And so it begins.

Went to a writing group at a funky little independent bookshop (www.worm-holes.co.uk) in York a couple of weeks ago ... was super scared about going and nearly chickened out a million times but I managed to go through with it and I'm so glad I did. It's a very friendly group and I felt welcome straight away. Also did plenty of writing which is the main thing. Hopefully I'll be able to make if a regular thing. So we did 2 exercises and I'm posting them here as part of my recovery - will be the first creative thing I've put onto the web (deep breath) ...
'The F word' exercise: Given 5 'f-words' (father; freeze frame; future; falling; futile) and had to write for a set time without pausing - were allowed to use any number of the words, up to us. Mine started out as a poem and then went somewhere else ...

Future falling, ever smalling
wondering who I am
where I'm going
why I've been where I've gone
how did I end up here at this biggest point not knowing why or whether it was the right place at all - the right friends, the right loves, the right vows, the right words.
Did I turn right when I should have turned left or did both paths lead to the same place after all? Was that my future-self I just passed by on some other track taking her in the opposite direction (no doubt asking herself the same questions). How do all those millions of freeze frame moments amount to anything more than smiling photos of me, seemingly unchanged by the years in looks, thoughts and deeds. I can see them all before me, those future falling freeze frames in a double helixed spiral of people I've known and tried to enchant with my good girl disguise. Sometimes I force the two seperate strands together and try to make sense of it all that way as two frozen moments collide and merge across space and time and I'm a thousand other selves who know what it is to be the essence of me and recognises it as the camera flash goes off - and whatever you do, don't mention my father.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The objects exercise: for this one we could choose an object from the table and we had to write a self-contained story about it with a word limit of 250. Rather predictably I had trouble settling on which object to choose but I managed it ... forgot about the word limit completely though ... which is no bad thing.

I tried to slip into the house without Mark seeing me bring another folorn fugitive into the house but dropping my keys on our front door step reminded me that I should take all those old redundant keys off my keyring and alerted Mark to my arrival. I tried to hide it behind my back and hoped to distract Mark by asking him about his day while I cunning ly performed a magician's trick and disappeared my latest adoption under my coat and vanished it upstairs before I could be rumbled. Unfortunately 4 years of similarly unmagic attempts meant that Mark was one step ahead of me and could see through all the smoke and mirrors - or more accurately he could see my smuggled goods reflected all too clearly in the hallway mirror.His 'happy to see you' face fell into his 'oh no, you haven't brought another one home' face and he rallied my breezy question with one of his own. "Erm, what have you got behind your back?" Not realising that I was more the emperor without any clothes than the great Mystico, master of illusion, I kept up the act regardless. "Nothing - do me a favour and stick the kettle on, you wouldn't believe the day I've had".
Rather than obediently scampering off, Mark stood his ground - "We agreed you wouldn't bring any more home - where do you thing we're going to find room for it?"
I produced our new charge from behing my back with a theatriccal flourish - "but look at his eyes, I couldn't leave him there, you know what they do to them once they've finished ..." There was a moments stand off before Mark resigned himself to having lost yet again in this all too frequent battle of wills where the ending was decided before the curtains opened.