Excerpts from Brighton Book Festival Writers Workshop

Free Writing 

Task: The moderator read words out at 30 second intervals, and attendants were to use them in their writing. 

The Jazz bar has a droning trumpet between 7 pm and 1 am in the morning, when the partiers generally stream from its doors to the Mexican restaurant down the road. They run out of avocados on Fridays and Saturdays, when the scuzzy drunkards have a craving for guacamole. My apartment is above the Jazz bar, opposite the silver birch tree in the park across the street. I’m not usually bothered by the revelry late into the night, but New York City temperatures have skyrocketed, boiling summer days causing tensions to rise. Not only that, but my sink is blocked. Tonight, the midnight ruckus is unwelcomed, and I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, chip crumbs crunching somewhere in my sheets. My brain whirls at the chaos below, as fast as the servers in the restaurant the partiers love, thoughts slinging as fast as late-night tacos and nacho chips with extra dip.  

Personal Writing

Task: Write a scene of a familiar special place with the following: describe a cherished object, a face, an animal, a room, your hands.

The waves are small today, a thick fog over the sand blends shore to ocean. You cannot distinguish where it ends and begins. My dad’s surfboard, now long gone, would be too big for these waves. The mermaid painted on its face is cheery as a cherub, a small button nose set below blue eyes. A great white shark bit that face in two, pinprick eyes set in its sleek grey body. Waves come in bigger now, the swell growing as the wind picks up. The room I’m staying in is perfect for one. The bedroom and the kitchen two steps apart and without any walls between them. My hands are cold now. They get dry in ocean air and the cuticles around my nails crust and flake like salt. 

Outdoor Writing 

Task: Go outside and write for 20 minutes, begin with your sensorial experiences and see where you go. 

Someone is cutting the grass - or just has, actually. The scent of fresh greeness lingers in the air, a soft breeze carrying it between the stones of the courtyard buildings. The sun is shining as well, softening the blades of grass under the gardener's mower and making the juices inside spill all the more readily. 

In the gardens, the breeze picking up now, is a secret window into another world. There, the grass is not kept so manicured, but rather allowed to grow wild. Weeds and seasonal flowers are left to their own devices. Animals are welcome, unlike the populated garden with its freshly cut grass. They live there, actually, beyond the secret window and amongst the wildflowers. They have little homes along the edge of the courtyard, where they tend to their children and their vegetable patches with equal tenderness. 

The market is coming up, taking place on the first weekend of the month, and Mrs. Rabbit is much more concerned for the health of her prize-winning carrots than she is about her children. Her carrots, after all, cannot care for themselves and her children are old enough to not take interest in their mothers hobbies. They think she is a little ridiculous, in fact, with her thatch-roofed cottage on the courtyard and her prize-winning carrots. She still refuses to tell her children the secret behind growing such fantastically large and delicious carrots. She teases them by making up stories every time they ask; she uses mirrors to reflect the sun on them all day long; she grinds up mealworms to use as fertilizers; she whispers stories to them at bedtime. 

Mrs. Rabbits’ carrots are not only prize-winning, but she uses them to make the best carrot cake of the courtyard. It’s even better than Mr. Badger’s courgette cupcakes. Mrs. Rabbits’ carrot cake is also prize-winning, no doubt due to her prize-winning carrots. There is a rumour running around the courtyard, though: Mrs. Sparrow is new in the neighbourhood and her blueberry pies are also prize-winning, made from her prize-winning blueberries. Mrs. Sparrow’s prize-winning pies and prize-winning berries, however, are only prize-winning in the village at the creek, all the way over the hill, not in the courtyard. 

This Sunday will be interesting for Mrs. Rabbit and Mrs. Sparrow but not so much for Mr Badger, who never had any prize-winning anything! 

Rewrite: Language OOmph 

Task: After analysing different texts and authors' use of language to convey emphasis and implicitness, reverse your own style to embody the opposite. 

Mrs. Rabbit is not only a prize-winning gardener, tending to her carrots as if they were pseudo children to her grown up kids, but she uses them to make her prize-winning carrot cake. Dense and moist, Mrs. Rabbit’s carrot cake settles on the tongue like a gift, explosions of flavour coursing up one’s nose and sparing like firecrackers behind the eyes. Your mouth pools with the heavy discomfort of desire, saliva settling thick between your cheeks and the insides of your stomach gnawing at itself in desperation. Mrs. Rabbit’s carrot cake is the greatest delicacy of the courtyard, far exceeding the attempts of Mr. Badger and his courgette cupcakes, which wilt like winter daisies in comparison. A great raucous has stirred, however; Mrs. Sparrow, the newest inhabitant of the courtyard after her travels across the continent, has her own prize-winning recipe. Blueberries, wet with juices and plump in the ripening sun of summer, are as sweet as a lovers’ embrace and make the most sickeningly good blueberry pies. 

Rewrite: Repetition and Rhythm 

Task: After analysing poetry for rhythm and repetition, rewrite one of your previous passages to utilise repetition to create rhythm. 

Mrs. Rabbit’s carrot cake is a prize-winning dessert. 

Mrs. Rabbit cares for the construction of her carrot cake every year. 

Mrs. Rabbit grows the carrots, harvests the carrots, and bakes her carrots into a delicious carrot cake. 

Mrs. Rabbit would never tell her master secret behind Mrs. Rabbit’s Prize-Winning Carrot Cake. 

Mrs. Rabbit wouldn’t tell that she sings her carrots bedtime songs. 

Mrs. Rabbit wouldn’t tell that she fertilizes them with mealworms. 

Mrs. Rabbit even uses mirrors to reflect the sun onto her carrots all day long, although she wouldn’t tell. 

Mrs. Rabbit’s carrot cake is deliciously good: she makes it moist and dense and ensures it tastes like a prize-winning cake. 

Mrs. Rabbit is sure she’ll win this year’s Prize-Winning Dessert Competition in the Courtyard with her Mrs. Rabbit’s Prize-Winning Carrot Cake. 

Mrs. Sparrow from the village by the creek over the hill, however, is much more confident in her Mrs. Sparrow’s Prize-Winning Blueberry Pie.