End of the project

Last night the group, along with a few friends and other interested people got together to celebrate the end of the project.  Doreen, Louise, Barbara, Jensen, Jenn and Robbe read their stories.  It was great to hear the finished stories read out loud and to see the finished blogs up on the screen.

Jenn reading her story

Louise reading her story

Everyone has worked so hard these past few months and it’s amazing to see how far we’ve all come.  For example, who would believe that four months ago Doreen claimed that she didn’t know what a blog was, or that Louise wasn’t sure if blogging was her “cup of tea”!  I’m particularly impressed with how different all the blogs and stories are.  From Barbara’s multiple ending story, to the way that Keith has plotted his story on a 3D map, the blogs have really made me think about different storytelling methods and techniques for representing places.

I’ve learnt a lot during the project about technology (thanks to Jensen and Keith!), storytelling and, above all, about the place that I’ve been living in for the past two years.  It’s been fascinating to find out about the history of Birkenhead, Tranmere and Rock Ferry, and a real privilege to hear people’s memories, experiences and opinions about the place in which they live.  During one of the workshops, someone mentioned that fictional stories about a place can somehow make it seem more real or “vivid”.  I think this is true – I’ve begun looking at places more closely and noticing details that I may have previously overlooked, because they’re associated with one of the stories.  Last night we also showed a film that Barbara made as part of the wider Art for Places programme, called Mapping Memories, which shows people from Seacombe, Birkenhead, Tranmere and Rock Ferry (including Dot) talking about their neighbourhoods and it was interesting to see how some of the things that people mention: Byrne Avenue baths, Fogg’s Chemist etc. have cropped up in the stories!

Barbara's film - Mapping Memories

One last thing I wanted to mention was that I was interested to hear people’s reaction to the article that David Lloyd wrote about the project earlier this week. Some of the group felt that it was a little dismissive of the project, or perhaps didn’t explore the positive aspects of regeneration in these areas.  Personally, I thought that it raised some valuable points, however, the writer obviously has his own story about the area that he wants to get across.  One member of the group told me that “the fact that anybody would want to highlight the area (through projects such as this) is good for the place” and that having such activities happening in the area is important in protecting the facilities that we do have, such as libraries. What do other people think?

The website I’ve been working on for the project should be up and running next week and it’ll be interesting to see if people leave any comments about the stories.  Watch this space!

Building the website

Since I am the only person not to have written a story, I thought I’d better give an update of how I’m spending my time – to prove that I’m not skiving but really am busy!

So far this week I’ve met with Doreen and Dot who have both now finished their stories and have published them to the separate page on their blog.  One of Doreen’s recent posts – Taking Off and Landing sums up pretty well how I’m feeling about the project at the moment.  It’s difficult to know how best to create the website as a ‘finished product’ which can do justice to everyone’s contributions, whilst also allowing other people to take part virtually by submitting their own stories.  Although I’ve done a lot of other projects before, this is perhaps the first one that I feel is truly collaborative.  I’ve always been interested in people’s experiences of places, however in other projects I’ve often collected people’s stories and used them in my own way.  This project has been quite different as it has been the group members who have produced the work and my role has mainly been as a facilitator or enabler.  In some ways this has made me a bit more anxious than I might usually be about how the final project will look and work, as it isn’t just my project but belongs to everyone.  I think that this is a good thing though and overall I’ve really enjoyed working in this way.  Despite the obvious frustrations of working with computers I’ve actually liked helping people to set up their blogs.

So, with collaboration in mind, if anyone has any comments about the website – how it should work, how it should look – then please let me know.  Doreen made a good suggestion on Tuesday – that the pop-up boxes on the map should include “hook lines” from the story to encourage people to link to the blogs, whilst Barbara pointed out in a comment on the last post that it would be best to include a map of the whole of the Wirral, so that people with a story from any part of the peninsular can contribute.  I was thinking that it would be nice to make the site look a bit like a writer’s notebook – like some of the 1st drafts and notes that people have uploaded onto their blogs such as these:

Barbara's mindmap

Doreen's list

Keith's mindmap

I’ve put together a very rough image of how I think the website could look, with some notes on it about how it could work.  I must stress that it is very rough and my handwriting’s pretty bad, so I don’t expect everyone to fully understand it, but hopefully it should give an idea of what the finished website might look like (click the image to make it bigger):

Rough design for website

On another note, I’ve been busy sorting out the venue for the project launch.  Barbara had the great idea to host it in the function room of the Queen’s Hotel in Birkenhead.  I think that this will be an ideal venue as there’s a screen and projector that we can use to show the website and, Keith in particular will be pleased to hear, a bar!  It is also opposite Birkenhead Park which features in Jenn’s story.

The Queen's Hotel

I just need to get confirmation about the date and time, so as soon as that’s sorted I’ll finish off the invites.  If anyone has any people in mind who they’d like to invite along then please send me their name and address or e-mail and I’ll make sure that they’re invited.  I’m hoping that a couple of people might like to read their story on the night – any offers?  If you would like to have your story read out, but don’t want to read it, I’m happy to read it for you and I’m sure Jenn will be as well.  Talking of Jenn, since yesterday she is now a mother of two children with a new baby boy!  Maybe she’ll bring him along.

Mapping

I have been talking to my web designer friend Roger Threlfall, who’s making the website for us, about how the map will work.  The idea is that the website will feature an interactive map which will show the locations for each story.  He’s been looking into the possibility of “skinning” a google map, which basically just means that you use the existing infrastructure of the map (zoom functions, layout etc), but customise it to look how you want.  So I’ve been thinking about  what our map should look like.  I’m quite keen to keep it simple as I think that the main focus should be on the stories, so I have been looking at different maps of Wirral online to give me a bit of inspiration.

I always think that maps are really interesting documents.  They always seem so authoritative, yet at the same time they’re subjective documents.  Like the writers in this group, map makers have to decide how to represent their subject – what to put in and what to leave out.  These maps give an idea of how differently a place can be represented:

Political map

map from 1947

rail map

Geological map

Pictoral map

My main questions are:

- How much of the Wirral should the map include?  Although all the stories developed by the group have focused on Tranmere, Birkenhead, Seacombe and Rock Ferry, we’re also asking other people to contribute, so should the area include more of the Wirral to allow more people to contribute?

- How should the map look?  Like an OS map, like an A – Z or something completely different?  Should it look hand drawn or not?  Should it be in black and white or colour?

- Are there any particular landmarks that I should include?

Any ideas gladly received!

Remote working!

I was shocked to discover that it has been almost a month since the last diary entry.  Where has the time gone!  Fortunately, things seem to be be slowly coming together.  Over the last few weeks I have met up with a few people in the group to help them work on their blogs so I probably feel a lot more connected to the group than everyone else.  Despite the social potential of technology such as e-mail and blogs, it’s not quite the same as face-to-face meetings, especially for keeping the momentum of a project going.  As Dot says in her blog, it’s easy to

Doreen's chosen icon for her story

“go off the boil”! Anyway, it has been really helpful to work with people one-to-one.  Doreen “A rose between two moustaches”, has pretty much finished her story which you can read here. I think is a wonderful depiction of the emotional and practical realities of being connected to two very different places, as well as of the often difficult relationship between mother and daughter. We’re going to meet up again in a couple of weeks to add some video, so keep checking her blog.

Dot's picture of Byrne Avenue Baths

Meanwhile, it turned out that the only thing stopping Dot from forging ahead was the pop-up blocker on her computer – so often with computers it’s pesky little things that can cause the greatest problems!  Once we’d sorted that out, Dot uploaded photos of Byrne Avenue Baths and Victoria Park to her blog and created a google with old photos of the places in her story, which you can see here.  Hopefully, we are going to do a bit more work together next week and mock up an old fashioned newspaper front page for her story.

I also met with Louise who is a natural born blogger.  Unfortunately, her efforts (which have included taking out books on blogging from the library) had been thwarted by her computer which was set to a 1995 version of Internet Explorer!  It took is at least half an hour and a lot of talking to a team of super geeks at the end of a phone line to work out that this was why when Louise was logging on to her dashboard art home it looked completely different to other computers and didn’t even have a button to upload images.  Fortunately, we sorted it and now Louise’s blog is full of photos, maps and even some video

Image of postbox from Louise's blog

taken on our group outing to Rock Park.  Have a look at it here. I also noticed that she has added a Facebook badge to her site, which will come in really handy when we start promoting the event in the next few weeks.

Other blog activity includes the second draft of Jensen’s story which you can read here and marvel at how he has managed to include so many references to other peoples’ stories, as well as my favourite line which describes the tiles in Byrne Avenue Baths as “the gap-toothed grin of Wirralian ancients”!

Barbara has posted two endings to her story and there has been some debate in the comments section about how this should work on the website.  Click here to read both, very different endings to a story which I think really brings out

Jensen's chosen icon for his story

Barbara’s endless knowledge of and passion for the Wirral, and give your opinion on each ending.  Jenn has also updated her blog with ideas about how she’s going to present her story.  She’d like some advice on these, so read her blog here and post some comments.  It seems that Keith and Robbe are pretty much sorted with their stories as well, although it would be good to see the video that Keith was talking about putting together.  As for me, it looks like I’m not going to have time to create a story afterall, but that may not be such a bad thing -

Draft of Barbara's story

I’m more than happy to leave that side of things to everyone else at the moment….although I may add one once the website is up and running..perhaps under a pseudonim!  I’ve been looking into venues and just started working on the website with my friend Roge, who is a brilliant web designer and worked with me on the Tunnel Visions site – an online map of an abandoned railway line in Preston that I made in 2007.  I’ll do another diary entry at the weekend about the website and event as it would be good to get some feedback on a few things.  Until then, happy blogging!

Diary 9: In Conversation

Just as a lot of the participants work on writing their stories, learning the tricks of using their blogs, commenting on each other’s work and reading each other’s drafts happens between the workshops – a lot of mine and Elaine’s work in thinking about and developing the project happens on the telephone, over late night emails or cups of tea first thing on Thursday mornings while we’re waiting for the others to arrive!

Linking t'Egypt and Birkenhead on Doreen's blog

One of the best things about a writer and an artist working together is the different perspectives we have, and the way we’re working to combine our own experiences and specialities with the workshop experiences and the participants input to create a truly collaborative finished project. Here’s a conversation we had this week, about how the project had developed, what we’ve learned as creative practioners and how we’re envisioning the end stage of the project.

Elaine: As you described in your previous diary post, something seemed to click during the last workshop and everyone really got to grips with the blogs.  Unsurprisingly it’s been a difficult process.  Whilst online tools such as blogs and social networking sites are the territory of today’s digital natives – children who have grown up never knowing what pre-internet life was like – for those who have come to these things later in life (and as someone whose first internet experience was at age 18, I count myself within this group), attempting to get to grips with the online world can be difficult.  I really think that lack of confidence is one of the main contributors to what is often called the digital divide – the gap which exists between those who do and do not have access to the internet.

Jenn: I’ve noticed that too. Sometimes providing access just isn’t enough. As a former public librarian I know that almost everyone has, or

Photos of Rock Park on Louise's blog

can arrange, access to reasonable speed internet within a short journey from their home. People can get at computers, but what I’ve noticed is that confidence is the main issue. Some of the conversations we’ve had during the computer element of the workshop have been really eye-opening in revealing how essential being able to join on-line communities are, and how disenfranchised individuals can be if they don’t have the tools or the confidence to join their communities. Their voices – their stories – just don’t get heard.

Elaine: Exactly, the problem is that, even if access to the internet is available, if people don’t have the experience, and thus the confidence to use it, it may as well not be there.  One of the things about working online is that it can be incredibly frustrating.  No matter what you are trying to do, whether it is posting a blog entry, building a website or even sending an e-mail, at some point something will inevitably go wrong and you will have no idea what it is.

My boyfriend once told me that his Grandad, who is a 97 year old former RAF engineer had said that there was a time that he understood

Mapping on Rob's blog

the working of every single piece of technology that he came across, but now he hasn’t got a clue.  As things have become digital it’s difficult, without sophisticated programming knowledge, to really understand what’s going on – why your blog post refuses to appear or the photo you’ve spent the last hour trying to upload won’t go in the position you want it.

The important thing to remember is that this is the nature of the medium and everyone experiences the same frustrations.  Making it work is just a case of being stubborn and going through the process step by step – making sure that you’ve spelt things correctly, selected the correct options, clicked the right buttons etc.

A murder mystery map on Dot's blog

Jenn: You’re making me think of Dot, who really worked hard to overcome all kinds of computer glitches with her accounts getting locked out, and was really patient in being able to wait for us to help her get these things fixed. Or Doreen, who wasn’t keen on blogging at all, but once she found her confidence and was able to enlist a bit of help from her son, started really getting into the project and is now blogging away like a professional!

Even the workshop members who had blogged before, like Keith and Jensen – and me, it has to be said – got to try out new things, like the geo-mapping, uploading film, working with images and voice-over. Everyone’s been able to make a bit of progress, and I like to think that the discoveries haven’t all been about using the computers either. Jensen’s got an absolutley natural gift as a teacher, and it would be great to see him go on and do something with that as a result of this workshop.

Elaine: I think that the blogs have really added to the project though.  When I first started developing this project I wasn’t sure what internet application I would focus on.  All I knew was that I wanted to see how the internet could be used to encourage people to think about specific places in a creative way.

It was through talking to you, Jenn that I began thinking about the use of blogs as, for you, they seem to offer a number of benefits in terms

geolocation on Jensen's blog

of visibility and publishing.  I have to admit that I was a bit nervous though about how well the blogging aspect of the project would work, and how relevant it would be to the main aim of the project, which is to develop new stories about specific places on the Wirral.

Jenn: I was wondering if you were a bit nervous about that! I must admit, I was a little worried myself, becasue really we were doing two

things – teaching people to tell stories, and teaching them to blog. That’s no small feat for the participants, or for either of us – especially as we’d not worked together before and as the group’s experience in both of these things was really mixed. The thing I was really interested in was communicating how many possibilities there are with story telling, so much more than you can have if we’d collected our stories and printed them up as a magazine. I didn’t want the project to be just about collecting some stories – I wanted it to be about creating a local online writing community that would carry on after the workshop element of the project was over.

Video on Keith's blog

Elaine: Yes, like you say -  the blogs have allowed the project to extend beyond the boundaries of the workshop and to build an online community, so that exchange and feedback can happen at any time.  As the next workshop will be our last together as a group, it is important that we continue to use the blogs to stay in touch with one another, provide feedback, offer suggestions and publicise our own ideas and activities.

Jenn: And even though I’m stopping work for the summer at the end of this month, I’m looking forward to still being able to join in and read along from home!

A hand-written draft on Margaret's blog

Elaine: I also want to mention something about the final outcome of the project.  As we discussed during the last workshop the stories will all form part of an interactive website, which may work a bit like a project I developed in 2007 called Tunnel Visions (www.tunnelvisions.info).  The idea of this project was to present multiple experiences of a particular place (a disused railway tunnel), and in this way Out on a Limb is very similar.

As you said, although everyone is writing about the same area, the experiences described in the stories are all very different.  Likewise, the way each person has begun to visualise their stories, through photographs, video or hand-written work provides a totally unique interpretation of a particular place.  At the same time, as people have started to use the comment system more on the blogs, there is a real sense of collaboration and cross fertilisation between the stories which I think helps to generate a sense of place.

Jenn: I’m really excited by this too. I’ve been watching the development of Barbara’s story idea over the past week – and the way she’s using the non-linear way you can tell and read stories using blogs and websites to play around with multiple alternative endings and invite reader participation in her writing. The stories become live, evolving things then – and I’m looking forward to ways that we can demonstrate this on the finished website.

Elaine: Me too. And another interesting thing about uploading these stories to the website is that the audience could potentially be made

An alternative ending for Barbara's story on her blog

up of people from across the globe as well as on the Wirral.  Therefore, for people who don’t know these places, the stories will be the means through which they experience them, and for those who do they might resonate with their experiences of these places, or make the familiar strange.  We will talk more about the website in the final workshop and it will be interesting to find out how the project develops in the virtual world!

Diary Eight: Editing Our Stories

Back at our usual venue at Rock Ferry Library, we concentrated on reading our draft stories to each other, giving and getting feedback and talking about editing techniques. A few really interesting things came up in this workshop and I’ve been looking forward to writing about them here.

Margaret's draft story

First, I was really impressed by how different all of the stories were. At the beginning of the project, I wondered if working so closely together over a series of workshops and requiring all the stories to have their settings in the Wirral and link to each other in some way would result in tales that were too similar, and didn’t have individual personality. I needn’t have worried.We have ghost stories, memoir, budding crime fiction and historical fiction and that isn’t even the half of it! It’s amazing to think that most of these stories came from a short list of first-line prompts right back in the second workshop…

You can visit each participant’s blog (check out the links in the sidebar) and just as the format and layout of the blogs are very different, so the themes, style and content of the stories are as individual as the writers themselves. A creative writing teacher told me to worry about technique but never about content – ‘you can’t help but be original’ he said – and although I didn’t believe him at the time I do now and I end up quoting him every time I teach.

I also wondered how the group would respond to feedback and editing tips. It’s so easy when writing, especially when you’re publishing your drafts to a blog, to consider the first or second draft your final product. It’s said so often in creative writing manuals and workshops that it is almost a cliché, but the difference between someone who writes and a Writer is the drafting, editing and rewriting. The magic happens in the third, fourth, and sometimes fifth or sixth drafts. I didn’t need to worry about this either – each person got the chance to read their draft story, ask for feedback and get some really positive, constructive criticism from the group.

If you’re interested in the tips for editing and rewriting, check out the ‘Behind the Scenes’ page of this blog – where you can keep up to date with the nitty-gritty of each workshop, try the writing prompts for yourself and even learn how to submit your own story to the project.

The next step was helping each writer / blogger to find a way to make their own editing process visible on their blog. The blogs, I reminded

Jenn's draft

them, aren’t supposed to look like books, full of perfectly polished and finished prose. They are places where we are testing out our ideas, building a writing community, experimenting with form and having the courage to reveal unfinished work and ask for opinions.

We made real progress in the computer element of the workshop – Dot was able to get her blog working the way she wanted it to and post a series of editorial questions to prompt critical conversations about her writing from the rest of the group. Louise was able to post drafts of her story in instalments, and receive advice and suggestions about form and structure. Keith posted a ‘draft video’ of the journey his story relates. Margaret posted pictures of her beautifully written first draft, and photographs of real historical events that have inspired her.

We’ve only one workshop left now – it’s really important that on line relationships are established so this budding writing community can carry on meeting, talking and writing together between now and the final deadline. Looking at the busy comment forms and the regular blogging that’s already happening, I think we’re well on the way.

Diary Seven: Field Trip

a shifty-looking group of writers on a research trip across the Mersey!

Last week’s workshop was a change from the norm as we got out from behind our desks and computers, stretched our legs and went on a field trip to take film, audio and photographs of some of our story locations.

We decided the route as a group – and although we couldn’t visit everywhere in the time we had available, we decided a trip on the ferry was a must. There’s a little bit of film footage and some photography of this part of the trip on my research blog Through The Tunnel as well as new group member Rob – who has posted lots of pictures and comment in his Wirral Diary.

Find out more about Rob as our newest member on the ‘meet the writers’ page.

The point of this trip was for us all to gather material to go alongside our stories – and many discussions about how to use photography, film, found objects, maps, diagrams and audio clips to tell a story were had both on the Ferry, and as we made our way towards Rock Park – a site of special interest for Louise and Margaret who are planning to set their stories there.

It was also a real bonding experience for the group – who got to talk amongst themselves about the project so far, their plans for their finished work and their experience of blogging. We have a real mix of experience and abilities – some experienced writers who haven’t

Ferry ticket

blogged before, and some who are happy handling a computer but less confident about their stories. The benefit of working as a group is the supportive relationships that have developed over the course of the project – everyone helping each other through supportive and encouraging comments on their blogs and in person.

Keith taking a shot across the Mersey

Now we’re on the home stretch of the project with only two workshops to go, so it’s time to stop researching and planning and start forming our drafts into finished stories. I reminded all the participants of the original briefs and set them the ‘homework’ of having a draft story ready to share at the next workshop. We’ll be using that supportive, collaborative relationship we’ve developed to offer constructive, positive feedback and to learn to edit our work into the finished product.

After all that walking, Elaine and I were forced to finish the day up in a cafe over hot tea, toasted sandwiches and chips – and of course to discuss the shape the finished website would take. Having a clearer idea of that in my mind (I’ll reveal nothing yet – she’ll be surprising you all at the next workshop!) is really helping me to decide how to edit my story so it fits alongside everyone else’s, and guide the participants into forming pieces of short fiction that will work together and, as a whole – along with the film, sound and photography we took in this workshop – really capture the ‘essence’ of the Wirral.

Can’t believe we’re nearly finished!

Diary Six – Exploring the Possibilities of Blogging

The Story Chart returns

For this week’s workshop, Elaine and I both did short exercises based around helping the participants to think flexibly and creatively about the form of their stories and the way they could use the blogging platform to trace the development of an idea through to a draft through to a finished product.

Our story chart (see last week’s post) came out again and we updated it with new ideas, story titles, events, characters and objects – a few pink highlighters served to mark up the links between the stories – it’s starting to look untidy now we’ve all had chance to redraft, develop our ideas and change our minds. Luckily, you can look at and print out a neat, typed version here.

Elaine worked again with her map, encouraging each of the participants to imagine their story as a route – the character moving through the environment the story is set in. Is it possible to geo-locate these stories? Margaret has already installed a google map marking the location of her story on her blog, Jensen has one in the side-bar of his blog and it is still an idea I’m playing around with.

the hand-made version of a map that geo-locates our story 'routes'

Next, we talked about the way we’re using our blogs – as a live, evolving record of each writers’ creative process. But how to distinguish the finished product from the mind-maps, research, drafts, scribbled notes, reflections on the workshop experience and trial stories? As everyone has opted to use the blogger platform, it was easy enough to set up ‘pages’ on the blog.

I’m really interested in how all this is going to work. The finished product – an on-line story reflecting all the stories in the workshop is going to link to the blogs so that anyone reading it can look at the relationship between my work and the participants’ work and see how our ideas fed into each other and how I was inspired by the stories written during our workshops. And any reader is also going to be able to compare the finished story to drafts, research material and mind-maps and trace how the whole project came into being. I think it’s a fascinating process.

Anyone who logs into You Tube can see TV and film out-takes, theatre rehearsals, bootleg band practice performances and almost all DVDs have ‘blooper’ reels, deleted scenes, interviews with the cast and so on. This kind of peripheral, extra material is a really important component to our project. For writing work, drafts and research are often hidden away and by blogging these items we’re providing a rare insight into the participants’ creative process.

the group hard at work turning story ideas into 'routes' on Elaine's map

And what about my creative process? I’ve set up my own blog – Through the Tunnel – as I’m writing a story for this project too and the structure and format might also be an inspiration to the participant bloggers who are wondering how best to blog the ‘making of’ a story. At the moment, it contains only drafts and research as I’m holding back on completing my story until I’ve read what the others come up with. Their ideas are certainly inspiring me, but for the time being I want to keep the final form ass fluid and undecided as possible, as I’d really like my story to be the hub that links all these other stories together – I want to be influenced by their ideas, rather than influence them with mine.

Next workshop, we’re planning to get out into the environment with a live tour of the areas we’ve marked up on our story chart and route map. I can’t wait!

Keith, keeping the workers happy with industrial quantities of hot tea!

Diary Five: Developing a Structure

Story chart and map

The theme of the workshop this week was linking – and we worked on ways to link our stories together, as well as link our blogs together through starting the kind of on-line conversations and interactions that make on-line storytelling a unique form. Using the comments form can be a tricky business, but I think most of us got there in the end and there are some great examples of collaboration and feedback happening already. I can’t wait to see how it all develops.

One of my worries as a workshop tutor is in the endless, careful compromise between freedom and form. I’ve blogged about it before, on my own blog here and again here. It’s a tricky dilemma because on the one hand I don’t want to tell people what to write about, don’t want to stifle ideas and don’t want to turn a group of keen and very different writers into a production line for cookie-cutter Wirral Stories (even if I could!).

I’m also aware that I’m working with a group of writers who are experts in a topic (their own area) that I’m still a beginner to. My teaching method  – perhaps linked to some early training in person-centred counselling – is largely non-directive and focussed around making writers aware of their choices, and the results of those choices, rather than in giving them a list of dos and don’ts, offering advice or instructions.

Jenn making story chart

On the other hand, there is a brief for this project and we do have a ‘finished product’ in mind – a linked, geo-located story that captures the ideas and voices of all the participant writers. We’re not going to meet the brief and not going to be able to put together the finished product if we don’t all approach the writing in a spirit of collaboration. It isn’t easy, but part of my job is to find creative ways for myself and the writers I am working with to play with their ideas inside that brief. Anyone who has ever tried to write a sonnet knows that rules can inspire the words as well as stifle them.

And of course I’m lucky enough to be working with a great group who are keen to work together and collaborate. Barbara, on her blog Derelict Stories likens stories to buildings, and I can’t help but think we’re all working on our own unique bit of the building (a spiral staircase here, a parquet floor there…) while keeping an eye on the blueprints for the whole structure.

Prosaically enough then, I thought a big chart might help us all to see the links and correspondences that already existed between our budding stories, and prompt those still short on ideas to utilise objects, characters, themes and settings from others. I love the idea of Dot’s dead body being carried over into a ghost story by Margaret, or the cyclist in Keith’s story taking an unexpected detour through the fabric of Elaine’s story. There are also cause and effect links – writing prequels, sequels, alternative endings and spin-offs to each other’s tales – an unexpected side effect of all the writers having their own creative process and coming up with story ideas at different rates.

out story chart - typed up by Jensen. Click on the picture to make it big.

This is a process we’ll be carrying on for the next workshop – and will, throughout the rest of our time together, involve the participants communicating with each other about the development of their stories, their story ideas and their own suggestions for the structure of the ‘finished product’ between sessions. Hence our emphasis on commenting and cross-linking the blogs and using these on-line journals not only as the equivalent of an artist’s sketchbook – showing our drafts and our ‘workings out’ but also as a way to build a collaborating creative community.

Fingers crossed!

Diary Four: Taking Shape

It’s been brilliant to see the project taking shape over the last two weeks – knowing that for the participants, most of the work is taking place between the sessions, as they read each other’s blogs, edit their stories and think about ways to tell their stories about The Wirral using sound, photography, video and geolocation. For a recap of what we’ve done in the workshops so far, click here.

I’ve also been impressed by the sense of community that is already springing up between the writers  – people are commenting on each other’s blogs, and using the form to keep in touch with each other and to participate in the workshops even when they can’t make it in person.

The stories themselves are also taking shape – while there’s time yet for editing, redrafting and rewriting, Wirral Tales of all kinds are begining to appear on the blogs themselves, and in the lively discussions we’re having around place, stereotype, history and community when we get together in the library meeting room.

The participants are also starting to think about visual ways they can tell their stories – exploiting the blog form and combining the digital with the hand-made, in Dot’s case by the inclusion of a hand-drawn map showing the area her story is based in, and the exact whereabouts of an unidentified body… can’t wait to read the rest of that story!

x-marks the spot - Dot geo-locates a dead body on a hand-drawn map

Barbara is using her blog not only to record her stories, but also her impression of the workshops and how she feels her writing process is evolving. On Derelict Stories, she says:

As usual ideas flowed and we could hardly keep them to ourselves.The sense of knowledge as we touched on different places creates the want to discuss what we each know about that place. The discussion around our thoughts was very interesting as i think we all see each place slightly different, maybe it was our upbringing within those places that sets the ideas flowing.

This feeling was echoed by Louise, who is also using her blog not only to record her stories, but also her feelings about each workshop. On Lou’s Thinking she writes:

We talked about the stories we had picked , most people seem used to putting photographs etc and i am just getting the hang of blogging so a bit wary of all these tecnological gadgets but the group is very friendly and when we are talking it is yap, yap yap as we havw known each other for always and not just for a few weeks so who knows what new skills i will learn as the course continues., well we can all dream cant we. We talked in pairs about were we could set our stories and the history of wirral such as the park the houses that people lived their lives in homes before progress came and bulldozed their lives out of the way!!!! One of the issueswe talked about was sterotyping people and places such as certain areas in the wirral are classed as snobby and others you would not walk down the street witout bodyguards !!! ( get the picture)

For me, as a non Wirral resident, I’m learning a lot about the history, culture and identity of a place that I’ve only ever visited for the Out on a Limb project. There’s a big difference between research and living in a place, and participating in discussions with a group who is intensely aware of and proud of their shared history and culture has been eye-opening. Usually I take a back-seat during these discussions, scribbling words and phrases that I think might be useful to future workshops, or for my own research, down in my notebook.

‘The best view of Liverpool is from this side,’

‘There’s a rich side and a poor side, like the Wirral is cut in half,’

‘The city was supposed to be built on this side,’

‘Some people call us Plastic Scousers, like we’re trying to be something we’re not.’

I’ve also learned about Fogg’s Chemist, which was the only place this side of New Brighton that sold fresh candy floss – I’ve taken photographs of 294 Eureka Villas, pondered the mystery of the appearing wedding dresses in Birkenhead Park, the demolition and rebuilding of parts of the Wirral and how that lives on in long-term residents’ memories and lots more besides.

I asked what places and landmarks we couldn’t possibly leave out of a story about The Wirral – the answers were a comination of the expected (The Ferry, the River, the Tunnel) and the surprising (the rocks near the pond in Birkenhead Park, Burne Avenue Baths, St Catherine’s Hospital, the floating platform near Rock Park)… I can’t wait to see how these places appear and reappear in the stories the workshop participants have been working on.

And as for me? The ideas are swirling around… I wonder how they’ll appear in my finished story?