In Search of Nessie

I haven't written in a few days because I have been swept away by a flurry or writing exercises, delicious meals, cracking ( Scottish for awesome) company, music sessions, and a highly entertaining game called Mafia. It is 2am Scottish time, and we have all stayed up into the early hours because there is so much laughter and good times no one can say goodnight very easily. Also, it gets dark around 11pm! If you see the picture of the sunset I took, you'll note that it was taken at 10:30 pm!

My Scottish slang has expanded in the last few days to include cracking, wank(rubbish), chuck (tough), wee (small), fresh legs (just what it means), cheers (bye), loch (lake), tattie (potato), lift (elevator), brilliant and telly (tv).

On Wednesday, Laura was our morning tutor, and boy does she remind me of how I teach. She gets down to business! I really love her enthusiasm and how she got us all involved in plotting out the various parts of a story (characters, themes, beginning, resolution, dialogue, setting, etc). She started us off with a meditation exercise that really worked--it got us to go to a place that was peaceful to relax, and then she told us to pick up our pens, and write about something that makes us really angry. We were to write for a certain amount of time, not stopping to edit or read. Just write, she said. "I want to see smoke coming off your pens." I was able to channel that energy and get some emotion on paper that I had been keeping in. After talking about what makes a good story, Laura assigned us a wee bit of homework, which was to write a one-page synopsis of the story were were working on at the moment or hoped to start.

I was dead tired Wed. afternoon, and it was misting outside so I took a little snooze in the afternoon and got rested for the evening session with our guest author, A.L. Kennedy. Dinner was homemade macaroni and cheese, salad, fruit and cream. After dinner, Alison read to us from the novel she is working on now, and then she sat and talked openly with the group about her experiences as a writer. Her reading was marvelously entertaining and we could have certainly listened to more! We did stay around until midnight talking up a storm.


Thursday brought great weather and another productive workshop with Gregory. We focused on character development, and learned how some effective strategies to fleshing out the characteristics of our main players in a story. He gave us the set-up of three people are stuck in an elevator. From there, we wrote up biographies of the three characters, followed by descriptions of them from themselves, a police report, someone who knows them and a complete stranger. Then we wrote the story, with a beginning and an end. For my finished piece of writing that I read on the last evening (Friday), I worked hard to develop my "lift" story and it really came out cracking (haha). My premise is that a lawyer enters an elevator at the end of the work day to meet his friends for a weekend trip, but he gets stuck for a bit in the lift with two office colleagues he has dated, one is aggressive and one is innocent to his status as a lifelong bachelor. Laura, a published author with such a humorous voice, really got a kick out of my dialogue. She gave me some spot-on advice about how to improve the character arc of one of my characters and I was able to bring the story to life. Everyone got some big laughs when I shared my reading tonight, and that made me feel as though I had applied their methods well to the assignment. I was a bit nervous about producing a piece that I would feel proud about, and I even had a bit of a minor nightmare last night that I wouldn't have a story completed, and I'd let the tutors down. But, luckily, that did NOT happen!



Since the weather was so nice, I decided to walk and run myself down to Loch Ness, which is about 3 miles south of where Moniack Mohr is located. Several students have cars, but I missed my ride with our resident Harley Davidson-riding, fly fishing Scotsman, so I took my camera and headed out on a wee adventure to the Loch. I've posted some of my pics of the view from the top of the Loch, but I wish I had more time to actually get down there and see the Urquhart Castle that is by the Loch. I did have a tranquil two-hour jaunt, with little car traffic, and several friendly people along the way. I came upon two men fly fishing in a green canoe on a smaller loch before the I got to the great Nessie dwelling. I passed cattle, rams, and ducks on the way, and I chatted briefly with a Grandfather and a Grandmother watching their three grandchildren in a field across the way from where they lived. We talked for a bit, and she told me about the tome she got stuck in the snow this winter and the plow got stuck trying to get her out. Her husband noted, "You're an awful long way away from home." He got that the isolation of the highlands was a good thing for writing. They were so friendly and sent me on my way to view the Loch. I also saw a brightly colored sign for the Scottish Highlands on Friday night, and we almost were going to go as a group tonight, but I think it was just the opening ceremony, but I'm not sure. I DID NOT see the Loch Ness Monster!!! Next time . . .

The chefs for the evening cooked up one delightful dinner with lemon chicken, broccoli and cauliflower dish, yummy tatties (potatoes), green beans (so fresh), and carrot cake. After dinner 5 of the 10 of us read from their works, and it was very entertaining and great to hear what everyone was working on. At the close of the readings, we were able to snap some vivid photos of the sunset with its pink and purple hues. THEN the guitar finally came out, as we had been begging our resident musician, Ben from London, to play since we arrived. The entire group of us sat around until 1 in the morning playing songs and singing. The iPad has peaked a lot of interest from my fellow writers. I looked up whatever lyrics we needed and we passed the iPad around so everyone could sing. Ben's ear is so good, he could just hear us humming the lyrics or singing them and he'd figure out the chords. We sang the Beatles, Kinks, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, The Proclaimers, The Killers, John Denver, The Eagles, Bob Marley, Johnny Cash, and the list went on and on. It was a brilliant night, and we were still talking about it this morning. I also showed the group a few of Justin Timberlake's more famous Saturday Night Live skits, and the ENTIRE group (Scottish, English, Irish) were howling. They are all going to find it on You Tube when they return home to show their family.


Well, it is 3:30 am my time, so I am going to get a little sleep before we depart in the morning for the Inverness bus station, but I will be writing more tomorrow night, so please stay tuned to hear the last bit of my time here in the highlands and later when I travel to Dublin.