Tagged: Writers Resources

As seen on the Good Blog Guide

NWS_WIDGET_72dpi The lovely people at New Writing South have, in their infinite wisdom, included Chez Goldberg on their Good Blog Guide. WooHoo! They’ve given me a little internet badge and everything. Dedicated to “inspiring, nurturing and connecting all kinds of creative writers across the region and beyond”, New Writing South are a brilliant resource for writers. Their workshop ‘Stop fucking about and start writing’ looks particularly good and is the kind of ethos I fully endorse 🙂 Check out all the good writerly stuff they have to offer.

Writers Workshop in South London’s Newest Cinema!

Cinemas are one of my all-time favourite spaces. The feel of plush velvet beneath your fingertips, a dark room filled with anticipation, the whir of long red curtains being drawn back to reveal a giant screen. And then…the music, the flickering lights, the sound and pictures so big, so all-encompassing.

Agata Zielinska-Hryn clearly loves it too, because she’s built one beneath her shop in Forest Hill, South London. Doopo Doopo opened in 2012 and is an independent art gallery, boutique and arts hub. It’s home to the Vortex Cinema Club, creative workshops including film-making, oil painting, guitar classes and life drawing. I’d been in several times before popping the question earlier this summer: Have you ever thought of hosting a writer’s workshop here? Yes! she said, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! And so The Forest Hill Writers Workshop was born.

Every Thursday night from 7pm – 9pm the newly developed cinema space will be converted into a writers workshop and I’ll be taking writers through their paces in a supportive atmosphere. There will be detailed feedback and inspiring weekly excercises. Writers will write. And laugh. Because laughter is important in these things 🙂

The new workshop begins on 23rd* October and is strictly limited to 12 places. See the Forest Hill Writers Workshop page for more details.

Testimonial:

I studied with Stephanie Goldberg for two terms and found her classes dynamic, challenging and hugely enjoyable. The structure of the class was always reliable, allowing time for free writing and shared responses to students work. Her critical feed back was always immensely valuable. My writing grew significantly under her tutelage and I would not hesitate to recommend her classes to writers of all levels.

Denise Stephenson, writer of Pentimento (recently awarded 4 stars by The Stage)

TO BOOK, POP IN OR CALL DOOPO DOOPO ON 078 4271 8336.

DOOPODOOPO

*This post originally stated that the workshop would begin on 9th October. The venue then changed the date and this was updated on 5th October 2014.

The Queen of Procrastination

Aaaaargh!!! Staring at a blank screen, writing something, deleting it, wondering how you ever managed to complete anything before when the drivel that is coming out of you now is so rancid, the prose so decrepid and puerile that you should be taken in front of the Judge of Writing, court martialled and then shot. You are that judge, of course. The nasty little voice saying nasty little things about what you’re getting down on paper, on screen. You are the “Creative devil” laughing at any attempts you make.

You set yourself a challenge last week to write a blog every day for the month of May. Already you have failed. This is no reason not to get back up and carry on anyway. You have learned this, over the years.

This morning you write three lines about a trip to the Rivoli Ballroom on Saturday night, decide it’s crap, look at Facebook, watch every interview of the entire cast of The Crimson Field on the BBC website and then an interview with the scriptwriter, Sarah Phelps, which leads you to procrastinate further on the BBC Writersroom blog, where you find this: Getting through Writer’s Block: Established television writers share their strategies for getting through writer’s block.

Your favourite tip from this video comes from Toby Whithouse, writer of Being Human and No Angels, who says

What you need to do is to book a room above a pub for about two months time, tell all of your friends there is going to be a reading of your script and I guarantee you, you will get that script written. Because sometimes the only way to overcome writer’s block is to literally push through it.

 

This tip speaks to you because you are driven by deadlines and fear. Specifically the fear of completely humiliating yourself in front of an audience. It’s the reason why writing workshops are so great – just the idea of reading your work out in front of others forces you to work harder on it, to make it less shit. More importantly, to finish what you start.

As the self-proclaimed Queen of Procrastination, you can sniff out every excuse, every trick, every lie people tell themselves in order to get out of what they’re actually supposed to be doing. When you run the Queer Writers Retreat for example, the first thing you do is get the writers to hand in their mobile ‘phones. You all chat and laugh and eat during the breaks, but when they sit back down in the Writing Room, a hush descends and the gentle tapping of keyboards and scratching of pens takes over. They’ve already agreed their goals for the day, they are there for one reason only. There is no distraction, no escape. It works.

There is of course, what you like to call “Productive procrastination”. Would you get any cleaning done if you weren’t putting off doing something else? The scarier the task, the cleaner the home. In fact, most of the boring chores you do seem to be a result of putting off doing something else. Sometimes you write stuff to avoid writing the thing you feel you’re supposed to be writing. And sometimes that avoidance writing turns out to be far more satisfying. This entire blog post, for example, has been an excercise in procrastination (you were supposed to be writing about Saturday night, remember?).

Be stubborn (you were born that way, you might as well utilise it). Force yourself, allow yourself, to write any old shit. As long as you’re getting something down, it is never a waste of time. You can make it good later. Remember the maxim: Don’t get it right, get it written.

Then get it right.

 

The Goldberg Guide to Writing (in 200 Words)

1. Read. Read a lot. Read everything you can get your grubby little hands on. For years, decades.

2. Live an interesting life. Make terrible decisions. Fall in love with drunken idiots. At crossroads, take the path strewn with fallen trees, pot-holes and gnarled branches clawing at your sleeves.

2a. Alternatively, live a life so excruciatingly dull that you are forced to live in your imagination.

3. Be grateful for your fucked-up family. Emotional blackmail, Olympian feats of denial and traumatic get-togethers are literary gold! Whether you write down everything they do as a coping mechanism or merely revenge, all the raw drama of life is here.  If you ever run out of material, you could do worse than telephone your relatives for a chat about what a disappointment you are.

4. Remember that the blank page is nothing to be scared of.  Remind yourself of this often.  Every day, in fact. One day you might even believe it.

5. Write thousands of words of pretentious bilge. Fill a forest-worth of notebooks with future embarrassment.  Fail again and again. At some point, fail better.

6. Shut the door. Sit. Pick up a pen. Repeat steps 4 and 5. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

The fear of the Blank Page

I finished my 30 Day Challenge on 30th November. It was exhausting, exhilharating, inspiring. My Queer Writers Retreat is up and running (and there’s an earlybird discount if you book before Christmas Eve), this blog is growing steadily and I now have the confidence to play, experiment, have fun with ideas in a way that my perfectionist self warned me against in the past.

And yet. The fear. It’s always there. Lurking.

The blank page

The blank page

I teach people free-writing*. I have abseiled off the top of a 500m building, done stand-up comedy, performed to a 200-strong rowdy audience wearing little else but my underwear and a long velvet cape, stood up to bullies. So why does a blank page hold such horror?

I have been re-reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I love this book. Love its humour, advice and wisdom. It’s candour. But most of all, I love the intimacy King creates, as if he is speaking only to me, as if this is just a relaxed conversation between us two.  It is simply a joy to be in his company. (Hell, if he was writing about corporate tax law, I’d still lap it up.).

There are a couple of lines, near the end, that I want to screen-print onto a large poster, frame and hang on every wall in my house. To remind me. To remind me what you, and I, and everyone already knows deep down:

The scariest moment, writes King, is always just before you start.  After that, things can only get better.

Oh Stephen, you speak the truth!

So. Sit. Pick up your pen. And start.

 

*the art of just getting the fuck on with it

What one talks about on the Queer Writers Retreat (clue: it’s bollocks)

Or at least, this is just one of the topics covered during an afternoon break at the first ever Queer Writers Retreat. We are giggling in the kitchen: the playwright working on a new play, the literary agent who’s got her own book to deliver in January, the comedian creating a brand new set, the blogger working towards a book and the host – yours truly. The novelist couldn’t make it. The novelist missed out on other conversational gems such as “M_’s nut milk”*, “the fanny grooming shop” and “the proper use of coasters”. I make a pot of strong coffee and we eat biscuits and chat.  The conversation becomes more animated and threatens to last a while. I gently interrupt and usher everyone back upstairs, to continue what they started.

Earlier that morning…

It’s 10:10am, ten minutes after the QWW is supposed to begin, and I’m struggling to clear a blocked sink that was perfectly fine just five minutes before and no-one has turned up. There’s a problem on the trains and four writers are running late, one has given up trying to get here altogether. The place is sparkling clean and fragrant with oils of bergamot, lime and peppermint. There is freshly baked lemon polenta cake sitting pretty on a cakestand in the lounge, coffee and a gazillion types of tea at the ready. The writing table is poised for action. The roses in the hallway stand to attention. We wait. And we wait. All we are missing is some writers. And an unblocked sink.

Five minutes and some heavy duty sink unblocker/ prodding with a metal curly wire/ plunging + a lot of swearing later, and the sink is satisfylingly empty and the first guest arrives. The kettle goes on, two more writers turn up, a pot of tea is made. We sit in the lounge and I give them tea and cake and paper to pledge their committment to what they will achieve today. This fixes a goal in their minds and they work harder for it.  They are nervous.  Of course they are – they’re spending the day with a bunch of strangers and a monstrous expanse of empty white page. I know this feeling. That’s why I soothe them and offer them cast-iron tips for how to get writing. Because if there’s two things I am bloody good at it’s this: feeding people and getting them to just write.

Once all four are safely at the writing table, I tiptoe upstairs like a parent checking on a sleeping baby and peek into the room. The nervous chatter is gone. All I can hear is the scratching of pens. They are lost in whatever worlds they are creating. It is beautiful to watch. With a happy heart, I return to stir the hearty soup I am making for their lunch.

Image

At the end of the day, they are rewarded with wine, sparkling elderflower juice, crisps, olives, personal satisfaction, a little debrief and some wonderful new friends. And pages and pages of words. Lovely, delicious words.

What they said:

“Thank YOU. It was such a brilliant day. From the start you took care of everything: from gentle prodding on the writing, to a comfortable space and wonderful food and drink all day. And the unexpected bonus, the funny and open-hearted fellow writers. We did chat but it was mostly about writing and only a little about hair…”

“The view is just magic”

“Stephanie creates a wonderfully warm and relaxed environment where writers across disciplines can come together to work. Support is available at all times, be it in the form of tea and cake, or a sounding board for an idea. Having writers from mixed disciplines is great for fresh perspectives and new techniques and the atmosphere of creativity and mutual respect is really quite special.”

“I cannot recommend this enough for anyone looking to refocus and give real time to their work away from everyday distractions.”

*Because M could only drink almond milk, of course.

Unleashed and unblocked: The loveliest praise

I received the loveliest message today:

STEPHANIE. You have unblocked or unleashed something inside me and I am all spilly over with words, like sick with them, grrroooo. I had to get up at 5.45am to write. Goddam you!

This made me so happy! It’s one of the reasons I’ve started the Queer Writers Retreat – a whole day of writing with no distraction. It trials this Saturday and I’m excited, nervous and planning what cakes to bake*. It’s the time and space to nurture your writing, because in turn the writing will nurture you.

Let us all be “spilly over with words” 🙂

*lemon polenta and coffee & ginger, since you ask

Why write?

I’m sitting in my spare room, or “Writing Room” as it is sometimes known to me (depending on how active I am and how much washing is drying in here). I’m at a rosewood table and in front of me, a little to the left, is a window with a view of the City – I can see St. Paul’s, Guy’s Hospital, The Shard, The Gherkin, Canary Wharf in the distance. There are trees immediately outside, yellowing with autumn, some already undressed for winter. It is grey, misty, quiet.

You may not know it, but I have been talking to you for over an hour now. Like a lover getting ready to greet her beau, I have been practising what I am going to say over and over in my mind.  While I ate breakfast, while I lay in the bath, while I dried myself off and put cream on my face, I was, in my head, already writing, composing what I was going to say to you. And like a lover, I felt that excitement in my skin as I dressed and made tea and got my laptop out and unwound the battery cable and plugged in and switched on and shut the door.

Then, the blank page.

And now here we are, you and me. You may be reading this minutes, days, weeks, years from now. You may be reading it from anywhere in the world. I don’t know you. But you know that right now at 11:49am on Wednesday 20th November 2013, I am typing this on a white laptop from my spare room at a rosewood table. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

And you know what? None of what you just read is what I wrote earlier in my head. It’s all very well thinking up ideas, but if you don’t get it out on the page, it’s just going to wither and die.  That brilliant line, that awesome story, that piece of beauty sculpted from words will never see the light.

And yet.  Sometimes I don’t write. I have realised it is a cruelty to myself, a punishment, of sorts. And that giving myself permission to write is a kindness. It’s always better to be kind. In no particular order, here’s just some of the reasons why I write:

  1. If I don’t empty these thoughts in my head onto the page I will explode and make a mess all over the ceiling
  2. I have to get this bile out of me because if I don’t it will eat at me like acid
  3. I’m so happy
  4. I’m desperate
  5. Something hilarious has just happened
  6. Something important just occurred to me
  7. I need to make sense of something
  8. I don’t understand
  9. I have to capture the beauty
  10. There is a picture in my head
  11. I want to know what happens next
  12. These characters are waiting for me to give them something to do
  13. These characters are doing something unexpected
  14. I have a deadline
  15. People are paying to hear me tell a story, so I better bloody well write it
  16. I want to win that competition
  17. I just remembered something interesting
  18. I feel I should
  19. I feel guilty
  20. I feel creative
  21. Some words just popped into my head
  22. I wonder what woud happen if…
  23. I have something to say
  24. This story needs to be told
  25. To communicate
  26. To help others understand
  27. Because I can
  28. To express what my characters can’t
  29. To express what I can’t
  30. I JUST HAVE TO

(Incidentally, that view of the City I mentioned? Completely obscured in fog now. The wind is up and raging outside, leaves flying quick past my window, the door banging, trees threatening to snap. I just had to tell you that. Nothing like a bit of apocalyptic weather to inspre a story…)

So. Why do you write? Come on, I want to know. And just as importantly, why don’t you? What stops you?