Vanessa Rigg

Happy so far, but I’m aware there’s a lot more I could be doing – and will be doing…

Gorgeousness: My favourite bits were ‘afternoons draped in honey’ and ‘as cleanly as she peeled old skin from a white potato.’ I have been told I overwrite too sometimes. But what does it really mean?

I liked your I remember, too. Many of us chose to capture a single incident, or linked series, in our I remembers. I’ve also done it with…[Read more]

YES about the detail. So evocative.

Sorry you’re feeling that way, Jane. It’s great that we can support one another with or without feedback – glad you posted anyway.

I love the bit of dialogue about the peas.
I found the listening exercise very hard. Tried it again the other day. I would need to be very close or the speakers would need to be very loud!
Interesting about trying to write ‘gorgeous’ when you don’t feel you normally do. A good exercise, though, to try a different approach. Scary dream!

Did the listening exercise this morning. Not ideal as I couldn’t hear very well – the tables were too far apart. So it’s not dialogue, just snippets. But, for what it’s worth, here are some of my eavesdroppings!

…completely messed up my belly button…
He obviously thinks they’re after something else.
I was pulling roots up and at the end I…[Read more]

Thank you, Kaz.

Andrew Wille sends his regards to the group and says if we have any questions please ask. I think he’s posting bit of additional stuff soon on his website.

Thanks, Raine.

Thanks, Bella. Tomorrow I’m spending some time in a coffee shop with my six-week-old grandson and a notebook and pencil. I’m hoping for some lightness and humour in my eavesdropping!

Appreciating hugs, tissues, tea, chocolate biscuits.

I’m sorry this is a sad piece. Perhaps this has something to do with why I’m feeling emotional about my writing.

Love the Scotsness of it (made up a word). The now, right enough, a wee bit.
My favourite bits of the I remember are the bus that didn’t come and his old hands cradling nothing.

I’ve used I remember for character, and I’m planning to do it again for my brand new novel in gestation.

I love this, Bella. I wonder – if you’d been asked to write about that incident without doing it as an ‘I remember’, do you think it would have turned out differently in other ways than simply not starting each sentence with that phrase? I agree it’s like a poem, and I especially like the line about Glenn’s mum who also ‘remembered’.

This is wonderful! I remember kissing a photo of David Cassidy which my friend had stuck to the mirror in her bedroom. (Donny Osmond was hers.) And there’s nothing wrong with wearing a bra AND a vest now – but there would have been then!

Well. I’ve read the Le Guin and Burroway chapters and have had a strong emotional reaction. Not to the gorgeous passages. But to the prospect of this whole MA, to notebooks and journals and free-writing, and sharing with you lot and telling the stories that matter to me. I’m sixty years old and I’m sitting here crying! Don’t worry – I won’t use…[Read more]