn, revealing niggling resentments, buried conflicts, laughter and tears - and the possibility of consequent dramatic action. We looked at how some of our great contemporary writers – Carol Shields, Ann Tyler, Ian McEwan – effectively exploit the potential of the dinner table scene. Then we wrote our own - and it was fun!

As author Evie Wyld says: ‘…writing fiction is a bit like organising a party – you can decide who to invite…but you can’t tell them what to talk about…’ So why not give it a go in your own story? You never know where your characters may take you.

Check our website for details of the next Thoughttree Writing Workshop – coming soon.

Deb x

To the Smoke!

Lovely to have thoughttree blog up and running again... We're now taking bookings for autumn workshops (too soon to get gothic? Yeh... bit too summery. But come October...) If you're East Yorkshire based and would like a workshop - get in touch!

Off to London tomorrow to record a podcast for York Notes. Specialist subject: The Handmaid's Tale. Still adore the novel even if its become rather familiar. A level students can check it out come the start of the new academic year by going to York Notes online A level resources. And on the subject of A levels...

Good luck to all A level students this week. Ali has been tutoring several A level students who have university places hopefully on the horizon - Amy and Alice you know who you are!

Ali x

We're Back!

Greetings all! After weeks of GCSE marking followed by a technological problem of stupendous proportions solved only by the return home for summer break of the university student - we're back!

So news: this morning Deb led our latest writing workshop: 'Location, Location, Location' at the Paintpot Cafe, Elloughton. No doubt a great time was had by all! We are finalising details for an autumn workshop with York Writers - fear and tension as main focus (odd bit of ghost story in there no doubt, then - whoooo). York Adult Ed are advertising us for their autumn season of courses (and look out for our 'one offs' in Huntingdon and York Central library). Ali is wading into writing her A level study guide for ecocriticism with - huzzah! - a publishing deal!

Some great stuff in the cooking pot then - and look out also for details of our autumn/winter workshops - coming just as soon as this next little bit of summer has passed...

Sooooo good to be back! Ali x

Creative Writing at Wyke

Did you know that creative non-fiction is one of the fastest growing genres for publishers and bookshops – and that magazines pay good money for well written factual articles and reviews?

This week Deb has returned to @WykeCollege with Thoughttree Workshops, to reveal top tips for writing ‘non-fiction with pizzazz’ to Creative Writing students. And, luckily for everyone, many of the well-established techniques of fiction writing apply!

So… use a narrative structure and don’t give too much away too soon, shun the passive tense (not to mention adverbs), use active verbs and tell a true story well, in a lively colloquial voice. Sound familiar?

There’s more to it than that, of course, so look out for a Thoughttree Writing Workshop on Writing Creative Fiction, coming your way soon!

Deb x

A Great Morning spent with Costa Winners!

Our latest workshop, where we took a close look at Costa Book Award winners, went down a treat - as did splendid coffee and cakes at our latest coffee shop venue, @thePaintPotEllerton!

Most notable... 2015 Costa winner Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney, where we uncovered a classic Gothic opening crammed with foreshadowing, hints of death and a sense of mystery that draws the reader in (and all that in the first 3 paragraphs!)

Francis Hardinge's The Lie Tree was also hailed as a rightful winner; workshoppers found her text to be permeated with a wonderfully evocative sense of period and landscape.

More coming soon!

Boaty McBoat Farce!

It's been one of those stories... the public, in its infinite and wonderfully tongue in cheek wisdom, has chosen the one name for the new polar research vessel that the NERC probably didn't want. And now, of course, there is much wriggling and re-thinking and it looks like Mcboatface will never quite make it.

What shame! Didn't we vote for this? Yeah, we did! The NERC should honour its commitment! Boaty would have sailed with such support and such affection - it's a lost opportunity for engagement between scientific research and us ordinary guys out there. Boo you, NERC!

More Great Writing!

Here's more great writing from our Year 4 star, Amelia:

Beach

The peach sand frizzled under the turquoise sky, while in the distance the glistening sea formed huge waves.
The white feathers of the seagulls sparked in the sunlight.
The sea water splashing onto the shore smelt of salt.
The sun reached out on to the rocky hills.
Nearly in the brilliant blue rock pools, golden fishes raced.
As the light faded, the sunset skipped into a rainbow.
Above the clouds, the cobweb moon gazed at the dazzling planets.

Love this! Amelia explored two things which made such a difference to her writing: different sentence starters, and powerful verbs.

Favourite sentence: the sunset skipped into a rainbow. Beautiful! (to use a word we have banned in our sessions!)

Young Writers showcase

As promised - some fine descriptive writing from young writers - this time Amelia, year 4.

Enjoy!

The Monstrous Night… by Amelia

Once upon a time there was a field. The bright green grass swayed in the shimmering wind. The spreading branches trembled in the blue-sky breeze. The warm wind flowed in between the emerald green blades of grass, while the golden sun glowed. Autumn coloured leaves flew through turquoise air.

           

In the field was a scarecrow. He was loving, happy and a giant smile on his face.

            

That night there was a monstrous storm. Fierce lightning flashed while dark rain poured in the ebony night. The powerful wind prowled like wolves howling and growling. The wolf wind grabbed the leaves and tossed them in the air. It pulled on the scarecrow’s straw. It spun him round and round. It stole the scarecrow’s torn hat and scarf. The wind tugged at his head and his arms until he was torn apart and laying on the grass in peace.

Work Done!

Morning all bloggers - we're back! Deb has been marking A level coursework, and Ali has been writing material for the revised edition of the York Notes study guide for The Handmaid's Tale... so we've been busy!

Here at Thoughttree we're hoping you've all had a great Easter break - bring on the spring!

Showcasing some splendid descriptive writing from our young writers next. Just one comment on current stuff today (teachers' union conferences and all that) and that is to say: what need teacher votes and so on? As a parent, if my children were to be tested at 4 years, I SIMPLY. WOULD. NOT. ALLOW. IT. PERIOD.

Did it before with KS1 Sats. Would do it again. Listening, Nicky Morgan?

Writing Workshop

  How to Keep Your Reader in the Fictional Dream

 

                                                    Reading a good story is like  being in a 'vivid and continuous dream' (John Gardner)

 

Please join Deb (Ali is on a short writing sabbatical) on Thursday 25th February, 10am -12.30 at Judson's, Pocklington. £15 including coffee and cake, of course.

 

We'll be exploring techniques for our own writing (control of vocabulary; handling sentences; developing style) that can save us from distracting the reader from this 'dream'.  As always, we'll look at how the some of the best contemporary writers do it.

Do come and join us - and please book your place asap.

Best wishes

Deb and Ali

we're back!

Great heavens above! How did it come to this? No internet access for five days - that's FIVE WHOLE DAYS, people! What's it like? It's like one's right arm has been not just cut off, but brutally severed, that's what!

So much for changing to superfast broadband, BT... something of a slow start! And guess what: the reason for our stuttering start to superfast? The guy at the BT cabinet had plugged us into the wrong port. Yep. Highly technical. I throw my hands up in horror. No, I really do.

Oof. So glad to be back - and look out for Deb with our latest Thoughttree Writing Workshop later in February! As for me - now that I'm over the shock of the superfast fiasco - am taking a sabbatical to write the next novel. Will continue to blog though - there will be many on the subject of writer's block and what on earth do I write next, no doubt!

Creative Writing Course

Thoughttree are delighted to announce that they are working with York Adult Education to offer a new course in Creative Writing, led by Ali. www.thoughttree.co.uk for more details and how to book.

www.yortime.org.uk
01904 552806
email: york.learning@york.gov.uk

The Loney. So nearly great.

Congratulations to #TheLoney for being almost the Costa Winner this week - loved this book - most of the way through. #Hurley creates a world full of threat and foreboding; we are kept delightfully - and in most sinister fashion - on the edge of our readerly seats.

How does he do it? The page eggers are the sense of menace personified; look at the language as they arrive: 'crawled'; 'nightmare'; 'grotesque'; 'savage'. They are so effective because the the threat they bring with them is never quite realised - and this is important in Gothic writing where the thrill lies in terror, not horror. More of that in a moment!

This novel has echoes of Fay Weldon's Puffball. But Weldon (arguably true ruler of domestic Gothic) achieved something that Hurley has not: she stepped back from an overwritten ending to leave us with a sense of delicious wonder that the ordinary can appear so menacing/sinister. The Loney descends into farcical horror: the sacrificial baby? With 'shrivelled yellow face' and 'mangled claw'? Really? Horror, not terror.

And the miraculous recovery of Hanny? Oh please.

Its reductive, and a shame. So nearly great!

creme egg on the face!

Greetings bloggers all - glad to report that we are coming up to speed for the New Year (yes I know it's almost February!)

Important things first - hot topic: tried the first Cadbury's #Creme Egg of the season today. Result: horrid. You have cheapened the chocolate, Cadbury! First and last Creme Egg for me and definitely a case of egg on the face for Cadbury.

Creme Egg, anyone? No thanks.

Happy New year from Thoughttree!

Greetings from Thoughttree!

The festive season is behind us - the last chocolate sneaked from the box, decorations packed away, a trail of pine needles leading to a naked tree, lying prostrate on the damp patio...

Time for New Year's resolutions!

We're hoping that yours includes enjoying more Thoughttree Creative Writing Workshops in 2016!

Watch this space for the next session, coming soon.

And it's not too late to enter our Flash Fiction competition - title: Snow Globe. Word limit: 150. (Sounds easy, eh?)

Deadline: this Friday (8th Jan). Submit on-line. Winning story will be featured on our website and read on West Wolds Radio, the creative writers' radio station.

Best wishes

Deb and Ali