"My shoulders are f***ing delicious" - Hollie McNish

On Thursday the 30th of August, I went with a group of year nines, tens and elevens to a writers workshop down at the University of Canterbury site. I went down with my fellow year nines and friends Samantha, Molly, Jay, Rheanna, Jaime, Chloe, Brayden, Nathan and Dylan. We sat through two separate lectures after arriving, the first was with Laurie Winkless, who was talking about her career as Science Writer, there wasn't advice I could take away from her lecture except for these things, these are not her exact words, they are just how I interpreted them.

 - Write about things you know about and things you want to know about.

 - If readers think critically and feed you advice and their thoughts, you know how you could improve.

 - You will never be universally liked. There will always be people who don't like your work, they don't matter. Do it for you and the people who do like your work.

 - Whatever you write, make it your own words.

After the lecture, we were free to explore the university grounds for some time and we decided to go the cafe across from the lecture hall. leading in all the universities shops in that area were gathered to resemble a mall. We stayed there for around five minutes before going to explore their TEN STORY library. I took this photo with a statue, the artist was named Donald Patterson and the statues name was Jubilee Sculpture. No, we did not meet them. I took a photo of the information that was next to the sculpture.

After our adventure, we went back to the lecture hall for a second session, except this time we talked to three different people.

The first person who spoke was a woman named Hollie McNish, she's a poet and she writes about herself, her daughter and everything around her. "My shoulders are f***ing delicious." was the first line of one the few poems she read to us, all of the poems she read to us were from her book 'Nobody Told Me'.

The second person to speak was another woman who was named Juno Dawson, she is an author and read a chapter of one of her newer books, titled 'Clean'. She also read through the episode of Doctor Who she got to write herself, which she said would be coming out next year.




The third person to talk was a man named Omar Bin Musa, he is an author, rapper and poet. He rapped through the song he wrote named 'Play On.' I have a video here of him talking/rapping through his song 'Play On'.

What am I learning?

From going to this workshop I have learnt about author's and poet's struggles as they wrote about both themselves and others. I have learnt that writing is not restricted to creative or narrative writing, there is science writing, journal writing, document writing and so many other ways you can interpret a single job, such as a writer.

How does this work show my learning?

It shows that I know I have learnt these things and really cared enough about writing to want to write about it myself and talk about other's experiences and learnings through it?

What am I wondering?

Does everyone who can write a good book have a past that they can reflect on and take into consideration when writing creatively?