Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time, there was a couch, a skeleton and a naked woman. The skeleton and naked woman was posed at either end of the couch. The naked woman was surmising whether the skeleton would have so bony if he had eaten more cupcakes whilst alive.
Cupcakes taste good, but are not so nutritious. They can be naked or decorated. They can be iced.
Everyday could be a day for cupcakes. Making the cupcake mix is therapeutic for some. Creativity with the icing and decoration can be therapeutic for others. These days, cupcake decorating is a whole new artistic thing. Not sure why daggy old cupcakes made a comeback as a fashion thing. Was it Sex in the City?
One day maybe I should try my hand at making fancily decorated cupcakes. The muffins at my local Café are a bit of an inspiration with their decorative toppings shouting “buy me”. I’m more interested in the toppings than the actual muffin, Texas pan size, themselves. They look like half your daily calorie intake in one baked item.
Now let’s get back to the cupcakes. They now manufacture containers especially to carry your cupcakes in to travel. Even tiered cake plates to accommodate cup cakes.
Because of that, couples now have wedding cakes made up of tiers of cupcakes. I’m not sure how elaborate they’ll eventually become.
This activity has now carried over to other things until finally we are now getting ‘imitation’ cakes of cupcake like tiers made up of nappies like at the Baby Shower we had at the gym a couple of days ago.
That’s enough of cupcakes. Why is there a skeleton posed on a couch?
At the last minute, I did notice the naked woman at the other end of the couch gazing at the skeleton. I didn’t notice her face earlier as there was a paper fold across her eyes. Why is she gazing at the skeleton? What are they both doing posed on the couch? What connection do the cupcakes have?
I don’t know or would even venture to guess. This is part of a writing exercise in Catherine Deveny’s Gunnas Writing Master class and here is what I learned.
Just write! Don’t worry about where you are, what chapter it should be, that you are not sitting at a desk. That you don’t think anything will come to you.
This exercise started with a mangled photocopy of a picture of a vintage style couch with a rather tall looking skeleton at one end, a naked female posed not to show anything at the other end. And a separate piece of paper with only the word ‘cupcake’ typed on it. To get us started and help us along, we were given six prompts (in the bold type) at various intervals to incorporate wherever we were up to, starting with Once upon a time.
The Gunnas Writing Master class is not about how to write but how to get you motivated to write.
After spending decades of a professional life easily writing and editing specifications, manuals, business cases, project plans, internet content, presentations and speeches with words and writing coming easily to me to meet workplace deadlines, what did I discover on this class?
Much to my surprise, I wrote quickly and easily during the enforced writing exercises. I didn’t agonise or delay, the words easily tumbled out too quickly for my hand writing to keep up.
Self criticism is your worst enemy. Don’t worry about what anyone else will think, particularly you. Just write.
Initially attending today with non-fiction aims, I might think about some fiction writing and some social commentary too.
Maybe this is the start. Stop. Not maybe.
This is the start of something new for me.