It’s back! Here is the link to the prompt page:
Base Bar Direction
Hello Everyone,
Tonight’s meeting will be in the Base Bar of the GUU. For those of you not too familiar with the layout of the GUU, directions are below.
When you enter the doors, go down the stairs on the left and turn left down the corridor. Go straight to the end of the corridor and you will find yourself in the Base Bar.
Semester Schedule
Hi everyone, this is the schedule for the coming semester.
Week 3 – 1st October – Mystery/Crime – GUU Base Bar
Week 4 – 8th October – World Building – GUU Drawing Room
Week 5 – 15th October – Horror – Unassigned
Week 6 – 22nd October – Show & Tell – GUU Drawing Room
Week 7 – 29th October – Gothic – GUU Base Bar
Week 8 – 5th November – Poetry – Unassigned
Week 9 – 12th November – Fantasy – GUU Drawing Room
Week 10 – 19th November – Villains – Unassigned
Week 11 – 26th November – Sci-Fi – GUU Drawing Room (this week will be 8 to 10)
Week 12 – 3rd December – Fairytales – GUU Drawing Room
Week 13 – 10th December – Show & Tell – Unassigned
Meetings This Year
Meetings this year will be on Mondays 7-9 at the Glasgow University Union in the Drawing Room. While the Icebreaker session will be on Wednesday 19th at The Dram! the first workshop will be on Monday 24th.
Hope to see you there!
For those of you new to campus – when you get to the GUU, go up the stairs and turn left. The Drawing Room is the left-hand door on the wall facing you.
WE’RE BACK!
ATTENTION CREATIVE WRITERS!
To the old hats – welcome back – we hope to be seeing your faces again. For those of you who don’t know who we are (but would like to) – we are a student society who run weekly workshops. We aim to encourage people to develop their own writing skills and connect with other keen writers.
All are welcome – whether you’re a beginner or have been writing for years. If you just want to network, or if you’ve been dragged along by a friend.
Join us for our 1st Icebreaker workshop of term – The Dram! On Woodlands road WEDNESDAY 19TH from 6-8. Hope to see you there!
One last thing about our society – it’s completely FREE! We do not charge any membership fees – we know we’re all broke.
DIRECTIONS (FROM MAIN BUILDING AND KELVINBRIDGE SUBWAY STATION):
If you’re on campus get to the MAIN BUILDING. If you’re trying to get there from off-campus, the best way is getting the subway and getting off at KELVINBRIDGE.
FROM THE MAIN BUILDING:
Turn down the hill towards the GUU and the CHARLES WILSON building (away from the Byres road side).
Go down that hill and turn left. The GUU (big fancy sandstone building) will be on your left, Charles Wilson (big fancy church building) on your right. Turn right at the traffic lights and go down GIBSON STREET.
Keep walking straight down that road until you get to a roundabout. The OLD SCHOOLHOUSE should be on your left (it’s a nice pub – you should try it out sometime) and the ST ANDREWS building on your right. The road right in front of you is WOODLANDS ROAD.
Turn right up Woodlands Road. THE DRAM! is right after a set of traffic lights.
FROM KELIVINBRIDGE SUBWAY STATION:
Exit the subway to the right and you will find yourself in a car park. Walk through the car park and turn left to exit at the barriers (they are a garish orange and white – you can’t miss them).
You will see a cobbled road that curves up on your right-hand side – it is SOUTH WOODSIDE ROAD. Go up it.
THE DOUBLET bar will be on your right. Cross at the traffic lights on your right-hand side. Turn right straight after crossing and then take the first left. You are now on WOODLANDS ROAD. Walk straight up Woodlands road until you see a bus stop. THE DRAM! is on your right.
Once inside The Dram! turn left into the function room (called THE WEE DRAM). The door should have our name on it, but if not, don’t worry – it’s ours from 6 to 8. If you’re a little early feel free to grab a drink!
The End of FFF2018
Hello everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s snow day! Today is the last day of February, and more importantly, the last day of Flash Fiction February 2018. All the prompts have been posted.
Don’t worry if you haven’t written any/sent any flash fictions in yet, though! You’ve got a couple months at least (we know the aim is to write one a day, but we also acknowledge that people are busy).
Well done if you managed all 28, and well done if you managed even one. And please send in any that you’ve written, we’d love to read them!
Living Flame
There are many things that can be created from fire. Swaths of soot left after a blaze. Smoke spiralling into the air, silhouetted against the sun, painting the sky with the dark against the light. What is charcoal if not charred remnants, used to draw, used for art? And even fire itself can be beautiful, blooming like a flower, orange and yellow. Even in its destruction it is beautiful, sweeping through wood and paper and forests and buildings, leaving barely anything unscathed.
And we fear it, as we should, keep it controlled in fireplaces and furnaces, with weak pathetic flames burning in lamps and on candles. But even with our precautions, sometimes it escapes, wreaks havoc, causes devastation and feeds like a living thing, breathes and grows and survives like a living thing.
But always, even in the aftermath, in the smouldering remains of what was once a whole house, a thriving woodland, you find the strangest things, untouched and unscarred. An intricate candlestick, on a carved marble fireplace. An iron-wrought bench, inscriptions painstakingly worked into the back.
You never know what you will find, when you put out fires. You never know what will have destroyed, and you never know what will have been left for you to discover.
-Maura Kenny
(04/02/18: create, fire quote)
Be Strong
“Be strong.”
She could hear the voice in her head, saying those two words, be strong, the last thing she’d ever heard the girl say. As they’d been dragged apart, the other girl hadn’t screamed, hadn’t cried, had simply looked her dead in the eye and told her to be strong.
And so she tried. She held her head high, and she wiped away her tears, and when she saw an opening, she ran for her life, ran faster than she’d ever run before.
“Be strong.”
She kept her head down, worked hard, listened out for any word, any news. She smiled and laughed and befriended people and she tried so hard to be strong.
“Be strong.”
She went to the gym, went running, punched a bag. Mental strength could come from physical strength, and as her muscles strengthened and she ran faster and punched harder, she flet strong.
“Be strong.”
She’d been told to be strong. And so she was.
-Maura Kenny
(08/02/18: strong)
My Ship
It hadn’t been the cleanest ship, hadn’t been the fastest or the nicest or the best. In fact, some would say it was downright disreputable. The rigging had been frayed, and the wheel always squeaked, and some of the doors were permanently wedged open… but it was mine. My ship, that I’d taken all over this beautiful, terrible world. My ship, that had been with me for years. My ship, that I’d lost due to my stupidity and my trust and my bloody inability to leave the girl I loved.
I’d loved her, and she’d betrayed me, and I’d lost my ship, and I’d lost her. Years had passed since then, but the ache hadn’t faded.
I had spent those years doing the best I could. It was hard, going from captain of a ship to just another pirate, and having to fight back men on every crew I joined, men who didn’t believe a woman could be a pirate. But I hadn’t become a captain by luck, and after I’d bested a few expert swordsmen, word had spread, of a captain without her ship.
I joined crews, and I worked hard, and I fought and bled, but I wasn’t ever a part of any of the crews I joined. Always separate, always alone, always aching.
And I kept looking. Looking for my ship, and for the girl I’d loved.
-Maura Kenny
(03/02/18: disreputable, picture of ship on an island)
Warm-Up
The exercise involves lying full-bodied on the floor for another to draw around your form. The purpose of said exercise is to articulate a sense for the flow of immobility, immobility as flow and thus possibility. Many groups attempted similar activities to great aplomb and connection. Artists collapsed upon their models. Models rose to heights of personal ascendence. Poetry collections were published. Limbs grew lithe in artificial moonlight. The studio upgraded its entire rigging. We brought new humans to practice passivity. Every pairing was a pool of pleasure. Who knew the flesh untouched could be so malleable. To cultivate the necessary unrest, ambient ocean sounds may be played directly into the model’s ear. Arousal. Here we are, rhythm of intermittent tide, a pencilled warble. This man has muscles that articulate a paradoxical vulnerability. It’s in his tattoos, which only the artist sees. A he or a she or neither, in which case a very special effect is reached. Systems fall into perfect error. Undulations of hair leave their impress upon carpets, but admittedly parquet floors were instructed. Recommendations swept away in paper flakes. Controversies stirred at the death of a single participant. They had scratched, I am just looking for a way out. It never occurred to the artist that the model was in fact referring to their very own body. Doors were locked and provisions made. They ate tinned peaches and dripped the slippery juice across each other’s faces. Some of them miss the practice as it was before. No good to dwell in the past. No good at all. The snapshots were flushed when authorities arrived. Time will tell, how else? Little white lines. Social media profiles in the boom era broke down when the 404 parade came round, desperate and percussive. I make of you a blade of rain, they said. This isn’t the eighties, the skin replied. There were twenty-two poems explaining aesthetic paralysis. A great deal of laughter and stuck-together A2 paper, resonant scent of impermanent ink. When your felt-tip skims my shoulders I melt like infinite butter. His tattoos twist, I drink them.
– Maria Sledmere
(04/02/18: ‘create’)
GUCW 