I have a lifetime membership of Durham University Creative Writing Society. I have not been to a meeting of Durham University Creative Writing Society since the winter of 2008. I have a lifetime membership because it was only two pounds more than the single year membership.
I think it’s fair to say I’m not a particularly loyal society member.
Original ideas don’t come easy to me. I struggled with the composition element of my music courses. I liked my photography course because all the subject matter I needed already existed; all I had to do was work out what aperture, composition etc was right for the shot, and press a button. Incidentally, I’ve always been good at editing – improving existing material. It’s just taking that first step that baffles me.
The Creative Writing society meets once a week; a standard session involves a prompt, an hour or so writing, and then feedback for those who want it. I definitely would never have written anything without those prompts, and even with them I felt like I was forcing the words out, and eventually I stopped going.
I was looking at an old notebook earlier, and I found a piece of writing. I don’t remember writing it, but it’s in my handwriting and it’s clearly a work in progress, so I must have. I’m not even sure it was written at Creative Writing; if it was I don’t think it had anything to do with the prompt. We had a lot of snow that winter, and I think I may actually have been inspired by my environment for once.
Anyway, I didn’t want to lose it forever, so here’s a poem I apparently wrote.
The news would be a pandemic
Sweeping across town in a matter of minutes
Yet there would always bee one poor soul who trudged across town
To be lost in a deserted playground
Our daddies would fight through a jungle of rusty bikes
To retrieve our sledges from the back of the shed
While our mummies would fuss over too-thin-jackets
And flimsy shoes
They would peer anxiously as we flew free downhill
Wincing as we skidded to a halt
Just a little to close to those ominous dark waters
We would fall backwards, sinkikng into soft clouds to make snow angels
Never wondering what lurked beneath
Catching snowflakes on our tongues
With no regard as to their chemical composition
Soon someone would throw the first snowball
And the town would ring with shrieks and battle cries
Some would sneak home; my daddy would take me
To the pristine sheet in our back garden
Each year our snowman more magnificent than the last
And as the snow turned grey and the sun fell
Our mummies would fuss over our soaked clothes
And melted snow dripping on the carpet
Would we ever learn?
We would make hot chocolate
And feel warm in every sense of the word
Dreaming not of the days to come
But of snowflakes and icicles
That snow has melted now
And now we fuss
Over frizzy hair and cold toes
And complain of our too-thin-jackets.
Needs some development and it’s too sunny these days to think of winter, but I quite like it regardless 
