Writing Circle Activity

Last Wednesday I and two other people from my group (Coretta and Hannah) participated in a writing circle activity as part of Dr. Robin's Digital Storytelling class. The exercise was insightful, fun and useful.

The group was given 15 minutes to write a story about a moment in time when they were forced (had) to make a decision that would change their life. I spoke of the time I chose to move to Austin for a job that would change the course of my career. Hannah chose to write about her decision to go to U of H and how it has changed her life and career. And Coretta wrote of her journey to self fulfillment and a career doing something she loves. By the end of the exercise, having discussed each participant's story with the assigned group, we had found common themes, discuss a little of how to make the story better (though probably not as much as we should have) and in my opinion gotten to know each other a little bit better and enjoyed ourselves in the process.

The exercise itself showed us how easy it was to pour out at least a rough draft of a story. We all agreed that it was easier to write about something we knew, as well as something near to our hearts and experience. Dr. Robin checked in on us and we discussed the difference between the exercise topic and working on our final project. I came away with a better understanding of what lies ahead in creating the text for my final project and hopefully understanding the creative process a little better.

Finally, the writing circle was without a doubt something that anyone working on a story could use. In practice, as an educator, I could see using this at the beginning of the digital storytelling course as an icebreaker amongst students. The student is not expected to spill their heart out about a sensitive topic, but to speak about something that brings pride to them. Another possibility would be to use the writing circle at the beginning of every class to - maybe a five minute exercise - to allow the students a creative moment to either build on lessons learned from the last class or areas of their final story where they would like feedback. Actually there are so many options for when and how to use this type of exercise.