story and verse: Mslexicon

I think I have just about recovered from my weekend in Leeds attending the first ever Mslexicon I still haven't read everything I brought back. My head was so full and I was so shattered that I decided to give it all some distance and then take it in slowly...savouring it.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and was met by a friend at the station. He showed me some of the city including the wonderful Victorian covered market where Marks & Spencer's first shop opened (and they still have a shop there today) in 1904, though they began in 1884 with a market stall in Leeds. Read more of the history here. We stopped for a well needed cup of tea and set off for the Uni. The walk was longer than either of us had envisaged...about forty minutes. All I can say is that my leg muscles performed well under the weight of my rucksack and heavy handbag!

My friend and I parted company at the entrance to the main building, and after registering I was taken over to the accommodation block across the road. My room had everything I needed and I coveted the desk! I only get a desk of my own when I go away on this type of break. The room was rather dark, but that's a minor thing. It was warm and I had both windows open the whole time I was there.

Over dinner that night I began to get to know others, though the noise in the dining hall made it difficult to hear people. It has a high ceiling and sound echoed hundreds of voices. I wanted to attend the open mic session, so I left after dinner. I then found out the open mic session had been put back in time so that people could attend two sessions - a guess the genre spot. However, I opted to sit this out and give myself time to unwind a bit.

The open mic session was good. People got a chance to use a mic for the first time and perfect the art of positioning it in the right place. I did take a set of poems just in case I plucked up the courage to read. Mainly it seemed to be for prose reading, and anyway I lost my nerve as others seemed so 'on it' and my confidence tumbled.

In the morning I had my first one to one. I could hardly eat breakfast but I need not have worried because Isabel Costello was so lovely and she gave me a A4 sheet of hand written feedback as well as notes on my short story. She had asked for the full story in order to give me the best feedback. Everything she said made sense and was so constructive I can now (hopefully) get this story in a publishable state. I'm pleased to hear that I have a good imagination! I was really pleased and went off to my first workshop relieved.

The Short Story Masterclass with Jane Rogers was great. We looked at several opening paragraphs of award winning stories and talked about how they made us feel. We looked for the 'ingredients' a short story should have. Did they all have this? How did they work? How did the use of second person You make us feel. It was interesting to listen to everyone's point of view and how they varied. We then had a go writing our own first paragraph and shared what we'd written. I should say that all the workshops ran for two hours and the classes were a smallish size, so everyone had their chance. It felt intimate and a safe environment to share our work and chat.

After lunch (you'd never go hungry here - choices of hot meals twice a day, mainly veggie/vegan which suited me down to the ground) I went off to Arabel Charlaff's workshop entitled Psychoanalysing Your Characters. Wow! The subject alone interests me so I was enthralled. There was so much to get through that Arabel left some parts for us to read later (we had a great hand-out). We began talking about Freud and others before going on to look at attachment theory and how relationships with parents forms how we relate to others later in life. We were invited to discuss in twos and threes where our character fitted into this.....secure style or one of the two insecure styles. We also looked at Genograms, basically putting together a family tree using the information we had. There is far too much to talk about here, and though I have touched on some of this in the novel writing course I am doing, this was in far more depth and I was able to see that my character fitted one of these styles and did act out the right reactions to future relationships. However, it made me go that bit further in understanding him, and one lady I talked with asked a question about another character and I realised I'd never really sussed her out. Together we worked it out! I found this workshop thoroughly fascinating and have much to follow up on links given.

Late in the afternoon I had my second 1-1, this time with Jane Rogers whose workshop I'd attended in the morning. Jane was calm and encouraging. I'd submitting a thousand word extract from a novella I'm still writing but wished I sent the first thousand words as I thought that would be better. But she said that it was fine as it was. She pointed out something I'd not noticed, asked if I'd read Capital by John Lanchester. I had (and seen the TV adaptation). My extract reminded her a little of that and she liked the idea of multiple characters. Yes! I love writing multiple characters. She talked about my humour - so glad she liked my two OAP's. I came away really happy.

That evening after dinner we had Jackie Kaye come to speak to us. I've heard her speak before. She is so funny. She read a monologue about a woman who got her head stuck in the toilet seat frame while throwing up her guts...this was right after we'd eaten and the description was graphic! It was funny though. She talked about Red Dust Road, the story of finding and meeting her birth father, and she read poems from her new book (which I bought). I loved her anecdotes.

On Sunday I'd chosen Fiery Flash Fiction with Meg Porrass but we'd no sooner entered the room than the radiator sprung a spectacular leak. Meg only turned the knob to shut off the central heating (it was a hot weekend) and then whoosh a fountain erupted. Poor Meg was drenched. Towels were brought, someone had to stand with their hand over the leak to stop the flow of water while the right team were called to sort it out. A new room was found for us - we ended up in the snooker hall! We finally got started twenty minutes late but finished later to make up. The session was brilliant. We talked about what flash is and we read a few flash stories. This was the most writing I'd done all weekend as we wrote a lot! Meg gave up random words to use and this worked well for me as I use them myself to get going. The new writing group I go to use them too. I came away inspired to write more flash. I've rather strayed from it in the last year. Meg is a great teacher and I ended up with several pieces I can work on.

After lunch I attended a panel on What Makes a Book Addictive with Julie Fergusson and Maggie Gee. I was really flagging by this stage and I wondered how I would stay awake! It was interesting though and afterwards we had our last speaker - Sophie Hannah. She was great and had us laughing. She talked about her background and her first book Little Face. She then went on to speak about how she came to write Poirot books. I'm not a big fan of Agatha Christie but I loved how Sophie read from her latest book and left us at a moment where we all wanted to know more.

Finally, to end the day, there was a networking session. Most people had already left really, but some stayed. I ended up chatting to four others and exchanged stories tips. There was a chance to fill in a form about what we were looking for ....feedback, buddy etc. The idea is to match people who are looking for the same. I'm waiting to see on that.

I shared a cab back to the train station and finally got home about 10.30pm, shattered and my head full of images of the weekend.

Mslexia put on a great weekend with wonderful tutors and speakers. The food was plentiful and good. We even had one evening meal outside in a grassed courtyard and the hot food came on wheeled trollys and located under the cloister style area. The rain held off just long enough for most of us to eat and then it was a dash inside. My one gripe was the wi-fi. It was difficult to understand how to log on and I only ever got on using my Tablet as my mobile kept shooting an error message at me. People complained that the internet kept dropping out. It was very hit and miss and frustrating as I wasted a lot of time. I had almost given up hope of getting on. I was desperate to get onto YouTube for my music fix to help me relax. I think I'll download some music for the future as music really is the only thing that calms me down when I'm stressed, because it is daunting at times. I loved the fact that it was a women only weekend (never missed the men!) and everyone was so friendly and we all had the same doubts and fears.

I have to say well done to Mslexia for all the hard work they put into this. Of course there were a few hitches, but nothing major and some amusing. Everyone worked tirelessly behind the scenes. For a first time event they did brilliantly and made everyone feel welcome.

Since returning home I found out that Visual Verse has published my flash fiction this month entitled The Rules of the Game. You can read it here.

Here are some images of Leeds itself and a few at the venue.