Deconstructing Beds

Allison Fell presented a very intresting exercise that she said it opens the writers’ eyes, hearts, and minds to some of the essentials of writing. Also, it encourages students to relax their control of language in order to allow a lighter and fuller control to emerge.


1. Write 100 words prose description of a bed you slept in as a child. Write in sentences rather than in a note form, as the verbs will be important later.


2. When you’ve done that, writer another 100 words on the bed you currently occupy, what’s in it, what surrounds it, what you do in it, etc. we spend one third of our lives in bed but no one seems to write about it!


3. Write a final 100 words on a fantasy bed, a bed where money is no object, a bed that can be made of anything you like.


4. The second stage is to type up the three 100 word pieces (preserving the originals) and cut them up into very short phrases and single words, then lay out all the words so that they can be scanned easily. Next assemble the short sequences, intuitively, without worrying about commonsensical things like meaning or narrative.

My Childhood Bed

Everyday at university running from one building to another under the hot boiling sun of Hilwan University, then on my way home while I’m jammed in the hot sweaty train all I can think of is the moment I turn my key in the door and get inside my flat.

The one thing I would be impatiently waiting for all day, is when I rest my body on the comfortable mattress of my childhood bed.


This bed was so amazing that in the hot unbearable weather outside I come home and I just rest on it and it would feel so cool and nice and when its cold outside it welcomes me with its warmth and comfort.


Since I was young this bed was a big part of my life, I used to sleep on it, put all my books on it and do my homework on it, read write and watch T.V, listen to the Radio and cry myself to sleep on it.


Until this moment I wake up sometimes and I feel I’m still there in my old flat and I’m sleeping on it… I even dream that I will go home one day and be able to sleep again on it. Although I know that this is impossible because I witnessed the day it broke when I had a gathering with some of my friends and it just fell to the ground, I know it was very old but it was very dear to me, it was part of me, maybe that’s why I kept the mattress on its own, it provided me a lot of relief from my back pains and it was a place of comfort till the day I had to leave my home. Though I don’t know what happened to the remnants of the bed I still wish I can sleep even for just an hour on my comfortable childhood bed.