23rd January 2023

WRITESPACE STUDIO 23rd january 2023

Please introduce yourself by telling us where you live (country, city/state/region) and what kind of writing you do.

David: David - Oslo - criminology writing 🙂

Vicky: Vicky, in a cold crisp Essex, UK - just done the school walk in minus 5c. I am a historian writing about living with lodgers in Victorian England

James: James, Stockport, UK, – researching and writing about design education.

Sonja: Sonja - Cairo - at the moment, working on my PhD, but I like to write short fiction stories, children's fiction and poetry from time to time, since my son was born

Ramón: Ramón, Melbourne (well, Waiheke tonight!), doing sociological writing.

Jenny: Jenny from MInjerribah, North Stradbroke Island. Retired, Author of “Deep Work: Spiritual Practice in our workday world”. Trying to figure out next writing project.

Lynne: I'm Lynne, a linguist in Brighton, England, who writes about language for both academic and non-academic audiences.

James: Amazing pic Lynne! What were you singing Lynne?

Lynne: not singing, but LECTURING ;) there are resident artists at a place where I give talks, and that’s the most favourable pic

Creative warm up:  Choose an object that gives you aesthetic pleasure; hold it up to the camera; tell us how your object is like your writing (practice/project/process)

David: Juggling balls: keep a balance and a rhythm among the components to produce something harmonic and enthralling.

Jenny: My pen is like my writing: Sometimes flows richly and smoothly across the page and is beautiful. At other times it just runs empty!

Vicky: My golden ratio blackwing pencil -- reminds me to slow down and savour the beauty around us. And a rule one should use for writing, slow down and endeavour for beauty - well, as much as I can, with the topics I deal with!

Lynne: Because it’s felt that it’s not fair to play word games with a linguist, I generally play Bananagrams with a handicap: I am only allowed to play words of more than 4 letters. It’s like when I try to get the ‘be’ verbs out of my prose.

Sonja: My object was a wood-carved giraffe statue with a missing left ear. I think my writing is similar to it in a way that I always strive for a perfectionism that is unattainable, incomplete. Instead of just excepting that writing can be just like this giraffe - good enough.

James: I chose a circular rubber stamp. I use it in my collage work. The prints are always imperfect, textured and surprising, and I am learning to live with all of this my writing.

Pre-pomodoro: What do you plan to work on?

Lynne: a long-promised blog post on using portfolio assessment.

Sonja: Outline for my theory chapter in my PhD thesis

Ramón: I’m reviewing some of the methodology and findings section of my paper.

David: I will start an article from scratch - first entirely new writing project of the year! About ways into guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

James: I will aim for 100 wor(l)ding* on design pedagogy. *Inspired by NG

Vicky: I've two document open -- one to edit or one to write, undecided as yet.

Post-pomodoro: Please tell us one thing that you accomplished -- no matter how small!

Vicky: some good editing of the intro to my chapter

David: Wrote half an abstract (60 words)

James: 204 worl)ding

Sonja: I got myself motivated to write, but didn't actually write much

Jenny: Worked out next small chunk to write

WINDOW session:  One thing that you discussed, noticed, or learned.

James: troubling privacy and the near edge

Jenny: Word AND image

Vicky: long paths to the end of a paragraph

Sonja: There can be many conclusions to one issue

Ramón: We had a nice chat about my paper, to review many aspects of it.

1 word poem

Spiritual

Tumultuous

Imperfect

Birdsong

Path

Palm trees