Still Life Workshop Anthology

Living through the Covid-19 pandemic posed a particular problem for the writers of fiction, namely how to create work in a world which seemed to have risen ready made from the genre of dystopian fiction. Meeting in groups on Zoom broadened the scope of our workshops in so many ways but it also added an unreal element. For a time we were all characters in a fiction of someone else’s making. So how to react to such a life changing situation?

Some of the workshop writers avoided the subject like the plague while others grasped it by the throat. You’ll find it here in all its shades and variations. 26 writers, artists and photographers reacting in their own unique way to the threat of the unseen, the unknown. Available to buy on Amazon

“I was very familiar with Zoom but Roddy’s workshops really make the most of the format. Close reading other writer’s work onscreen is a revelation and I love watching videos of poets and plays. But one of the best things about the workshop is Roddy’s  help with homework. Its like a magic wand has been waved over it.” Margaret Cooper  –  Zoom workshop writer.

………………………………………

In this section we share a selection of our writers’ weekly homework pieces and timed exercises. Homework is normally 500 – 750 words maximum, the timed exercises are completed in the workshop within 20 minutes.

Its not uncommon for one of the workshop writers to develop and combine their homework pieces and craft them into a long form story, or even a novel. This new piece by Sue Hitchcock is just such a work, coming in at over 8600 words, The Disinformation Correspondent is a contemporary, murky thriller.

The Disinformation Correspondent by Sue Hitchcock

Read Sue’s piece

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

MAY

CONFLICT

For this week’s timed exercise I asked everyone to use this scenario in their piece:

Your character has been blamed for something they didn’t do.

This was an exercise in creating conflict. Learning how to create conflict in your stories is crucial. We often think that to create conflict we need to show spectacular events. For example, a car chase, an argument between lovers, a fistfight, or the threat of a nuclear explosion. Or we think of conflict as some kind of internal suffering: depression, longing, or pain. But the truth is that if events and emotions were the only elements of conflict in our stories, we’d have some pretty flat stories.

Conflict, in good stories, is not about spectacular events or painful emotions. Good conflict is about values.

We looked at the conflict in values in Pride & Prejudice. Looming above the whole story is the value of marriage and love. Mrs. Bennet wants all her daughters to get married. The daughters want to get married too, but only if they’re in love… and preferably in love with someone wealthy (another central value in the story). Marriage, love, and wealth are all positive values. Their values most of us would agree with! However, figuring out how to adhere to all of those values at once is incredibly difficult, and in Pride & Prejudice, we get to watch the characters try, fail, and then finally succeed at achieving all of these good but conflicting values.

For the homework I asked everyone to feature characters with conflicting values and to use this line from Pride & Prejudice:

I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

…………………………………………………………………………

The Writing Room by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

Daisy Chain by Judith Horth

Read Judith’s piece

Motives & Morals by Sho Botham

Read Sho’s piece

The Missing Peace by Chandra Fifield

Read Chandra’s piece

Being Interviewed by Lesley Dawson

Read Lesley’s piece

What If? by MaryPat Campbell

Read MaryPat’s piece

Find Ye a Necromancer by Mia Sundby

Read Mia’s piece

The Devil Always Sings the Best Tunes by Stuart Finegan 

Read Stuart’s piece

Benefit by Ivor John

Read Ivor’s piece

Crime & Punishment by Fran Duffield

Read Fran’s piece

…………………………………………………………………………….

SUSPENSE

For this week’s timed exercise I asked everyone to open their piece with this line:

Someone must have been telling lies about…

This is of course part of the opening of Kafka’s The Trial which immediately throws the reader into a world of mystery and suspense.

Building apprehension in the minds of your readers is one of the most effective ways to engage them in your work and keeping them flipping pages late into the night. Simply put, if you don’t hook your readers, they won’t get into the story. If you don’t drive the story forward by making readers worry about your main character, they won’t have a reason to keep reading.

“You have a scene with two characters in conversation. Surprise is when, suddenly, a bomb goes off. Suspense is when the reader knows there is a bomb that will explode at 1 o’clock, and is now sitting on the edge of their seat as the characters remain unaware of the bomb’s existence, while 1 o’clock is slowly approaching.” – Alfred Hitchcock

For the homework I asked our writers to use this line in their piece and to include suspense:

I like to make use of what I know.

…………………………………………………………………………

The Helping Hand by Judith Horth

Read Judith’s piece

Devil’s Gold by Chandra Fifield

Read Chandra’s piece

Waiting by Lesley Dawson

Read Lesley’s piece

A Warm Blaze by MaryPat Campbell

Read Sho’s piece

People Stay off the Heath by Mia Sundby

Read Mia’s piece

God Knows You Sin by Stuart Finegan 

Read Stuart’s piece

Pretty Meh! by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

Amen to That by Jill Webb

Listen to Jill’s piece

Que Sera, Needn’t Be! – a timed exercise by Judith Horth

Read Judith’s piece

Trapdoor – a timed exercise by Fran Duffield

Read Fran’s piece

…………………………………………………………………………….

APRIL

WAIT

For this week’s timed exercise I asked everyone to open their piece with just one word:

Wait

We looked at the American poet Galway Kinnell’s poem ‘Wait’

I also read from Katrin Schumann’s article When Being a Writer Means Playing the Waiting Game – which I’ve attached. Schumann’s debut novel ‘The Forgotten Hours’ was a bestseller. I read the prologue of Schumann’s second novel ‘This Terrible Beauty’.

On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man.

For the homework I asked everyone to use this line from the novel anywhere in their piece:

Silence isn’t always empty, is it?

I read my column ‘Lofty’ from my first collection of columns, ‘The Familiar’ Read it here

…………………………………………………………………………

Crocodile by Fran Duffield

Read Fran’s piece

Getting to the Bottom of Things by Jill Webb

Listen to Jill’s piece

Timeless by Sho Botham

Read Sho’s piece

Claustrophobia by Sue Hitchcock

Read Sue’s piece

Where is my Hand by Lesley Dawson

Read Lesley’s piece

…………………………………………………………………………….

TIME

For this week’s timed exercise I asked everyone to us this line in their piece:

But this is such a pleasant day: wouldn’t it be nice to have just a little more of it?
This is a line from David Kirby’s poem “The Hours,” in which the poet reflects on a subject that feels more significant at the start of a new year: the presence of time. “I’m going to rely on you hours to lead me, / to open one door after another and beckon / me through. Look it’s time to make lunch. / Look, it’s time to go back to work.

Look, / it’s time to rub cat Patsy’s belly again,” he writes. Read it here

I read Margaret Atwood on ‘time in fiction’ – Read it here

I read the opening of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The original title for the novel was ‘The Hours’ and the work has a preoccupation with time, not just ‘clock time’ but ‘remembered time’.

All of the novel’s action, aside from the flashbacks, takes place on a day in “the middle of June” of 1923. It is an example of stream of consciousness storytelling: every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, freely alternating her mode of narration between omniscient description, indirect interior monologue, and soliloquy. The narration follows at least twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Septimus Smith.

I asked everyone to use this line from Mrs Dalloway anywhere in their homework and to consider time as a theme or a motif.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

I read my column The Mystery Guest from my first collection of columns, ‘The Familiar’ Read it here

…………………………………………………………………………

Once by Ali Giles

Read Ali’s piece

Old Habits Never Die by Janie Reynolds

Read Janie’s piece

Pandora’s Box by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

Wrong by Fran Duffield

Read Fran’s piece

Thirteen Days by Sho Botham

Read Sho’s piece

Is it Necessary by Lesley Dawson

Read Lesley’s piece

Gerard Knows Best a timed exercise by Mia Sundby

Read Mia’s piece

……………………………………………………………………………….

TRANSFORMATION

For this week’s timed exercise I asked everyone to open their piece with these two short sentences:

Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab.

This is the opening of A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Fredrik Backman got tepid responses when he sent out the manuscript for his debut novel, A Man Called Ove. Most publishers ignored him, and several turned it down.

After a few months and a few more rejections, he began to think perhaps there wasn’t a market for a story about a cranky 59-year-old Swedish widower who tries and fails to kill himself. “It was rejected by one publisher with the line, ‘We like your novel, we think your writing has potential, but we see no commercial potential,” said Backman who lives outside Stockholm with his wife and two children. “That note I kept.”

In hindsight, that critique seems wildly, comically off base. Ince its publication in 2012 the novel has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide and has been made into films, most recently starring Tom Hanks in the title role.

The novel’s protagonist, Ove, is a lonely curmudgeon who screams at his neighbours for parking in the wrong place and punches a hospital clown whose magic tricks annoy him. Six months after his wife’s death, he’s planning to commit suicide and has turned off his radiators, cancelled his newspaper subscription and anchored a hook into the ceiling to hang himself. But he keeps getting interrupted by his clueless, prying neighbours. He strikes up a friendship with an Iranian immigrant and her two young daughters, who find Ove’s grumpiness endearing.

For the homework I asked everyone to use this line anywhere in their piece:

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.

I read my column The Fabulous Baker Boy from my first collection of columns, ‘The Familiar’ Read it here

…………………………………………………………………………

Glorious by Janie Reynolds

Read Janie’s piece

Saquin Point by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

Who Are You? by Sho Botham

Read Sho’s piece

Lucifer’s Wish Disguised by Her White Collar by Stuart Finegan

Read Stuart’s piece

Retirement Dream by Ivor John

Read Ivor’s piece

Fairy Godmother or Wicked Stepmother by Sue Hitchcock

Read Sue’s piece

Drunken Safety Blanket –  a timed exercise by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

Gerard Knows Best a timed exercise by Mia Sundby

Read Mia’s piece

…………………………………………………………………………….

ARTEFACT

For this week’s timed exercise I asked everyone to open their piece with this line:

After a winter of gluttony & grief I’m back on plan for good this time.

This is the opening line of Kiki Petrosino’s poem ‘Whole 30’.

Originally from Baltimore Kiki Petrosino is the author of White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020) and three other poetry books, all from Sarabande. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her memoir, Bright, was released from Sarabande in 2022. She directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, where she is a Professor of Poetry.

Kiki Petrosino’s definition of poetry

“My definition of poetry is that a poem is the artifact or the trace that is left behind and created through the poet’s movement of mind over a problem or a situation.”

We discussed artifacts in fiction and in real life. As an example we watched a video clip of a 6 year old child prodigy Paul Petrescu playing Fur Elise by Beethoven. In 1867 Ludwig Nohl found an autographed piece of music by Beethoven among the papers of Therese Malfatti and published it – under the wrong title. Beethoven had a doomed love affair with Therese Malfatti. She was his 18 year old student, and he fell in love with her. He wrote a short but haunting piece for her – Bagatelle, but after she rejected him and his proposal of marriage the piece was shoved in a drawer. Ludwig Nohl misread Beethoven’s messy handwriting and so ‘Für Therese’ became one of the most famous piano pieces ever – ‘Für Elise’.

For this week’s homework I asked everyone to have their protagonist find an artefact from their past – an inciting artefact which could be something as personal as a photograph or journal. Or it could be a complimentary or derogatory note (or letter) that involves them that they had never seen before. Of course, you could also make it something fun like an old treasure map.

I read my column The Big Sucker from my first collection of columns, ‘The Familiar’ Read it here

Boxed by Janie Reynolds

Read Janie’s piece

I Wish I Hadn’t Told Ya by Jill Webb

Listen to Jill’s piece

All The Little Pieces, Inga by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

Tea Towel by Sho Botham

Read Sho’s piece

Damascus by Rosalyn St Pierre

Read Rosalyn’s piece

House Clearance by Ivor John

Read Ivor’s piece

Grandfather’s Letter by Sue Hitchcock

Read Sue’s piece

I Kiss You –  a timed exercise by Juliet Robinson

Read Juliet’s piece

…………………………………………………………………………….

NEW YEAR METAMORPHOSIS

For this week’s timed exercise I asked our writers to open their piece with this line:

These are the things I decided I would do this year.

This line comes from Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding. New Year’s Day is often a time in novels in which tensions erupt or a new life is envisioned for a character facing a transformation, such as in Middlemarch by George Eliot, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding. It is no surprise that literature has, for millennia, attempted to document our human fascination with metamorphosis. We could say, of course, that all literature is about change – about characters growing, developing, learning – but some transformations are more emphatic – changes of heart, changes of mind.

I read from Bridget Jones Diary.Zellweger famously gained 30 pounds to play the titular role in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, repeating the process again for the 2004 sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. By the time she filmed Bridget Jones’s Baby, however, the Oscar winner was tired of talking about her weight.

For the homework I asked everyone to open their piece with this line from Bridget Jones Diary and to focus on change. What new life does your protagonist embark on? What changes, or doesn’t change, for them and their desires?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.

I read my column The Hogmanay Coat from my first collection of columns, ‘The Familiar’ Read it here …………………………………………………………………………

Art by Sho Botham

Read Sho’s piece

Mirrored What I Saw in Me by Stuart Finegan

Read Stuart’s piece

Universal Truth by Rosalyn St Pierre

Read Rosalyn’s piece

Karma by Janie Reynolds

Read Janie’s piece

Telltale by Sue Hitchcock

Read Sue’s piece

What’s Larp? a timed exercise by Mia Sundby

Read Mia’s piece