I’m lucky to be in a new writing group and today’s prompt was to think about the process of writing…how I go about it, what it feels like…. The first piece is the result of my ten minute response to the challenge…. It is very rough and ready, but an honest insight into my issues around concentration. I’ve followed it up with a little something that I wrote about a painting from William Nicholson’s still life exhibition at Chichester’s Pallent House Gallery . It is meant to

This section’s last task was to write from the perspective of an inanimate object. I had no idea how on earth I was going to tackle this until yesterday when I found myself visiting the Victoria & Albert’s Marie Antoinette Style exhibition full of its empty, sad dresses. At the end of this beautifully curated story, there hangs the guillotine’s blade which possibly was used at her death. I was struck by its awfulness, hanging there, and it prompted me to imagine its life……

Sitting on the city-bound train, the aim is to shrink, become part of the carriage. Rough material on soft thighs, red, blue patterned with black greasy marks (hopefully spilt coffee or gum rather than anything worse). The seats uniformly sag in the middle where countless forms have previously slumped.  Commuter-chameleons Pied Pipering to where the streets have never been paved with gold. Never catch another’s eye – that’s the point, group-think maintains the cloak of invisi

The glitter-covered pink butterfly stuck to the door next to her name and was the in-house code signalling respect for the recent dead. It was short-hand for staff that tea and bed-baths were no longer needed, and a message to visitors that knocks would now go unanswered.   Mrs Williams had faced down her death with the same grim resolve that she had lived her long, humourless life.  The end had not been pretty and she had resolutely refused all offers of comfort the pain-kil