#WritingWorkshop

Red Sky Session 1- Mailika Booker

Notes from the first Red Sky Sessions run by Apples and Snakes, a free series of writing workshops around poetry.

Writing is all about habits and rituals.

• Where do you write?
• How do you maximise your time?
• Try different spaces in house, different times.
• No need to always be Writing Every Day, but have a regular routine.

If you aren’t reading, you aren’t writing.

• Set reading goals.
• Read as many poetry books as possible
• Read a book in depth each month- underline and Make Marginalia.
• Why do you like certain poems?
• What are they doing?
• How does the imagery work?
• Read anthologies to find poets.
• Read outside your era and experience. (Read Widely)

Keep a haiku journal

• Encourages us to look for Specific Detail.
• Asks us to observe.

Strategies to mess up the blank page

• 5/7 min Free Writing.
• Structured free writes- to a prompt or starting point.
• Underline lines and pull out into a new poem
• Start with simple contrasting statements- I know/ I don’t know etc
• Rhyme train for three minutes.
• Line by line developments.