Time Hop and Comics

Whenever I get the chance to sit down and write something here it always strikes me how long it’s been since the last one and how time seems to be speeding up. Time’s a funny one. One minute it’s December and you’re in hospital, then next it’s approaching Halloween and you’re old.

I’ve been doing lots and lots of cool stuff and things, including making protest poems and stories for Never Such Innocence/The Invictus Games (I’ve just come back from a brilliant afternoon near Leyland doing just that). I’ll post some photos soon.

Over the summer I spent time working with Barnsley Libraries at the Lightbox, their brand new, stunning new home, and in the Civic with Hive running TimeHop workshops, taking inspiration from Anita Corbin’s Visible Girls exhibition there – which was amazing (people photographed in the early 80s, and then, a second time, all these years later). We had a terrific time, writing stories and poems – even constructing 3D human photographs.

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Another summer highlight was making comic strips with some younger writers and illustrators for Sheffield Libraries, and I LOVED it. I spend so much time saying to people that there are so many different ways to enjoy stories (and tell them) – doing it with pictures is among my favourites. We were there for two hours and it we did so much (something I’m trying to apply yo my own writing – you can do a lot in a short period of time if you’re prepared, 1200 words in Stoke train station on Thursday proved that) — we came up with ideas, turned them into stories in a way no one had been used to – planning them into panels. Then we took those and we wrote them and then copied them up neatly and illustrated them. And they look amazing.

And writing’s been happening as well, and that’s always a good thing when you consider that, really, writing is what writers do. Hopefully more on that soon along with some great things I was involved in in London. This is probably long enough for now though.

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nikperring

Nik Perring is a short story writer, author, teacher of writing, and editor from the UK. His stories have been published widely all over the world. His books include the widely celebrated Not So Perfect (Roastbooks 2010), A Book of Beautiful Words; and Beautiful Trees; and he co-wrote Freaks!(TFP/HarperCollins, 2012).

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