Writing workshop

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Last night I went to a creative writing workshop sponsored by my church. It was a small group but it was great meeting other writers. Writing can some times be a lonely activity so it is fun getting together and hearing other people's thoughts. 

We went through some exercises to get our thoughts out on paper. We focused on our memories to maybe use for a story, but mostly just to get thoughts on our paper. Our second exercise was called "The Old 'Hood". On a piece of paper, we drew a 1/2-inch square somewhere in the middle of the page. This represents the house you grew up in. 

Surrounding that square, draw what you can remember of the neighborhood where you grew up. Draw houses, streets, landmarks, etc. (from a bird's eye perspective). Be thorough, but don't worry about detail, and no one will see it, so you it doesn't have to be pretty. Just show what goes where roughly. Then do the following:

• In 3 minutes, make a list all the people who live on that map.
• Pick 3 people and write down one memory of each.
• Pick 1 of those people and write down three more memories.
• Pick 1 of those memories and write about it. As much as possible.

I picked my best friend from my child home Katie. It was a great little exercise and I thought I would share my more polished answer with you...

My best friend Katie and I were always together, we lived next door to each other and we were always running in between each other's houses.  I don't remember any one being around us, everyone else around us just seemed too busy to really be in our lives, she had four brothers and my mom was a single working mom so when we were together it was just us. I remember together we never had to look perfect or stylish. She had long dark hair and she never worried about it being messed up, she just pushed it away. And we never worried about having perfect clothes, our parents didn't have a lot of money so we were mostly stuck with hand-me-downs or clothes that were bought at good will and we were okay with that. I thought she was such a tomboy the way she always wanted to play Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (she was the yellow one, I was the pink one) and she never minded getting pushed around by her brothers. But we also played Barbies together, and she introduced me to Alanis Morisette (who I thought was so rock then). Some of my 

favorite memories with her were on my swing set racing to see who could see over the fence the fastest. We could be out on her trampoline or my swing set until sun down and I always remember it being summer so sunset was pretty late. 

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I really enjoyed the exercises in dealing with memory. I hope if any more writing workshops come up I can go because I think it is really important to have a writing community.