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Saturday, January 03, 2009

Ninety Nine Places

I am not sure that what I have in my head is a working title for a poetry book or a gauntlet being thrown down by my imagination. The title is “Ninety Bine Places”. It comes out of a book I got at Christmas, “Teach Yourself Creative Writing”. It doesn’t actually specify ninety nine places, but one of the exercises is to find different places, or venues to write. You don’t write about the places, but observe people and places and find inspiration to write about whatever the place or the people provoke you to write. Naturally it doesn’t have to be poetry either – any kind of writing will do.

The request for the book is a challenge in itself, never mind the ninety nine places. Some friends of ours are looking into the coffee culture and seriously thinking about opening a coffee house to provide an alternative drinking venue from clubs and bars. Most cafes and coffee places are daytime establishments and our friends are looking into something geared towards evenings.

This would not normally float my boat. I am a home-body, but another one of the exercises in the book is about joining a writing circle or a creative writing club. It would appear that there isn’t one in Inverness. There might be one that you need to be in the know to know about, something you find out about by word of mouth, rather than hitting the google button, but for all intents and purposes, there isn’t a “findable” one. On discovering this, my brain tootled “So start one going!” That’s rather proactive for me, but I decided to arm myself with a Teach Yourself Creative Writing book just in case I actually got proactive. A venue like a coffee shop would be ideal.

So, yes, challenges abound. Working titles? I am working on it!

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