Ooh, get me! I do writing now

I went to the NLAB Open Seminar on Friday in Leicester, where there were various workshops dedicated to online and digital writing. I've really enjoyed the NLAB sessions over the past few months, and they've helped me to filter some ideas about writing for my films and reconnected me to the web as an art space.

Now, I have to admit I'm a bit of a goon. The first session was called 'Writing games for grown-ups'. I got really excited - I'd love to write games for grown-ups. Wrong! This was games to help grown-ups write. What an idiot. I kept my disappointment and embarrasment to myself, but then we got started, and it turned out to be a great session. We had to do two main exercises, and here are the results - unedited, and perhaps not as good as I thought they were on Friday!

OK, so the first exercise started by describing an object in the seminar room - then describing it's journey to the venue. Remember, we had only five minutes for this, so it's understandably a bit rough!

"The TV snoozes peacefully, the standby light the only clue that it is still alive. It makes a loud yawn and click, and crackles as light becomes brighter behind its single glass eye. It consumes breakfast hungrily, on BBC, ITV and sometimes on the cable channels. It flicks to the travel channel, and sets off on a bus journey through the far off reaches of the world, a young, enthusiastic presenter as it's guide. Surfing through, it eventually arrives at the college. PR+ guides it up through the channels until it reaches a new place, "308: Seminar Room". Finally settled on the channel, the TV pretends to sleep, listening in on writers struggling to describe inanimate objects. It looks across and spies a black shirted man busily scribbling. It begins to feel uncomfortable; "He's writing about me", thinks the TV. He stares ahead. "I'll just pretend I'm not here"".

The second exercise involved us describing a place, either fictional or real (I chose a beer garden in St. Davids). Halfway through, the workshop leader gave us a prop, which we had to incorporate into the story. Here goes...

"This place is the place where the friendliest dog in the world tried to lick everyone once, in turn. It's the place where Stuart knocked over his beer and ruined at least one pack of cigarettes. It's a place where you can completely forget there's a world beyond, a place where low level drug dealers, happy campers and barbequed families jostle for bench space, next to the parrafin heaters (once the sun drops, it'll be cold), and munch away on crinkle-cut crisps and Nobby's Nuts. We've been here for hours, and to be honest, if time stopped now, forever, I'd be perfectly happy. Jason is using his glasses to chase an ant around the table, focussing the dying sun through the lens to make a death ray. It's like a B-Movie ending, 'Antor' finally chased down by the laser-eyed hero. We all shout, laughing, for him to stop. He does, and puts his glasses back on. Stuart drops yet another glass of beer on the floor - it shatters loudly and the whole place erupts in cheers. Stuart takes a bow - even he thinks it's funny"

Ahem. Anyway, the other sessions were less practical, but equally useful. Kate Pullinger introduced her new project, Inanimate Alice - www.inanimatealice.com. You should check it out. The day ended with a screening of a web film called EPIC 2014 - http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ - a scary but funny vision of the future of the web. I am trying to wean myself off Google and Amazon as we speak.