In the UK we have a roadmap for returning to normality, the hope being that this lockdown will be the last. On Monday, the ‘stay at home’ edict will lift, allowing travel and some outdoor socialising. Soon we’ll be able to leave our homes and neighbourhoods where we’ve been cooped up for a year, travel further afield and meet up at last with friends and family we’ve been distanced from.

So today’s Creative Writing session is about journeys and reunions. The lifting of lockdown brings different feelings. Some people can’t wait for life to begin again, others are more cautious, others feel intense anxiety about stepping out into the world. Any one of these emotions – or a mixture of them all – is natural after the year when Covid19 shrunk our world. Even though we haven’t been able to travel physically, the year itself has been a journey, one where we’ve had to navigate unchartered territory.

Journeys can be as much emotional as they are physical, like in the poem ‘The Journey is a Picture’ by Sandra Fowler in which the poet describes life as a journey, reaching out towards another person.

Travel provides a rich seam for literature. There are whole genres constructed around journeys. The quest – one of the seven basic plots – involves a journey to find something or someone or solve a mystery. We’re all familiar with the road movie.

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — It’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

From On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Exercise 1

• Think of a journey you have made in the past, or a journey you hope to make
• Shut your eyes for a few moments and imagine yourself on that journey
• What can you see, hear, smell, touch?
• How are you travelling? (Eg on foot, driving, cycling, by train etc)
• Are you with someone or travelling alone?
• Do you know what awaits you at the other end?
• How do you feel about the journey?

Now set a timer and freewrite for five minutes, read over what you’ve written, highlight or underline any words or phrases you particularly like and use this as the basis for a piece of writing in any form.

Exercise 2

• Imagine yourself walking through a wood or a tunnel, about to emerge into the light
• What can you see, hear, smell, touch as you walk?
• What are your feelings as you head towards the light?
• Who is there to greet you as you emerge?

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