Something momentous happened in the UK last week – and I’m not talking about Boris being foisted on the nation. We had a thing called summer. In fact temperatures soared to ridiculous levels of up to 35 degrees and we experienced the sort of wall of heat you used to only get when stepping off a plane in a proper hot country.

So for the last Creative Writing session of the season at Maggie’s Nottingham, I thought a summer theme was appropriate. I consulted colleagues over at Lapidus for some end-of-term suggestions, and I brought along some summer themed containers each filled with prompts. The prompts were in four categories:

• Lines from song lyrics (eg ‘Summer in the City’)
• Poems (eg Walter De La Mare’s ‘Summer Evening’ or Amy Lowell’s ‘Bath’)
• Images of summer scenes (see below)
• Objects (eg shells, pebbles, sunglasses)

Here’s what we did:

Exercise 1

• List some of the sounds, smells, colours and objects you associate with summer
• Pick a prompt out of the container for one or more category (lyric/poem/object/scene).
• Freewrite for 20 minutes.

Exercise 2: thread poem (this causes much hilarity…)

• Each person writes the first line of a summer-themed poem on a sheet of paper
• They then pass the paper to their left for the next person to write the second line
• This continues until you have as many lines in each poem as there are people (if it’s a small group you could go around twice).
• At the end each person has a poem to read out (and take home with them if they so wish!)

Exercise 3: Three things (this sends everyone off on a positive note and gives them something to think about over the break)

• List three things you are looking forward to over the summer
• Write a paragraph or two about each one.

So school’s out for Maggie’s until Autumn but this doesn’t mean I rest on my laurels. I’ve got a series of author events coming up during August – I’ll be blogging while I’m out on location. Plus I’m supposed to be writing my next novel…!

If you’ve had a go at these exercises and feel like sharing your work, feel free to post in the comments below. Likewise if you have any other feedback on the exercises or the blog itself.

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