Thursday night class

Creative Writing, Thursday group, 7.30 to 10. Eight sessions. One piece a week, handed in printed, returned marked the following week. What follows are one student's pieces, in order, with whatever came back written down the margin.

Week 2. Brief: describe your routine without using adjectives.

I get up at 5.50 because the 6.20 bus is the only one that isn't full. I work in a pathology lab, on intake, which means I receive tubes, check labels and sort by test. That is eight hours. I eat at twelve, out of a box I make up on Sundays. I finish at five, get the bus, reach home at 6.40, and on Thursdays I don't: I get off three stops early and come here.

I am thirty-eight and this is the first thing I have done purely for myself since 2016.

Down the margin, in red: "Not one adjective in eight lines. That is harder than it looks and you did it with no visible effort. The 'and on Thursdays I don't' is the best move in the piece. Keep that colon."

Week 3. Brief: a place you could not get out of.

I was married for eleven years to a man who never once raised his voice at me. I write it that way because every time I put it differently somebody asks whether he hit me, and he didn't, and the answer disappoints them.

The flat had a hallway seven paces long between the kitchen and the bedroom. I know that hallway better than I know my own face. I know which pace has the coldest floor and where the paint went at the skirting, and I know I used to walk it making as little sound as possible without anybody ever having asked me to.

I left in 2023. I took two cases and the kettle, which was mine.

Margin: "The kettle sentence closes the piece on its own. Put nothing after it in the next draft. And thank you for trusting the group with the subject."

Week 5. Brief: a decision you put off.

I put off learning to swim until I was thirty-four. I put off the dentist for six years, which cost me two root canals. I put off telling my mother I wasn't going to have a child, and she died thinking it was still coming, and I don't know whether that was cowardice or a gift.

I am putting something off now and I am not going to write down what, because the pieces get read aloud in class and because I have not yet decided whether it is a decision or only a Thursday.

Margin: "The last paragraph is the only place in the piece where your syntax shakes. I have not corrected it. Leave it."

Underneath, in smaller writing: "Your piece was not read aloud. You didn't ask. I thought I shouldn't."

Week 6. Brief: describe a person using three objects.

A red pen, and not one of the plastic teacher ones. A real pen, with weight to it, the sort a person buys once and uses for fifteen years. He rests it on the desk between one correction and the next and it rolls half a centimetre, because the desk in room 4 is not level.

A grey coat that has hung on the back of his chair since the first session and has never once been worn, not even in June.

A glass jar of instant coffee he brings from home because the machine in the building is bad. In week three he offered it to the whole group. In week five he offered it again, but he looked at me before he asked whether anybody wanted any.

Margin: "Three objects, brief fulfilled. Two technical notes: the unlevel desk is a detail only somebody who watches desks would catch. And the third object is not an object."

Week 7. Brief: write a letter you will not send.

I am not going to write a letter. I am going to write what happened last week, and since this is not a letter, you can mark it without answering it.

Last Thursday I stayed behind because my copy came out missing the last page. You opened the file on your laptop and printed it again in the staff room, and came back, and room 4 was empty and it was twenty past ten.

You handed me the sheet and you did not let go.

It was about two seconds. Probably less. My hand was on the paper and your hand was on the paper and neither of us pulled, and then you let go and said goodnight, and I went down the stairs like a person going down stairs.

I am thirty-eight years old and I spent three days thinking about a sheet of paper.

Down the margin, and it is the only time in eight weeks the writing leaves the margin and takes the whole foot of the page:

"The piece is correct. There is nothing here for me to mark.

I am your tutor until the 26th, when the marks go in. That is not a formality and it is not an excuse; it is the only thing I have to hold on to, and I have been holding it since week three.

On the 27th I am nothing of yours.

Do you make better coffee than I do? Because mine is bad and I know it."

Week 8. Final piece. Open brief.

I handed in a blank sheet with my name in the corner and an address underneath it.

I got full marks, which I would contest if it were anybody else.

The 27th.

He arrived at ten past eight with the jar of instant coffee under his arm, which was the funniest thing that happened to me all year, and stood in the doorway holding it in both hands like a document.

I asked if he was coming in.

He said yes, and didn't come in, and stayed another four seconds out there with the jar, and I understood he was waiting for something that was not a spoken invitation.

My hallway is four paces. I don't know which of them has the coldest floor, because I have lived here two years and have never needed to learn to walk quietly.

The red pen stayed in the pocket of the grey coat, and the grey coat, for the first time in eight weeks, came off the back of a chair.