Modern Choir

BARRY

How to be famous, how to be famous? How will I ever walk on the Walk of Fame? How will millions adore me and listen to me? How?

CHOIR

How indeed? How would you ever be famous?

BARRY

I’ll act.

CHOIR

you’re as stiff as a plank.

BARRY

I’ll sing.

CHOIR

Choir: you sound like one too.

BARRY

I’ll teach.

CHOIR

About what?

BARRY

About my life so far.

CHOIR

You’re just Twenty-one.

BARRY

About all the things I know.

CHOIR

Nobody cares.

BARRY

I’ll run for president.

CHOIR

You’re broke.

BARRY

I have charisma.

CHOIR

Your own reflection runs away from you.

BARRY

I will carry the voice of a generation.

CHOIR

And you’ll be the only one?

BARRY

I’ll paint.

CHOIR

Like shit.

BARRY

I’ll draw.

CHOIR

Like Shit.

BARRY

I’ll sculpt.

CHOIR

Like Shit.

BARRY

Direct.

CHOIR

Shit.

BARRY

Animate.

CHOIR

Shit.

BARRY

Write.

CHOIR

Shit.

BARRY

Direct.

CHOIR

Shit.

BARRY

I’ll become a Pornstar.

CHOIR

You’ll have to pay to star

BARRY

I’ll write a musical about a Founding Father

CHOIR

Wait for it

BARRY

I’ll play sports. That’s it

CHOIR

You’re exhausted after lunch

BARRY

Tennis

CHOIR

You can’t aim

BARRY

Sprint

CHOIR

You can’t run

BARRY

Basketball

CHOIR

You’re not black

BARRY

Football

CHOIR

You’re not Brazilian

BARRY

I’ll cause a mass shooting

CHOIR

Again, you can’t aim

BARRY

Then what can I do to be famous?

CHOIR

 Who asked you in the first place?

BARRY

I did

CHOIR

And you trust yourself?

BARRY

Yes, I do

CHOIR

No you don’t

BARRY

Sod it. 

- Ruben Dewulf

The Script Edition

Hello everyone!

Yesterday was our first meeting after the Easter holidays. It was also the first time that Lena led the meeting; she did a good job introducing us to the joy of writing a script for theatre or for a movie. Lena led us through the art of script writing by having us write five different kinds of scenes. I will list each one below, if you feel like trying out something, feel free. You could even send it to us later and we will post it here on the blog, with your permission of course.

The first scene was a warm-up exercise. Lena asked us to write a scene while using specific stage directions:

A: comes up, sits on a chair

B: comes up, stands next to A

A: looks at B, shrugs

B: sits down next to A, puts hand on shoulder

A: pushes hand away, walks away

The second scene was a bit more complicated. Lena started by explaining us what a monologue is in theatre, namely a scene where one protagonist talks to himself or to the audience directly. The exercise was to write a scene where the protagonist writes a letter confessing something and in the meantime talk to the audience about it. Valerie, one of the participants of the meeting, wrote a funny monologue which reminded us of the very real anxiety of having to make a phone call. You can read it by clicking here! 

Then, Lena asked us to write a dialogue which would be the follow-up of the monologue we had written before. Meaning, two protagonists talking to each other, one of them holding something which suspiciously looks like the letter the other character wrote in the scene just before that. Although, what the protagonist is actually holding is something completely different. Lena was so kind to share with us the scene she had written about a girl who just wrote a letter confessing she has a crush on her brother's best friend and then freaks out because she believes her mother found that letter. It turns out though that the mother found a letter by the brother's secret admirer. 

The penultimate revolved a Greek tradition: the choir. Traditionally, the members of the choir would comment on what happens during the play and give some background information. Our task was to write a scene where the protagonist talks about all his elaborate and ambitious plans even though the choir is a bit more ... realistic. You can read what Ruben wrote here! 

For the last exercise, Lena talked to us about the tradition of the Commedia Dell'arte and its most famous characters. Our challenge was to write a new scene with 2 of the characters Lena presented to us. While writing, we heard Ruben laughing so when we had all finished, we promptly but in a kind way asked Ruben to share his work with us. I believe I am not only speaking for myself when I say that I was impressed by the creative swear words. You can read the story here. Enjoy! 

That was it for this week! In 2 weeks (May 2d), we will be meeting at the World's End for our next meeting which will be a games edition!

Until then,

Cara 

Commedia Dell'arte

The manservant and the soldier are making their way through the villa. The soldier is the son of the villa’s owner and has finally returned from the war.

Capitano: Thank you manservant, I wish to be alone now. Please do not disturb me further. I will see you again tomorrow.

Arlequino: Of course, sir, and it’s so nice to have you back after all these long years.

Capitano: Thank you but now I wish to be alone.

The manservant leaves the room and then enters again

Arlequino: Do you have need of anything, sir?

Capitano: You idiotic swine, did you not hear I wished to be alone?

Arlequino: My apologies, sir, I’ll leave

Capitano: No, stay so I can tell you how stupid you are for not leaving me alone

Arlequino: errr…

Capitano: I have just returned from a war, you know. I lost my arm, my leg, both of my eyes, my spine, my stomach and my sense of humour.

Arlequino: But sir, you are physically fine.

Capitano: I found them again, you swine-hair dressed son of a backwards mule riding wood gatherer. All except for my sense of humour.

Arlequino: My mother does not…

Capitano: I’m rich so I’m always right. Why are you still here?

Arlequino: You told me to stay.

Capitano: No, I didn’t. Don’t start spreading vile rumours, you monkey-washing oddhaired son of an Arctic Baboon

Arlequino: Why is my hair odd?

Capitano: It does not have an even number of hairs in it. Everyone knows having 120 hairs on their head is a sign of godlike perfection. Now why I am not alone yet?

Arlequino: I…

Capitano: Stay, I must insult you more, you table-fucking, bucketpraising, cow-worshipping, spaghettisniffing, airbreathing, rat-dressed spawn of a Wi-Fi-stealing, hay-sniffing, well-pissing, scissor-breaking, tooth-licking, spider-eating, sun-staring, wig-wearing Bulgarian ice cream vendor.

Arlequino: My lord, now you are offending me and my poor mother with these lies. She’s Hungarian.

Capitano: Just go, so I can be alone and contemplate being alone in a philosophical sense

Arlequino: I’m going and I will not disturb you anymore… When should I wake you?

Capitano: Out

- Ruben Dewulf

Monologue

Write a letter she said. It’ll be a load off you shoulders she said. Look at me now, sitting here at this desk. Ridiculous! Like this is going to help. I mean, It’s not like I’m ever going to send it, so why would I even--- Ugh. For fuck’s sake.

*5 min of quiet writing*

Fuck this is anything but productive. It’s not like I did anything wrong. I shouldn’t feel guilty. I DON’T. Because I’m not, guilty. Haven’t you ever done anything stupid, because something was done to you, that made you so fucking mad, that you just had to, you know let the anger out.

You with the pink glasses, I see you. Yeah you did, didn’t you! Well, did you apologize after? Like for real, heartfelt and all that shit. As if you did something wrong? When you know you didn’t do anything wrong. Because I sure as hell didn’t, so why would I need to apologize? SHE SHOULD HAVE TO APOLOGIZE, that rude little—

Fuck this. *rips up letter*

You would think that I smashed her phone on the ground and stepped on it, then kicked it and it smashed against the wall. I didn’t do more than dunk it a nice bath of steaming hot coffee.

But wasn’t my fault. She’s was the one to blame! She was still on her phone, waiting in line to get her coffee. You know those people, always on their phones, yammering the whole damn time. Well, she was one of those. She should apologize for her rude ass behavior. Fuck her, I didn’t do anything wrong!

- Valerie 

And On We Go!

Dearest readers,

A new semester is about to begin, and Creative Writing Group will soon be back at it again. The upcoming semester will be filled with lovely surprises and themed meetings once again, and we would love for you to be there! So grab your journals and mark the dates: 21/02, 07/03, 21/03, 18/04, 02/05 and 16/05. The theme of every meeting will be revealed one week in advance on the Facebook page, so make sure to follow us there.

On top of that, we have a new person joining our team, this semester! Lena will be helping us out coming up with crazy ideas and making sure the crazy ideas are turned into awesome meetings. She will add her introduction to the page in a week or so.

That's all for now. We hope to see you soon,

Aline

All Is Quiet On New Year's Day (Besides Aline's Gratitude And Cara's Spamming)

Happy New Year everyone!

CWG wishes you all lots of creativity, friendship, love, health and more of that fluffy stuff in the upcoming year.

What is our resolution, you ask? Well, we have a little surprise for you all. The past semester, Cara and I have been working on this CWG blog. On this blog you can find pictures of and posts about meetings, every single writing prompt or story that has been posted to our Facebook page, announcements, and more! Why do you only reveal it now, is your next question? Well, we didn't want to spam everyone about an empty blog, so we decided to fill it up a little first. By now, you should find plenty of prompts and short stories to keep you busy for a while. :D

Besides that, we wanted to thank all the people that were involved with CWG last semester. Not only the people that enthusiastically made it to every single meeting, but also the people who helped Laurence and me to come up with fun games or ideas for the meetings, and who provided us with the materials to play said games or make said ideas work. And, of course, the many people who were constantly spammed by Cara, but did not complain once. You are what makes CWG what it is today.

We wish you all the best and we hope to see you again next semester,
- Aline

And So This Is Christmas!

Ho Ho Ho everyone!

As you might know, for the last meeting of the semester, Aline, Laurence and I decided to spice things up! Instead of having a meeting at the Blandijn, we went to Mayana Chocolate Bar as it is impossible to be in the Christmas mood without hot chocolate. When everyone finally had their drink and was able to listen to Aline, she explained why we had all been asked to dress up: a Christmas sweater competition! We were all asked to vote on a little piece of paper. Julie and Jolien got to share the prize. Congratulations to them! 

Aline then divided us in pairs for the first part of the meeting and gave us two cards out of Aline's Christmas Story Cards set. Each card had the picture of a character from a Christmas legend and a little explanation on who the character is. Each pair wrote a little story, and then read it out loud. We also took a vote on whose story was the best, or the most amusing.

For the second activity, Aline divided the whole group in two. Each group received puzzle pieces from Story Box. The pieces were parts of a story. Both groups had to start from the same puzzle piece, but they had different endings. Just so you know, Christmas stories can now involve spying and kidnapping. 

Our (beloved) name bag made a comeback during the third activity. We all had to pick one name from the bag and then had to imagine what would happen if our character met Santa Claus. I wrote a story about the Statue of Liberty getting a saw from Santa so she could free herself and walk around, because isn't it ironic that a statue representing freedom is immobile?

To end the meeting, Aline gave us a copy of a Christmas song written by John Lennon. Laurence, who created this activity, had taken out some of the words and our job was to add new words, as long as it fit the rhyme scheme. For some reason, we all decided to transform the song into something weird, creepy and scary. Sorry, John!

Well this is it for this semester, we are now taking a break until the end of the exams. Aline, Laurence and I hope you enjoyed the meetings and what we posted on the Facebook page.

Enjoy the holidays and good luck for the exams!

- Cara  

Sunday Writing Prompt 04/12/16

#SundayWritingPrompt 💡✒ As Christmas quickly approaches, the pile of presents underneath the Christmas tree grows. One morning, you wake up and an oddly shaped gift has been added to the pile. Who put it there and what is inside of it?
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Don't forget to join us this Tuesday for the CWG: Christmas Edition! Since we are not entirely sure if the chocolate bar will be open, we will be meeting at the main entrance of Blandijn! (TraBla)
...

We hope to see you there!
- Aline

CWG: Christmas Edition

Good morning dear fellow writers,

Upcoming Tuesday will be the last creative writing meeting of the semester, but it promises to be a special one! As a theme, we chose the early Christmas spirit, and we will be going all out with it. Instead of meeting in the Big Meeting Room like we usually do, we will be meeting at TraBla at 19:00. We will leave at 19:05 at its latest, and go to the Mayana Chocolate Bar (if it’s open, there was some confusion about that and the baristas wer...e not able to help us out – but if not, Cara and I will inventively think of alternatives and are open for suggestions.)

Now what will be so Christmas-y about it, you may wonder? For starters, there will (hopefully) be hot cocoa. On top of that, all the writing we will do will be Christmas-themed in one way or another, and there will again be both prose and poetry stuff. Thirdly, we ask everyone who comes to dress up in a Christmas/very wintery sweater and to bring Christmas hat. The person that looks the most like an escaped Santa elf will win a prize. :D (Winner will be chosen by popular vote because democracy.)

Besides all the fun stuff, we ask everyone who’s coming to let us know you are on the Facebook event, so we know how many people to expect when we’re waiting in the cold in front of TraBla.  You can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/events/686851998157379/.

Last but not least, if anyone feels like sending in a story to be put on the FB page/be feedbacked during the meeting, feel free to send it through to creativewritingugent@gmail.com or message it to Cara or me on Facebook.

Alright, enough of the whining.
We hope to see you there!

- Aline

Let's Jump Into The Unknown!

Hello everyone!

Do you know Simile? No? Well, Simile is a literary magazine made entirely by students at the university. It consists of everything you can possibly think of: prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and even drawings. Every year, the magazine revolves around a theme, and this year it will be “the unknown”. Simile is now looking for submissions for this year's issue so Creative Writing Group decided to help students get started at a special edition meeting.

We started the meeting with the story cubes. Aline divided the whole group in pairs and gave each one three cubes. The exercise was to write a little story using the following prompt, and the cubes of course:

You are at home when you suddenly hear a strange noise coming from outside. You look out the window, what do you see?

As usual, some of the results were so weird, we could only laugh. The second activity involved a little name bag, which includes the names of fictional characters, but also real names, such as “Aline in a bad mood” and “Cara from Simile” - because why not. Each writer received two names, for example I had Barack Obama and Dr Frankenstein. Our task was to write a story combining the two names. Afterwards, the other people had to guess who we had drawn. Let's just say some stories were ... memorable.

The meeting ended as usual with a bit of poetry. Laurence had chosen a few poems, which all talked about death from a different perspective: death as a mystery, death as an escape, etc. After a brief discussion, Laurence invited us to write (or draw) something about one of those perspectives, even though we had already used all our inspiration for that evening.

If you would like to submit a piece for Simile or have any questions, do not hesitate to have a look at the Facebook page or send an email to similemagazine@gmail.com. The next Creative Writing meeting will be a Christmas edition by the way!

Until then,

Cara