Last Saturday, we welcomed Jodi Egerton, of Write Good Consulting, to The Writing Barn for a morning of creativity inducing, laughter generating, page-producing fun.
Jodi, a Ph. D in English from the University of Texas is also an improv master, performing most recently with The Pie and Ear Show. Jodi combined her teaching talents, honed at St. Edward’s University and her well-developed onstage antics with husband Owen Egerton, and took twelve writers to task to think outside the box and to be open to the possibilities the page can bring.
Don’t just take it from us at The Writing Barn. Workshop participant, Lucia Weinmeister, is our guest blogger today, where she writes about her experience taking Word Play!
Yes, and…?
“Yes, and…?” is really what Jodi Egerton’s Wordplay! Workshop should be called. I don’t mean that in a dismissive way. That phrase is the basis of what we learned with her this past Saturday at The Writing Barn. The core of the phrase is being open to new ideas and questions in order to take your writing in a completely fresh direction.
I signed up for her class on a whim, after deciding to take my writing endeavors more seriously. I am so glad I went. There were 12 of us writers, from all walks of life, all at different points in our writing journey, all eager to learn new ways to unleash and nourish our creativity.
All the techniques Jodi taught, based on her improv and writing background, were simple and yet powerful. She gave us all the tools to look at any story and turn it into something new. We learned about the importance of boundaries within the freedom of writing and how that can help us rein in fresh ideas.
We brain-mapped, we wrote algebraic sentences, we rewrote Snow White and a quite daring writer also turned the story into a DJ’d wrap for us. Belly laughs were had and ideas were born right there.
After leaving Jodi’s workshop, I was buzzing with new ideas, new story lines, new roads to travel in my imagination. The only question I need to answer now is “yes, and…?”
Lucia Weinmeister, is a blogger and freelance copywriter from Austin, TX by way of Mexico City. You can read about her projects on http://imakeiam.wordpress.com as well as her children’s musings on http://stardlc.tumblr.com
Additional pictures from the Word Play! Workshop. Look for an announcement about Jodi Egerton’s next workshop at The Writing Barn coming soon.
