Over in a flash: Creative writing workshop at Chester Library

Superwoman author Shirley Conran once famously declared that “Life is too short to stuff a mushroom”.

Well, I’m all for a bit of wisdom and inspiration and I think Shirley would agree with me in adding that life’s also too short to ignore your passions and dreams.

I love creative writing and so with that in mind I signed up for a flash fiction workshop at Chester Library.

The Summer Flash workshop, organised by Chester Writers with Chester Library as part of adult learners week, was led by award-winning local author Clare Dudman.

You may at this point be wondering what on earth flash fiction is. Well, in a nutshell, it’s a short short story – anything from 50 words (known in the trade as a dribble), to around 1000 words.

Some 14 local writers took part in the workshop, having a go at a series of exercises, from creating our own fictional character to writing about what we could see, hear and smell in the library’s meeting room.

The latter was not easy, given that this was, after all, a meeting room and not the most inspiring of locations, but it served its purpose, getting us to reflect on the importance of evoking all of the senses in our writing.

Clare was an excellent and supportive tutor, ensuring the workshop was full of useful pointers on writing flash fiction and crucial stuff like plot structure. The session also afforded us the opportunity of chatting with fellow writers, one of whom was the very talented Danielle de la Wonk, host of the Harvest Moon Open Mic session in Chester.

The workshop was one of two Summer Flash events, with the second being a flash fiction reception and open mic event at the library, with readings from various local writers and from those who took part in the workshop.

While I couldn’t make the open mic event, I came away from the workshop with plenty of food for thought for my future writing.

And I think it’s fair to say that while I will be setting aside more time in future for writing, I won’t be donning my apron to combine some dolcelatte with a pack of Portobellos, that’s for sure. How about you?