The marvellous Tiff was persuaded to blog about this weeks site specific writers session
Imagine the scene: A lone girl sits silhouetted against the train tracks, the light from the overhead streetlamp glistening in the puddle by the bench. She twists the pen in her hand as she finally lowers it to paper.
And now factor in that it is freezing cold, she is sat on a plastic bag because the seat is wet and she is currently on a disappointing total word count of about 10 words.
That’s right, last Wednesday the Yew Tree Writers hit Wakefield Train Station! (I say “hit”, it was a lot less dramatic than that)
Due to being currently homeless now that Drury Lane Library has closed (God bless its soul that its library-ness rests in peace), we took refuge in the nearest place: the train station.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but train stations are wonderful places. There are all kinds of people getting on trains that could be taking them to anywhere and anything, they are almost always mystical at night and the little coffee stands usually serve pretty good stuff.
It was the culmination of all these factors that made Wednesday so great. The focus of the week really was to write character based pieces, meaning we would observe someone, anyone, in the train station and write a piece about them (mine happened to be about a train conductor whose father always wanted him to be a doctor), however the night’s focus, for me anyway, also shifted to a rather magical place indeed as we dispersed ourselves across the station.
Imagine the scene: A lone girl sits silhouetted against the train tracks, the light from the overhead streetlamp glistening in the puddle by the bench. She twists the pen in her hand as she finally lowers it to paper.
And now factor in that it is freezing cold, she is sat on a plastic bag because the seat is wet and she is currently on a disappointing total word count of about 10 words.
That’s right, last Wednesday the Yew Tree Writers hit Wakefield Train Station! (I say “hit”, it was a lot less dramatic than that)
Due to being currently homeless now that Drury Lane Library has closed (God bless its soul that its library-ness rests in peace), we took refuge in the nearest place: the train station.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but train stations are wonderful places. There are all kinds of people getting on trains that could be taking them to anywhere and anything, they are almost always mystical at night and the little coffee stands usually serve pretty good stuff.
It was the culmination of all these factors that made Wednesday so great. The focus of the week really was to write character based pieces, meaning we would observe someone, anyone, in the train station and write a piece about them (mine happened to be about a train conductor whose father always wanted him to be a doctor), however the night’s focus, for me anyway, also shifted to a rather magical place indeed as we dispersed ourselves across the station.
I took a solitary perch at the end of the platform to watch the trains as they left and wrote a piece about the lights spreading out across the city I could see below me.
I was cold. I had a wet posterior. It was pretty dark. But the writing took me to a passage of thought that captured my imagination. Where were these trains leaving to? Why were they leaving? What did the people hope to find there?
As the trains travelled, so did my thoughts and my writing and, in all, Wakefield train station took the writers on a very special journey.
I was cold. I had a wet posterior. It was pretty dark. But the writing took me to a passage of thought that captured my imagination. Where were these trains leaving to? Why were they leaving? What did the people hope to find there?
As the trains travelled, so did my thoughts and my writing and, in all, Wakefield train station took the writers on a very special journey.
Which reminds us that while being as crazy as a bag of cats, the Writers can sometimes be philosophical and can most of the time resist the very strong urge to add an Inception quote like “We were waiting for a train…” in a post like this. Or at least, some of the time.
Comments
Post a Comment