The Writing Squad

Poets Mini Goals
2022-07-21 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-07-07 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-06-23 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-06-02 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-05-19 17:30 - 19:00 UTC | Online
Mini goals session – setting goals and updating each other on writing news and cultural highlights. Email billie@writingsquad.com for Zoom details.

Script Mini Goals
2022-07-18 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-07-04 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-06-20 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-06-06 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-05-23 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-05-09 17:30 - 19:00 | Online

Prose Mini Goals
2022-07-14 17:30 - 19:00, 2022-06-16 18:00 - 19:30, 2022-05-12 17:30 - 19:00 | Online

SFF Mini Goals
2022-07-11 18:00 - 19:30, 2022-06-13 18:00 - 19:30, 2022-05-16 18:00 - 19:30 | Online

Interactive Fiction: Choose Your Own Adventure
2022-07-09 11:00 - 16:00 | Manchester, Manchester
We’ll take a look at the many ways in which interactive stories exist, with a dive into examples from the games space, print, and new media. We’ll look at ideas and structures that make interactive fiction such a unique way to tell stories, and then roll up our sleeves and get stuck into a number of easy free tools to create our own works.
Although this is a primarily a hands-on workshop, the discussion will focus on what makes interactive storytelling really tick, what sets it apart from linear fiction, and where the overlaps are. This workshop is a space for experimentation.
You will come away from this workshop with new insights and understanding of a writing form you’re perhaps unfamiliar with, as well as some useful practical skills for creating your own work. You’ll also be given a cohesive spring-board into more learning and work through comprehensive hand-outs at the end of the workshop.
Bring a laptop of some kind, or anything that connects to Wifi and has a web browser! We can also provide machines if need be. Nothing else needed.

The Butterfly in the Corner: Revitalising Old Myths
2022-07-02 11:00 - 16:00 | Leeds
Now it is a well-known fact that literature is constantly in conversation with other literary text in some shape or form. This workshop will exploit this tradition as the starting point for writing our own poems. We will turn up to the blank notebook page armed with material, that our imagination can translate, update, transform and in some cases give voice to silenced characters or even fill in gaps left out of the original text.
We will write a poem using a myth, folklore, fairy tale, fable, religious, and / or historical tale as a starting point. Your poem will be in conversation with an iconic, well known and influential text. Hopefully you will find it both fascinating and rewarding to reimagine a text that we know and love, in order to present another perspective.
Come to the workshop armed with a myth, fairy tale, folklore, religious and / or historical tale that has always fascinated you in some way or form to use for stimulus for the poem we will create.
Note: This workshop is only open to members of the Writing Squad. It is not open to the general public.

Squad 10 Mini Goals
2022-06-27 18:00 - 19:30, 2022-05-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Online

Writing in Glass - A Three Day Project
2022-06-18 11:00 - 16:00, 2022-06-11 11:00 - 2022-06-12 16:00 | Sunderland
Priority for N.E. based Squad writers. If you are N.E. based, sign up by this Friday (20th) – sign-ups will then be open to writers in all locations of all Squads.
Over a series of three days (Saturday 11, Sunday 12 and Saturday 18 of June) you’ll get a chance to develop your writing practice against glass fusion techniques. This project will focus on distortion, tension, colour and the tactile world. We’ll be thinking about thing-power, the importance of scrap in our writing and our handling of the world around us.
Alongside glass artist Anna Selway we’ll look at different applications of frit, stringer and ribbon. On the Saturday we will familiarise ourself with the museum, and have a gander and play of the space we’ll be working in. The National Glass Centre is a historic venue right next to Sunderland’s old shipyard and metres away from St Peter’s Church. On Sunday we’ll work primarily with our glass pieces, applying materials to our glass pieces. Then on the following Saturday, we will receive our fused glassworks back from the kiln, and will work on binding (yes binding glass!), arranging and exhibiting them.
This project will take place in the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, so priority will first go to writers based in the North East, before we open it up to other Squad members. The project will run from approximately 11am-4pm over the three days. If you are not based locally, accommodation can be provided. If you will need accommodation for the night of the 11th of June, please email Billie on billie@writingsquad.com ASAP.
You don’t need ANY prior experience to be part of this project, just an open-mind, and a love/desire to work with the tactile world. This is a fantastic opportunity to work interdisciplinary with a fantastic glass artist and a brilliant space.

Awesome Poetry: The Air Year
2022-06-14 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
OPEN TO ALL SQUADS
One of the very best ways to become a better writer is to read widely and thoughtfully. Building on Emma and Matt’s great work in establishing the Awesome Play Text / Screenplay Reading Club, and Francesca’s prose club, Malika and Stevie are hosting the Awesome Poetry Reading Club to focus on how we can read as writers.
If you want to join us, then here’s what you need to know:
This session will focus on Caroline Bird’s The Air Year. The text can be purchased here.
The Air Year is a time of flight, transition and suspension: signatures scribbled on the sky. Bird’s speakers exist in a state of unrest, trapped in a liminal place between take-off and landing, undeniably lost. Love is uncontrollable, joy comes and goes at hurricane speed. They walk to the cliff edge, close their eyes and step out into the air.

TEN Talks: Sex in YA Communities
2022-06-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Online
Part of TENTalks – a series of discussions on ethical and philosophical writerly questions.
Sex is everywhere from ads, to TV, to music but should it be everywhere? In this discussion, we’re asking two questions: should sex be present in books marketed as ‘YA’? And how should a fandom community act when a book marketed to younger readers contains sexual content? To answers these questions, we’ll be looking at the work of Sarah J Maas, an author known for her very explicit books that despite being marketed as New Adult very much still find themselves in the YA section, and the infamous #DickSoap scandal that rocked her fandom and all of Book Twitter back in 2018.
There’s no preparation required other than having your thoughts (or your ears) ready to partake. But if you wish, here’s an article about DickSoap: https://electricliterature.com/young-adult-novel-twitter-is-losing-its-absolute-mind-over-penis-shaped-soap/ and you can choose to read Sarah J Maas novels such as Throne of Glass or ACOTAR (‘argh my eyeballs’ discretion is advised).

Politics and Prose with Preti Taneja
2022-05-28 11:00 - 16:00 | Newcastle, Newcastle
How to work with real life laws, evidence and witness testimony in all your many forms.
In this workshop we will look at the ethics, politics and aesthetics of working with real life situations and research evidence, including legal documents, and gathering witness testimony, as you write.
We will talk about situations where we have gathered witness testimony for our research, how to handle sensitive material and respect interviewees; we will share and build towards best practice when your work includes other’s real stories or identifiable lives especially friends and family. We may discuss how we can engage with legal documents that inform our world-building and how we can go about this in a fictionalised way.
You will leave the workshop with an appreciation of the value of research and the wealth of real documents and stories that exist for writers to draw in formally inventive ways. You will learn how to bring the politics into the prose with style and confidence.

Writing in Glass
2022-05-21 11:00 - 16:00 | Sunderland
Watch live glass making demonstrations, have a walk round the exhibitions and write in a ‘floating’ pod.
We will observe the glassmaking process, watching expert glass demonstrations such as flameworking, glass blowing and lathe techniques. We’ll have a walk through the exhibitions on display and have a stroll by Sunderland’s former shipyard. We’ll do lots of talking and even do some writing in the Glass Centre’s pod, a unique ‘floating’ event space overlooking the Wear.
We’ll talk about the glass-making process. And we might not have the language or the specific syntax to talk about the techniques or operations being used, but that’s the point. We might not even talk; we might just gesture in imitation of a glass blower, or point, or draw. What happens when words stop? And how do we use language, textually and visually to describe a man blowing on a stick? How does our writing reflect, refract and obscure the world around us? And finally, how do we work transparency and/or opacity into our writing?
You might have no idea about glass, be an inveterate watcher of Blown Away, or just appreciate a good Pyrex casserole. But by the end of the workshop you’ll walk away having seen a live glass blowing demonstration! And maybe a better understanding of your relationship to glass, whether it’s a love it or leave it situ. You’ll maybe draw some parallels in your own writing to the glass-making process. You might even get to hear about an exciting, upcoming Squad glass project…

Writing the Archive
2022-05-14 11:00 - 16:00 | Sheffield
Why should we make art from the archive? Why should we care? How can creativity serve history and vice versa? How do we write into the gaps left by history? What happens when artefacts are removed from their cultural contexts and audiences? Where does the line between poetry, history and myth sit? How does all this sit with our understanding of national memory and education?
We will be writing from research exercises based on the archival sources within the gallery. The participants will identify areas of silenced or marginalised narratives within the archive and creatively respond to them. The morning will be spent utilising writing techniques that best problematise the language of the archive, that help give voice to silenced narratives. The afternoon will be spent putting these techniques into practice along with mixed-media approaches to archive work.

Awesome Prose: My Name is Why
2022-05-10 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
One of the squad’s 3 Awesome Reading groups – designed to think about how we can read as writers.
If you want to join us, then here’s what you need to know:
We will be reading My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay. The text can be bought here.
NB: Because of the different types of documents included in the book, there have been problems reported with the legibility of the Kindle version, so buying/borrowing a paper version is strongly recommended.
At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth.
This is Lemn’s story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph.
Sissay reflects on his childhood, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation’s best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

What if we didn't start with words?
2022-05-07 11:00 - 16:00 | Leeds
In this workshop we’re going to draw / make design sets / costumes / locations… and then we’ll write for them.

I’ve been thinking about staging and the power of set design. Why is it that writers don’t often get to work with set designers early in a development process? What does thinking about image rather than words unlock for storytellers / writers? Then I saw a video about Taika Waititi’s (awesome writer/director, check him out) creative process. There he talked about how he starts his film scripts. He thinks about cool images / events for the beginning and start of a story, and then he writes to link them up. Do you do this? I don’t do this. I never do this. I think it could be interesting to try doing this. It could be so fun to try this! To play with the graphic and the look of things and see what that inspires. To think about a set/costumes and then imagine a story that comes from there? So, I thought, why not experiment with all of that?
