Understanding your narrative

An interesting morning yesterday at The Peak Arts Centre in Crickhowell - a workshop run by Helena Attlee, intriguingly entitled "Understanding your narrative". Helena is a largely non-fiction writer and a consultant fellow of the Royal Literary Fund who offers training to a wide variety of different groups. Our group yesterday saw a mixture of writers and artists - textile specialists, sculptors, painters and photographers - taking time out to look at their work and to consider how best to write about it.

Inventive exercises to focus on projects already underway or still at the planning stage were certainly useful - "If this work was an animal, what would it be and why?", "If it was a meal, what would it be and why?; but an important part of the workshop for me was listening to and gaining some understanding of people working in other creative disciplines. Many of the challenges and problems discussed appeared to be common to us all. Writers often spend a lot of their time with other writers; I feel I learned a lot from getting even a small insight into how other creative artists function - perhaps more joint ventures would prove beneficial all round.

Helena Attlee