Writing Magazine March 2020

w r it ing

http://www.writers-online.co.uk MARCH 2020^76

E

xperimenting with different

genres is a great way of extending

your range and developing your

writing voice. For example, I

started writing poetry because I

wanted to be able to write more lyrical prose

and I often use themes and settings from my

fiction as a basis for non-fiction articles.

It can surprise you too. People who think

of themselves as purely fiction writers often

discover, when they free-range off their normal

writing tracks, that they love writing non-

fiction and poetry too.

This column is a monthly workout for your

whole writer self, inviting you to draw on

your memories, imagination, knowledge and

emotions through memoir, fiction, non-fiction

and poetry. In the first instance, it is personal

writing, with the advantage that you are free

to experiment because nobody else is going to

read it, but it will create a seedbed of ideas you

might choose to develop with readers in mind.

Give it a go with this month’s free-range

writing forays. The theme is happiness, as the

International Day of Happiness is coming up

on 20 March. Happy writing!

Memoir

Some people who come to memoir writing

workshops begin by saying they have only

happy memories of childhood, others only sad.

Writing is a way of remembering more fully, of

rediscovering bright moments in dark places and

dark ones on the sunny uplands of the past.

When did you feel happy? Jot down some

memories from different stages of your life –

your early childhood, secondary school years,

young adulthood and so on, up through the

decades to where you are now. These don’t have

to be big occasions – some of my most intensely

happy moments have been when nothing out of

the ordinary was happening at all.

Choose one memory to write about and tell

the story. Take about twenty minutes. Really

feel those happy emotions. Writing memoir

can be an opportunity to enjoy wonderful

experiences all over again.

Tip: Emotions are experienced in the

body: they are not abstract ideas. So the key

to remembering how you felt more vividly

and conveying it to readers is to focus on the

physical symptoms of emotion rather than

looking for abstract words to describe it. My

heart raced... his eyes lit up...

Fiction

Happiness is a good theme for fiction because

the protagonist always has a problem, that is

to say, something he or she isn’t happy about.

That’s the grit in the oyster, from which the

story grows. No problem, no story.

The main plotline has two strands, first

the action and second the psychological

journey of the protagonist who, through the

action, reaches a point of either triumph and

breakthrough, or coming to terms – both of

which are kinds of happiness. This means you

can start imagining a story in either of two

ways, with a situation or an emotion.

Start this story with someone who is suffering

from an uncomfortable emotion – for example,

anger, jealousy, sadness or fear. Who? Write some

notes including, at the very least, their name,

age and something about their appearance, but

ideally explore a bit further into their current

circumstances and key experiences in the past.

The better you know your protagonist, the easier

it is to write their story.

Why are they feeling the way they

do? What has happened to trigger that

emotion?

They do something that makes them feel

better. What?

Take about twenty minutes to write the story.

Non-fiction

There is a whole science of happiness now.

Academics and therapists are looking beyond

mood-altering drugs and psychological

therapies to try and discover practical lifestyle

choices that can help people feel happier.

Taking a personal angle for this month’s

non-fiction piece, what do you do to improve

your mood when you’re feeling unhappy?

Think in terms of different kinds of unhappy

moods – for example, the things that help

when you’re feeling bored won’t necessarily

lift your mood when you’re feeling anxious or

angry. Jot down some ideas.

Write an article offering suggestions and

advice, based on your own experience. This

might be general – ‘My top tips for tackling

stress’ – or focus on a particular time in

your life, for example, ‘Five things that

helped me get through my divorce.’ Take

twenty minutes.

Poetry

‘The blue bird of happiness’ – that’s a

common metaphor. In my memoir section

here, I used ‘the sunny uplands’.

Find your own symbols for happiness by

jotting down the first thoughts that come

into your head, not censoring your ideas or

overthinking, for an animal you associate

with happiness, then a colour, a kind of

weather, a kind of music and a place.

Write about each one for three minutes,

whatever comes, simply describing them

without trying to link them to the theme of

happiness at all.

Choose one of your prose pieces to

develop into a poem. Don’t spell out that

your subject is a symbol for happiness, just

enjoy the happy feelings that writing about

it gives you and let the reader join the dots.

Take ten minutes.

Try these feelgood creative writing exercises from Try these feelgood creative writing exercises from Try these feelgood creative writing exercises from Jenny Alexander

happiness

FREE

RANGE

FIND YOUR WRITING