Lounge on the Farm 2013: telling stories (no tassles yet)

Will Sutton, Chris Tinniswood and I just told stories at Lounge on the Farm, a music festival near Canterbury, Kent.

Somewhat to the surprise of the people in the Peaceful Progress tent, we not only read stories - what was much more fun, we wrote new ones while they watched, using words they'd just given us.

We hoped to show our audience that you can write anywhere, you don't have to wait for the muse (who is she?), and anything can inspire you. And it worked - not only did they give us loads of words, but they clamoured for us to write them stories, and some even stayed behind to write their own.

It was far less terrifying to write in front of an audience than I at least imagined, mostly because we explained that one of the best things about being a writer is giving yourself permission to take risks, and not worrying that the words appearing on the page might be rubbish. Just seeing what happens with an idea or a word is all part of the process.

When we'd finished, we had a great weekend listening to the bands, and boggling at the Boom and Bang Circus. Will says they've given him some ideas for our next outing. I'm just hoping he's not thinking about their flaming nipple tassles!

Pebble story

In a minute I'm going to put a metal bucket, nine pebbles and nine small sheets of paper in the boot of my car, and then I'll drive to Gillingham.

I'm heading for LV21where I'm going to tell a story in the chain locker.

If anyone turns up to hear it, they'll be given a pebble (there are pebbles in the story, so it does make sense, sort of) - if they want to hear a part of the story, they put their pebble in the bucket. If they don't, they walk away.

I'll report back on whether this does engage my audience in the process of telling a story, or whether they walk out in disgust!

Oh, and this is another lovely ReAuthoring project, so there will be lots of other writers on LV21 today doing surprising things with words.

Confession: I'm a control freak

It's been quite a week, with two very different highlights.

This was me on Wednesday telling my new ghost story at the Whitstable Oyster festival ...

...and this was the GB cycling team leading the peloton yesterday on Box Hill (blurriness due to me taking the picture on my phone while cheering wildly).















Neither quite went as planned. I think my story went down well - it felt good as I read it - but it proved incredibly difficult to engage listeners who were just passing by. I'd spent hours on the story itself, and almost as many making posters and leaflets to hand out to attract an audience. But on the day, posters and leaflets weren't what was needed - I did have delightful listeners, but it was Facebook and friendship which brought them along (and the sterling work of the ReAuthoring team who brought me to Whitstable and looked after me there).

The one exception was a man who came in to the pub for a drink and (foolishly?) sat at the table next to mine - so I simply went up and asked if he'd like me to tell a story. Not at all what I'd planned, but it worked - he looked really thrilled at the end, and we had a great conversation about why stories and poems mattered to him.

Leap forward to yesterday. The GB cycling team had a plan - they'd deliver Mark Cavendish to the finish and he'd sprint over the line, just as he did in the Tour. Only it didn't work out - a load of other cyclists took the initiative and vanished into the distance, leaving the perfectly planned GB team out of the action.

We cheered anyway, and hoped till the last minute that they'd pull it off - but in the end, it was the guts and risk-taking of Vinokourov that won out and took the gold medal.

I'm off to LV21 in a few weeks to tell another story, and I'm determined this time not to plan it all to the last detail - I'll leave some ends untied, maybe, see what happens on the day. This time I'll be confident that my story will thrive no matter what the audience does. What's the worst that can happen, after all?