No more guilt about carving out creative space

Whodunnit Group Convener Marjory Caine discusses her return to writing through NWP.

‘Yes, I used to write, too.’

This was in response to a chance conversation at a NATE session on writing led by Simon Wrigley. We had been asked to jot down our writing memories and then discuss. Was this current lack of writing present across the whole English teaching cohort?

I joined the Whodunnit Group and found many tentative writers – those of us who wanted to write but just did not have the confidence, the time, the incentive, the stimulus. You name it, we had the excuse – but yet we asked our students to write every day – and then judged them.

Simon and Jeni’s approach was a breath of freshness into a classroom practice stultified by assessment objectives and fronted adverbials. As a group, we learnt to write together and share, and appreciate the richness writing brings to us as teachers, and now, writers too.

At the same time, I had started a doctorate investigating the creative writing of my A Level English Language students’ creative writing coursework (yes, in that brief flowering of creative opportunity in the classroom). What I had researched I found in the community of practice of the NWP meetings. 

And I found my voice.

It was a thrice trepanned skull in the Wellcome Collection. And that was where I found a way into the Neolithic world of my character, Rhia. Each writing session would end up with another appearance by her. And then I started writing at home. I made time. I thought about plot and structure. I shared my writing fears with my students. And wrote alongside them. Confidence improved both in the students and in me.

Writing retreats were made possible. I no longer felt guilty about carving out creative space. Here were members from other NWP groups who were willing to share and support. I felt like a writer. I thought like a writer.

And there was always another session with Simon leading our group with exciting and varied prompts. Then came the time when Simon asked me to lead the group. Since then, I have enjoyed the termly challenge of sourcing my source material. The venues are always stimulating because the group members are keen to write. We have been walking writers through Roman London, stood by the River Thames and heard its song, gazed into the faces at the National Portrait Gallery, toured the many stories in Westminster Abbey and many more. Always, I am amazed by the variety and breadth of writing that emerges from a Saturday morning in London.

In the seven years I have been with NWP I have changed from being someone who used to write, to someone who writes regularly, because it is part of who I am. I enjoy the creation of a poem, a piece of prose. I write fiction and non-fiction. I respond to my environment, to the people I know, to new experiences. Having my work valued by the group has given me the right to say that I am a writer who writes. Playing with language, working at finding the best phrase, figuring out a poetic rhythm: these are challenges that enrich my writing life.

Yes, I write. I am a writer.

A lifeline for poetry

NWP Free Spaces Group Convener David Marshall explains some of the challenges of running an NWP group - and why it’s worth it.

I run the London ‘Free Spaces’ group, which meets once or twice a term in different museums and galleries around London. Recently, we’ve been moving towards twice a term, as one didn’t feel quite enough. There’s around 5-7 people who regularly attend and there’s quite a lot of ‘silent’ members, who are on the email list but never attend or participate. I give people the option of being removed from the list, but few ask to be removed. I’d like to think that, though some don’t attend, they like being part of the group nevertheless. The way I see it, it’s important that the group meets regularly so that everyone knows that it’s meeting. That way, there’s always the option for people to come along one day, even if they never have.

One of the challenges is getting more teachers interested. I try to spread the word, but my network is quite limited. The other thing I’m aware of is that most of the regulars are either retired teachers or work in private schools (like me). It is very important for anyone in either of these two categories, but sometimes, I feel like I want it to reach more teachers on the front line of education. But something I remind myself is that the people who come are those who want to be there, and it must be important to them for them to give up their time.

I’m very committed to the group and to running it, even though I’m a full-time teacher. I took over when I returned from living abroad about 3 years ago and found that the group hadn’t met since I left. I emailed round and we started up again. We go to a range of places but find it’s easy to rotate to some of the same ones, particularly places that are central and have big cafes!

For me, the NWP is important because it’s a writing community. I’ve taken writing workshops and courses, some lasting several months. But there’s something great about a community because you’re there for each other over a long period of time and can build relationships. The meeting up for a chat is as important as writing together, sharing work and giving feedback. Often we find the writing leads on to a discussion about world events, politics and other things. It’s like it’s a catalyst for having important conversations that we don’t often have at home or with our colleagues.

It’s also important to me because it’s how I started writing poetry. I attended a workshop run by Jeni Smith and Simon Wrigley about 10 years ago at the British Library (during the NATE conference). Someone mentioned that it was important for English teachers to write in order to be able to teach writing. After this, I started writing regularly and set myself the challenge of writing a poem a day for a year. This got me into it, and helped me to improve. I continued writing regularly, sometimes taking classes and entering competitions or sending work to publications (very little was published). In Shanghai, I was part of a poetry group that produced a home-made zine and hosted open mic nights.

Since returning to London, I haven’t been doing as much writing. It’s been harder to find the time and so the NWP group has been a bit of a lifeline for poetry, keeping it going at least once or twice in a busy term. My aim is to get back to writing little and often. I think I’ll need to set myself a challenge like I did before.

However, there’s no doubt it has affected and improved my teaching of writing. I think the most important change is that it’s helped me to understand how difficult writing actually is. It has given me much more empathy, because I know that I would struggle with certain tasks just as much as the children do. Thinking a bit like a writer also helps me to spot where improvements could be made in a child’s work. It means I’m more able to see, not just what the child needs to do, but how. I can show them the way to make a change in their own writing.

Wellcome Celebrations

The Whodunnit group gathered at Euston’s Wellcome Collection for their regular meeting on Saturday 25th January - where their numbers were swelled by members of other NWP groups, and even some newcomers - to celebrate a decade of the project and to mark the stepping down (but not stepping away!) of one of its co-founders, Simon Wrigley.

Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style coupled with a focus on voice - and then by the exhibitions at the Wellcome: Play Well, Being Human and Misbehaving Bodies - writing was, as ever, varied and distinctive. From Stanislavsky to snails, buckets to bathrooms, cancer to Argos catalogues, writers shared their efforts to say the unsayable. 

Perhaps the dynamic of writing in a space like the Wellcome Collection comes from the disruption afforded by the tension inherent in art and in good museum curation. A disruption that provokes interesting writing.

We raised the roof of the Wellcome’s reading room with diverse voices telling diverse stories on diverse subjects. They were by turns funny, frivolous, far-seeing and philosophical.

The occasion was all that the NWP embodies. It was about using writing as a way of understanding, to explore and to be playful, to permit and to be permissive.

Jeni Smith, the projects’s other co-founder and Simon Wrigley’s partner in crime (this was the Whodunnit group, after all) spoke movingly about Simon’s immeasurable work in setting up and sustaining the NWP: the thousands of miles traversed and thousands of pounds spent in setting up groups up and down the country; a determination to succeed borne of suppressed rage and sadness at the straitjackets imposed on writing teachers in the contemporary educational climate.

Simon was presented, fittingly, with a hand-bound book of writing: of poems, personal messages, stories, and anecdotes from NWP members past and present; each uniquely commemorating the love, esteem, appreciation and gratitude felt for the man and his work. 

So we walk away collectively energised to write - for ourselves first and foremost - and for our students; because the more writing we do, the better we get at writing with them.

10 Years of NWP

The National Writing Project is now a decade old in the UK: a worthy achievement and a significant milestone deserving of celebration.

At its heart that is ten years of encouraging and supporting teachers to become experts in the teaching of writing through a network of teachers’ writing groups. London’s ‘Whodunit group’ is one of the oldest and well-established of these, so it is fitting that it is their meeting this month which is being taken over to mark this special anniversary on Saturday 25th January.

We will meet at the Wellcome Collection, a museum on the Euston Road in London, in the cafe at 10am. NWP co-founder, Jeni Smith promises ‘writing fun and games’ between 10am and 1pm. The current exhibition at the Wellcome is called ‘Play Well’ and considers the transformational impact of play in our lives, so prompts will, of course, be appropriately playful!

All are welcome to join us. If you are an NWP member past or present, or considering becoming one in the future - and you are in London that weekend - come out and play! It will be the perfect opportunity to meet up with others from the NWP community, to write, to share, and to celebrate how far the project has come.

Started back in 2009 by Jenifer Smith, University of East Anglia, and by Simon Wrigley, English adviser for Buckinghamshire, 2004-2013, and chair of NATE, 2004-6, the UK’s project built on the long-running, successful US National Writing Project. Since then it has evolved through exciting partnerships, research and collaboration, carefully cultivated by the huge commitment, creative ideas and winning inspiration of Jeni and Simon.

Here’s to the next decade!