Creative Explorations Workshop

This evening, Nikki Everts-Hammond facilitated a two-hour creative writing workshop at the main branch of the Guelph Public Library. She provided a number of exercises designed to release creativity.

A few examples...

Scenario--If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?

If I were a vegetable I would probably be a potato. I've certainly been mashed, boiled, baked and fried more than a few times in my life. There's nothing very special about me but I'm positively unavoidable. I don't do raw very well. I prefer to be dressed, buttered up and well seasoned. I work well with others. Put me in a group or soup...whatever you may call it.

I don't mind coming from dirt, being rather plain in appearance, functional, dependable. I have a thick skin, don't bruise too easily--sometimes. It all depends on what you expect from me.

I have eyes in the back of my head--or so I 'm told. I have a large family and we're a loyal bunch, lots of little tater tots in the family now...

Scenario: You are in a closet with a door closed behind you. A time machine takes you to the past or future.

Of course it's a time machine. It's where all the luggage is kept--in a large dusty closet under the basement stairs. The two large Samsonites with the airline tags still attached to the handles and their bright Christmas bows so that we'll recognize them amid all the other luggage rotating happily on their airport carousels. The carry-on bags are also in there, along with the snorkeling equipment still covered in gritty, white Jamaican sand. If I crawl into the closet and close the door behind me, I can still smell the musty smell of damp clothes, bathing suits that never dry in the moist Mexican humidity.

If I close my eyes and wish hard enough can I get there--that beach in paradise--without all the hassles of planes, trains and automobiles, lineups and snotty customs officials, passports and paperwork. Why can I not in this day and age of high tech gadgets just close my eyes and say: Beam me up Scotty, there's a poolside bar stool waiting for me somewhere.

Written by Patricia Anderson