“I woke up late this morning – as usual”

How does someone manage to keep a Monday class glued to our seats and entertained with 3 hours’ (even more) worth of stories and insight on their experience as a writer? Well, editor in chief and founder of Bread Wine & Thou Yossi Klein managed to do so.

Yossi made the point that in order to be a great writer, you need to be your own worst critic and the importance of surrounding yourself with people “who will take the time to give a shit about your writing because there was one time that someone gave a shit about them”.  He assured us that no matter what venture we may take (even if it means writing for Broadsheet for instance), always remember to always add in that story or quirk you have as a writer because that’s what makes you piece come to life and that’s what allows you to continue writing. Both Alexia and Yossi also encouraged us to explore other forms of writing such as poems as “there’s a musicality about them”. We also had the opportunity to hear one of his completed poems that could potentially be published sometime soon (seriously, keep an eye out for that)!

One thing that really struck me was the point that Alexia made that as a critic, you don’t want to be in that position where you can’t say anything about something. It’s a scary thought, especially in a world where political correctness is prevalent and where an open mind on both ends of an issue is essential to having an open discussion and to help understand one another.

_______________________________________________________________________

“I woke up late this morning – as usual” was the first sentence I selected to “fluff up” from the paragraph we were given (ironically, as every Wednesday morning, I did sleep through my alarm and arrived late to class). With only about 10 minutes to spare this is what was produced:

Shit, 7am. The snooze button had suffered enough of my exhaustion from the last 15 minutes and the many Wednesday hump days well before. I can’t help it. Why would anyone want to stop themselves from being served copious amounts of tequila sunrise? Served by –

Yeah, I had no idea how to end that sentence. Other than that, I really enjoyed this exercise as it put what I really needed to improve on in a different perspective. For instance, I found myself editing the piece throughout the 10 minutes rather than writing down what I was thinking and then editing it afterwards. This will definitely benefit me in my critical writing as it reflects how I were to describe a certain film / text to my readers.