"Dirty window", adverbs and humanity on Sunday nights by Vidyaratha Kissoon

 

 A nice Sunday night in October. The voice of the writer and poet comes over the Zoom call 

"One second.., why are you saying the window is dirty?" 

Another writer on the call  had shared a piece in which the morning light was coming through a dirty window and waking up the character.  There was a lot of description of the room.

Brief silence, then someone asked.. 'what do you mean?'.  We then talked a few minutes about the use of the word 'dirty', about how this could bias the reader against the character, and other ways to describe the window. 

I never imagined that a conversation about a dirty window could be so interesting..

Guyana's First Virtual Writers' Retreat was held over 5 sessions from 27 September to 25 October, 2020. People joined, as internet and electricity allowed, from Berbice , Essequibo and  Georgetown. 

I joined since I have this work task to create a 'compelling narrative'  and I thought it was good to learn a bit more about writing.

And so over the Sunday nights, we talked about adverbs (don't use them, use strong verbs instead), we talked about voice. We read some of our work (I don't like doing that), shared work and talked about the work. People shared poems, and the titles of books in the chat window. I have not read more poetry in the last few weeks than since the pandemic began. (I still am not a poems man though)

There were 'writing sprints' during the week. We set some time, 20 minutes, then everybody writes something in the time, and then we talk and share how many words were written in that time. Or we just talked.  Emails came in with attachments to read (resources) so we could discuss in the short time set for the actual virtual meeting.

I had a thing in my head to write during a rough few days when I could not seem to get the words out to the blog. We had an assignment and I had to write a 'character portrait' related to 'trust/confidence'

We had the writing sprint, and in 20 minutes, I wrote a thing. I shared it and people said they liked it, 'the humanity showed' . 

No edits. I published it on the blog.

I tried another thing another time. Similar humanity theme I thought. But the reactions were different to what I expected. 

I decided not to publish it. I might tell the story another time.

I did not join the final session. It was good to connect after the elections division and nastiness, in a nice sharing space. I am grateful to Daryll Goodchild especially for keeping the retreat going.

(This is one of a series of reflections on the first Guyanese Writers' Virtual Retreat )

Featured image Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash