Post-Workshop-Mush

Today was the day that I went off to Great Barrington to take an intensive workshop with Winter Miller. There were fifteen of us in the yoga/meditation space. We started out with some talking out loud things. Then, a series of writing prompts – some short exercises, followed by longer periods of writing based around what had gone just before.

I ended up writing about three different sets of characters and situations. It was very useful learning ways to generate information which might motivate a person or color a situation, to be able to think: ok, I know these three things, these two people in this situation and now they are going to interact. Go! They got to the point very quickly.

Even if the instructions seemed hard or not what I would normally do, I used my normal taking a class approach and did it the teacher’s way. Otherwise what’s the point, right? The results were quite interesting. She had encouraged us not to say “no” to the exercises or what might come up during the work but to get to where you could say “yes” to something in it.

At the end when we went around talking about whether we’d met any of our goals (talked about at the beginning) several people mentioned that they’d thought “no, that’s stupid” during some part and remembered what Winter had said and kept talking to themselves until they could move it to a more positive. I had hoped to learn about moving characters on to the next thing and I think I could – maybe by making a list of what I know about them already, what they like and don’t like, what annoys them etc.

People gave all kinds of examples and reasons why they felt the day was successful for them at the end, so hopefully we all went home ready to write write write! Thanks Gail for the motivation to go!

I was mush-brained enough that I ended up finding a different way home without really trying. I can’t count it as getting lost since I knew exactly where I would come out.

(Conversely, I did get lost in Great Barrington once I parked my car. I thought I knew where I was going and ended up asking people on the street until I found a guy who really did know the place I was looking for. Before that I went into a different yoga studio where some yoga students seriously made fun of my birkenstock shoes… what’s up with that? Apparently boots are required because it’s January. Oh well, at least I didn’t end up sliding my car down a steep hill that had been flooded to create an icy slope for sledding as I did many years ago at the Steiner school in Great Barrington…)