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Nonfiction

John Dodds

The Storymaker’s Cottage

As a child you probably made up stories, on your own or with friends. In my own case this is where the magic began, around the fireplace with my grandparents and parents on the Scottish island of Lewis. An oral story, begun by my mother or grandmother, woven and expanded upon by my brother and myself. These stories could be funny or frightening, sad or happy, or all these things at once. Fairy tale, myth, gossip and real life experience became part of the tapestry that was the family tale.

But when we grow into adults our mental policemen block much of this capacity for uninhibited creative expression, especially in a group setting. And yet it is in the group, the community, the family, where the art of storymaking begins. The oral tradition is the source of all written fiction that we know today, and re-engaging with this art can be a rewarding and liberating experience.

One way I was able to recapture this magic was when my wife, Carole, took me along to a day of "storymaking" run by her friend, Alice Mitchell, a poet, counsellor and lecturer with an encylopaedic knowledge of mythology.

When we arrived at her cottage in the Scottish Borders with our contribution of food and wine for the communal lunch, Alice welcomed us and introduced us to a group of a dozen people from all backgrounds, in employment or not, young and middle-aged, from all over the country.

After sharing tea and informal chat, Alice began by announcing the most important instruction of the day (vital for aspiring authors, storymakers or indeed anyone communicating with others): "Listen well." This instruction can mean different things for everyone, and is as much about listening to yourself as listening to the group.

She then introduced the theme for the day. This is usually related to the month in the Celtic Tree Calendar and a piece of mythology or lore may be interwoven. In this case, it was the season of Hazel (Coll), Spring. Hazel, we were told, was considered a tree of immortality and all the wisdom of the tree was held in the nuts it produced.

Storymaking then broke out in all directions: group work, individual writing, a round-robin oral story, drawing and painting, walking in Alice’s magical garden to take inspiration from the surroundings.

Part of the morning was taken up with writing fragments of words and phrases on giant sheets of paper, with children’s crayons. Breaking into smaller groups, we devised stories built on random fragments of torn-up bits of the master sheet (William Burroughs and David Bowie have both used this "cut up" technique, interestingly enough).

Then each small group read out their individual stories. My wife’s group produced the most unique story, composed entirely from sound produced with everything from tabla drums to kitchen utensils!

A walk around Alice’s garden was next, collecting anything which took our interest to feed into the storymaking process, from twigs to stones and feathers and grasses. What each of us took we spoke about, forcing ourselves to voice any thoughts which entered our heads, either inspirational or mundane in relation to the object.

Finally, the group chose to create a "literal" story, in the garden. By a literal story I mean that we created a physical object, using twine, leaves, branches, bits of broken fencing, anything we could find. And what we created was a huge boat, which we decided by its skeletal cup shape, was a coracle, a small craft in use in the British Isles from pre-Roman times for transport and fishing. It was also, of course, the shape of a hazelnut split in half (even on the wilder shores of our imaginings the day’s theme kept cropping up).

The communal lunch which followed, around the huge table in Alice’s kitchen, was the time for informal conversation, and lots of wonderful food, which was as much a part of storymaking as the more structured parts of the day.

Lunch over, we gathered in the lounge to create a round-robin oral story, harking back to my childhood on Lewis, which anyone could begin and any one of us could declare ended. Once the first brave soul launched the opening sentence everyone else eventually felt comfortable enough to pitch in with their improvisations. The verbal jazz which emerged was an inspired, sustained flight of imagination "off the top of the head," an intricate fairy story which was by turns surreal, dark, magical, funny and silly.

Alice’s warmth, generosity and creativity was tempered with the disciplined approach of a natural teacher. I have joked with her that she would make an excellent schoolmarm, since she is good at giving instructions. In reality, the moderate instructions gave structure and cohesion to the day, so when the next directive came that we must now just write, we set to without argument.

Creative batteries fully charged, we all made ourselves comfortable and scribbled furiously for an hour or so. Each of us in turn read aloud to the group what we had written. Poetry, prose, fiction, autobiography, or a mixture of these in some cases, flowed freely, and I was incredibly impressed by the skill and facility everyone had in their writing, even those who claimed not to have done much writing before. Aspiring authors or not, we found it impossible to have writer’s block under these circumstances. Indeed, I had not written much for months, but after the storymaking day, I wrote intensely for weeks.

I go to storymaking partly to recharge my spiritual batteries, partly to recharge my creative ones. Some go simply for the joy of participating in a community, meeting new friends and re-meeting old ones. Some go to release their creativity, to inspire their writing.

For my own part storymaking resulted in my first commercial short story sale. A 50-word writing exercise during a storymaking evening class run by Alice in Edinburgh, was developed into a 3,000 word crime story, "Crossing The Border," which sold to the online magazine, Blue Murder. The story has been nominated for an Edgar Award. I am now working on a 100,000 word novel, which storymaking in Alice’s cottage helped in no small way with my drive and courage to tackle.

If you wish to know more, you can contact Alice Mitchell at alice.storymaking@virgin.net