There’s nothing like a car boot as inspiration to create a story. A rich resource for creativity and writing prompts, although I find myself pondering human life and our detachment from the natural world. If only we realised how transient life is, our attachment to ‘stuff’ is quite strange.
The verges on the way home to base camp were where I found the real treasures.
Today was the second to last creative writing course that I will be running for St Nicks in York.
A bitter sweet day this is where my writing journey began six years ago and where I have worked with such an inspiring and lovely group of people.
I’m leaving to give more time to my independent freelance writing and PhD, but I will certainly miss it. This morning our creative writing tasks reflected the experience of writing at St Nicks. One of my lovely participants wrote that coming every week is his ‘Wednesday Trend’ to be in nature. I love those words.
Going forward I am going to continue the Wednesday Trend of connection with nature – taking a break from studying and writing to connect with the natural world.
The class will continue to run and will be hosted by my amazing colleague / friend Griselda who is also an artist and writer, so York friends please do get in touch with St Nicks if you are interested in joining them.
Here are some beautiful pics from St Nicks this morning… take care! Em 🙂
Today I am mostly not researching and instead painting beetles with my kids 😀
❤️ Inspired by the Bonkers About Beetles book by Owen Davey ❤️
Hello…..My name is Emma,
In February 2020 I set off on a personal journey to complete a PhD using my skills in writing to create a contemporary Choose Your Own Adventure book, taking a reader through the experience of a mental health journey.
Why am I doing this?
I have worked in the NHS since 2001 as an occupational therapist, specialising in mental health and vocational rehabilitation. A lot of my job involves re-sparking inspiration in life and supporting people to re-structure personal narratives and perceptions of the world.
I want to write something that conveys the human experience of mental health illness and also aims to challenge the way we think and feel about mental health experiences. I am particularly interested in the way that the stories we tell about ourselves, and others tell about us, shape our identity and how we think and feel about ourselves in the world.
So far my research has taken me back to the beginning of mental health care, looking at historical aspects and also narrative theory in relation to my writing. I’ve been using auto ethnography to explore my own personal experiences and to begin to consider characters and structures that I would like to include in my writing.
In essence I’m at the beginning of world building. Something we all do in the creation and making of stories. My biggest challenge setting out in this journey is fitting in my job, research and home schooling during lock down.
I’ve been buying myself some time at Base Camp by setting the kids off creating their own fantasy worlds (see pics at the top of the blog) for anyone interested in doing this with their kids I can recommend this excellent book which gave us our inspiration: Fantasy Mapping, Drawing Worlds by Wesley Jones.
Goals for this week:
Adventures from Base Camp 