Second - a bit about a writing (because that's why we're here, right?)

So I started a new writing course thing last night. I know, I'm forever going on them, I'm like a writing course addict. But this one seems especially good (I'll tell you why in a little minute). It's run by a lovely lady called Lisa who has a company called the Poetry Fold (check out her website here http://poetryfold.co.uk/). Anyway, one of the reasons why I really like her is because I was due to go on this course in April, and I couldn't attend the first session because I felt horrid and then by the time the second one rolled round I was in hospital. These courses always have some sort of no cancellation policy, especially last minute ones, so I was expecting to lose my money. But no! Lisa offered to keep a place on the next course for me, which was so lovely and at a time when it felt like everything was going wrong and I was feeling very sorry for myself it was just such a kind and unexpected gesture that it made me a little bit tearful. So that's reason one. Reason two is it's my day off today, and I've been up since 6.30 am (that's in the morning, folks, the morning) playing one of the games she taught us. I'll run through it with you, you might have heard of it. The name of the game is Exquisite Corpse and it's so easy and fun and useful that I can't believe I've never played it before. Anyhoo, you need a bit of paper with two columns. One on the left = adjectives, right = nouns. Write a massive list of nouns (about 20 is probably a good number but it's entirely up to you) then if you're playing with someone else fold the paper so they can't see the nouns and get them to write the adjectives. If you're playing with yourself as I am this morning, put the list of nouns away until you've forgotten about them (which will probably be about half an hour in my case) and then jump on the adjective wagon. I've chosen to make a table in word and type out my nouns so in a bit I'm going to print it and put it in a safe place and do the adjectives later, or give it to the husband to do my adjectives for me which might also be quite fun. We played this last night and some of them were hilarious, some interesting, some thought-provoking. My favourites were... * thin flatterer * fat moon * velvet path Anyway, it's fun and easy and you know it was a good game when I'm up before seven on my day off playing it. Oh yeah! I always think it's really interesting how random writing exercises can link to things I'm already writing/planning and thin flatterer is a fab description of one of my more tricky characters for my NaNo project, so I'm very pleased about that! If you want to play this game with me (and I recommend it if you're writing, totally) then let me know and we'll figure out the logistics of it...right, that's it from me. I'm off to make a cheese toastie for breakfast, because I'm underweight and that's how I roll...boom!