Creativity and Change

Tags

creative writing, creativity, nature, poems, poetry

 

 

Fears can rise at the thought of being creative, but in one of life’s paradoxes, it is my experience that creativity is also a powerful tool with which to address those fears – emerging wiser and stronger.

 

Change happens, whether we’re conscious of it or not, and whether or not it’s happening in the direction we would like it to. The act of creation is a highly adaptive process, embodied in the very cells through evolutionary biology, and it is something we can use to make change more graceful and fun.

 

It was New Year’s Day, and I took myself for a walk, by which I mean I insisted that my under exercised being and its fidgety disruptiveness leave the house because it was getting under my feet. I was alone, and the moment I was in the fresh air thoughts took off and began to run and play in enough space and with enough distance between them that I could watch and observe with a smile, without incurring the usual scratches and bruises. My feet were well enough practised in following this path to do so without much input from me, and I let them take me down towards the river, occasionally stepping onto the rough verges to allow vehicles to pass.

 

By the time I climbed the style just before the bridge, to take the trail to the river beach, my thoughts were much better behaved, and my shoulders were unburdened enough to allow my arms to swing by my side as every other step became a half skip. And then I was there.

 

The empty stony beach (by which I mean there were no other people present) and the noisy rushing river, riding the rapids before turning the corner and beginning to widen and slow down. But me, I wasn’t widened yet. I was rushing.

Looking around to admire the beauty of my surroundings, I still held a feather I’d picked up at some point along the way. It dragged almost imperceptibly through the air as my arms swung, until I and they were still. I don’t remember at what point exactly I closed my eyes and began to question the changes I’d recently set loose, like the waters of the wild river before me – unstoppable, beautiful – but why? Why was I leaving behind a community that I loved, a landscape that I revered and a life blessed in uncountable ways? The first answer was immediate and came in a single word – growth.

 

A raging hunger rose in me quite unexpectedly, and I began to cry. Comfort had become a cage, and my wings had had to be cruelly clipped. I needed to explore the edges of my potential, not grow fat and lazy on a diet of endless affirmation and appreciation from those who already admired what I did, without daring me, stretching me, demanding of me that I be more. By more, I do not mean in the pursuit of a bigger ego or greater worldly success, but rather in deep celebration and honouring of the otherworldly; that which still existed beyond the world I currently inhabited but that, with courage and practice I could bring into this world that others might experience and enjoy it.

 

That dance of the practical and the magical began to live in me and, inspired by the feather still held in my hand, began to form a poem. I had nothing with which to catch it, so I began spinning a web mid-air by speaking it aloud, the river as my witness, repeating lines to strengthen them, and the proceeding onward. Gradually, while I began to retrace my steps and make my way back up the hill, the poem grew, line by line, adjustments and refinements happening naturally until I walked back though my front door, and wrote it down.

 

Change is so much less frightening when we understand why it’s happening, and admit that we’ve set it in motion ourselves. Poetry helps me give that clarity and courage form, and its aliveness is much like change itself, for I find poems, as indeed most art, leaves enough space for me to visit time and again, and yet inhabit a different world each time. That’s not necessarily comfortable, but it is comforting.

 

A re-feathering

 

 

Whether faeries are real or not

I won’t risk killing one with

A disbelieving thought

For I have seen

Strewn at my feet

Feathers of my own wings

Shot from the sky

When doubt came hunting

 

But I am not a bird

And those wings

Were not of this world

Any more than a unicorn’s horn

Is hard and made of keratin

 

So it’s time for a re-feathering

Growing new shafts

From quill to tip

Fed with belief

’til once again

I fly

 

Writers’ Well – Love Letter From Gaia

Tags

creativity, earth, environment, letter, love, nature, writing, writing prompt

I remember reading in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic something about a friend of hers who was teaching about the environment. I can’t find the quote right now, so I’m paraphrasing. Her first lesson began with two questions. “Do you love nature?” Lots of nodding heads, and assurances of “Yes, of course!” The second question, “Do you believe nature loves you?” At first, silence. Then, “But that’s ridiculous! That’s not possible!” And her friend replies, “There’s our problem. Right there.”

We could argue semantics; try to define love, try to define nature, but that’s not the point. We are in relationship. The trees breathe in what we expel and expel what we breathe in. If you’re a gardener you know, you see the plants respond to your care. I could list many examples of the deeply interconnected world we live in. Is it not the height of arrogance to assume engagement in this relationship is all one way? I don’t mean disneyfying nature, or anthropomorphizing, I mean at a deeper, cellular level. We are, after all, all made of the same stuff.

 

So this week, the prompt was to write a love letter from Gaia. from nature, from mother earth, from the planet – however you choose to phrase it in order to connect with that ‘something bigger’.

 

I will share what I wrote, though it is incomplete, because this love letter will always be incomplete. It needs to be lived and re-heard every day, as it is rewritten in the moving clouds, the changing weather, the buds coming to life on branches bare for so long. This is just what I felt and wrote in those ten minutes:

 

 

Dear Ones

There are laws, and there is love. Even love has laws, laws that say the sun and the rain must offer their life giving rays and drops to all equally, whatever lies in their path is equally loved and needy of nourishment.

You are part of nature. You are loved, as much and equally. There can be no favourites with me.  But there are laws. Nature’s laws. Love’s laws. Fight them, fear them, and you can not thrive. 

I can not change the laws of love or nature for anyone or anything. You are loved. You are not loved any more or less than any other being on this planet. Favourites and comparison is not the nature of love. Love flows wherever it can be received.

Rain falls, sun alights on whatever is in its path. Put up barriers, and the rain and the sun can not get in, but they do not stop or disappear. They simply go wherever else they can be received. Falling on a roof, the rain runs down and is soaked up by the earth. Shrubs in the shade will not feel the full force of the sun’s warmth.

There is free will. There are laws. Humanity is neither above nor beneath those laws, but subject to them, as is every other being. Natural laws are your friends and guides. Use them, wonder at them, honour them and you will thrive.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, here are a couple of others on a similar theme:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/the-butterflys-cocoon/

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/love-is-a-verb/

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/a-natural-curriculum/

 

And if you’re looking for more prompts to inspire your own writing and creativity, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

“I think of a few of my favourite words…” – Writers’ Well

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, Landmarks, language, nature, Robert MacFarlane, words, writing, writing prompt

I’d like to share with you one of the prompts I used in last week’s writing workshop, which was inspired by my having recently read the beginning of Landmarks, by Robert MacFarlane. Here is the paragraph that particularly moved me, copied here from a newspaper article which you can read in full by following this link:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape

First, without having said anything about the background context to the idea, I asked each person to take a sheet of paper and write at the top one of their favourite words (no theme, just a favourite word). That paper was then passed to the right, another received from the left, and another word added until we had a beautiful collection. I then read the above paragraph, and asked people to write a poem in celebration of their favourite words. Of course, it need not include all or any of the ones we’d already collected, for as always I offer prompts with the lightest of nudges – there are really no rules, just a wide and heartfelt invitation to play in that general direction.  This is what I wrote, in 10 minutes, unedited and imperfect:

 

 

Story, a collection of words

phrases and sentences

but also a weaving

a binding, a flowing

of a river that takes you

on a journey

 

I have a story

and it has a beginning

and it will have an end

but the words that fill it

are as life-full and vulnerable

as the elemental environment

 

If I plant wonder and cuddle

and sharing and joy

the earth of my roots

fixes in itself foundations of

magic and kindness

and feasting and fun

 

but stories are being polluted,

like car fumes choking our air,

with thick rooted, thorn stemmed

fear and hatred,

indifference and defense

 

To rewrite the story

mind needs a shedfull of tools;

compassion to cut down the fear that’s flourishing

and throw it on the compost,

and kindness to weed away the illusion of lack

that abundance might be visible again

 

The mind environment,

the heart habitat,

are threatened too

but we all have the word tools

we need to clean it up

let it breathe

let it weave

a journey of wonder again

 

Should you feel moved, follow this link to sign the petition requesting the reinstatement of these culled nature words in the Junior Oxford English Dictionary:

https://www.change.org/p/oxford-university-press-nature-related-words-should-be-reinstated-in-the-junior-oxford-english-dictionary

 

I could say so much more, but I’ll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, my dear wordsmith, language loving friends – cherish words, use them well and widely!

 

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

Take a leaf – Writers’ Well

Tags

autumn, creative writing, creativity, earth, elements, fire, leaves, nature, water, writing, writing prompt, writing workshop

image credit: https://www.quickcrop.co.uk/blog/collecting-autumn-leaves/

Each week (well most, I missed last week – sorry!) I share on this blog one of the writing prompts used in my workshops, along with an example of what was written in response. This week is going to be a bit of a bumper edition (!) because a) I missed last week b) it’s half term this week, so there will be no Friday class and c) I’m feeling super full (in a good way!) and want to share some of that:-)

So to begin, I’d like to share the simple prompt I used in last Friday’s class. As I walked to the venue that morning, I picked a bouquet of beautiful fallen autumn leaves, of every size and hue. I laid them on the floor in a circle and asked each writer to pick one. We then spent a minute or so in silence, observing our chosen leaf (or bunch of smaller leaves) and then wrote for three minutes in response. Of course this could be done with anything collected from nature. I have, in the past, used stones/pebbles, or shells, of sticks/twigs.

This is what I wrote (sorry, I forgot to take a photo…)

You make me feel tender, this gathering, and the holding (there’s a small leaf stuck to a larger one, horizontally, like a baby being carried) and you shake as I hold you…or is it me shaking? It’s like you emphasize my tiniest movements…and then I imagine something else – you remind me of a flute, the different keys to press, and the bulge at the end of your stalk, where you once met the tree, swells like a mouth piece, and though you’re delicate, as I look more closely each one of you has a clear, strong, straight ‘backbone’ from which tiny veins stretch, though I can’t see them so well through the mottled yellow brown you’re turning, turning, turning.

So, that warm up is a fitting one for these three bonus prompts I’d like to offer for this half term week. These are taken from my ‘Elemental Journey’ prompt cards. You can find more information about these by following the link at the end of this post.

 

I just picked three at random, and luckily ended up with three different elements! They should be self-explanatory but feel free to ask questions in the comments section. I hope you have fun with them!

 

 

If you enjoyed these prompts, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

Wild innocence

Tags

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, bushcraft, camping, freedom, john muir, mary oliver, nature, the little prince, wild

Image of The Little Prince and the fox, from the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’d like to share some personal reflections inspired by a recent weekend bushcraft/camping adventure that still leaves me with far more to explore, and indeed wanting more…adventure, wilderness, realness – freedom. Enjoy:-)

 

Who has not felt the urge to throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence? – JOHN MUIR

 

It was a reconnection with innocence. I don’t mean childish or naïve or sweet – I simply mean authentically unadorned; the kind of wild, untamed innocence that knows it is timelessly and irrevocably at one with, and originated from, the very elements and other forms of life that surround it. The kind of innocence that looks neither forward nor back because the only truth is now, this moment, in which we are alive, the fire’s flickering, the potatoes taste slightly burnt and adults and children are dancing around the fire, chanting and laughing with sheer raw joy.

 

So what was the emotion that rose in me like a monster when we left, at once exultant and enraged?

 

One voice was saying, ‘This isn’t real. Come on, you couldn’t live like this day in day out, nobody would choose that. It would be hard work, miserable.”

 

But another voice was singing, “Oh, My God, that was me! That’s what it’s all about. That’s what I need to remember; remain humble and love, treat the whole earth as my home – not just one walled off doored off part of it. For a while I’ve been awake again, and the joy and wonder of that is so strong it overwhelms me.”

 

It was a taste of freedom; joyous, wild, risky, wonder-full freedom. Why now, unforced (perhaps) and consciously (really?) was I about to lock myself away in captivity again? There’s the rub; the pain and the curiosity and the question. Why would I do that to myself? Why would I support a system that does that to others? There is grief in seeing my bondage for what it is – chosen and self-inflicted.

 

I remember a quote from The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

“I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you…”

 

With taming comes responsibility, because once tamed it is hard for the tamed one to survive again in the wild. When looked at through the lens of my own experience and values this translates thus:

 

In order to be free I must once again take full responsibility for myself and my own experience. I must make nobody responsible for me because, in so doing, I shrink my own strength and I tell life/God that I do not trust – that I need comfort, safety, a backup plan.

 

Having explored and outlined the extremes, can I find the sacred aliveness of that meeting place of middle ground? Can I remain free and wild and authentic, and allow my heart to engage with others and this world deeply, rawly, fearlessly, staying always aware that I want to give and receive space and dares, not walls and promises, because promises are often broken and walls fall down, but love is something much wilder and more resilient, therefore in all my relationships with other people, other sentient beings, the natural world, let me not tame or be tamed.

 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

– MARY OLIVER

 

On the same theme, I’ve also very much enjoyed reading the following recently:

A poem by Tom Hirons, Sometime A Wild God

https://coyopa.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/sometimes-a-wild-god-2/

A book by Cheryl Strayed, Wild – a Journey from Lost to Found

http://www.cherylstrayed.com/wild_108676.htm

 

 

There is a season – Writers’ Well

Tags

autumn, beauty, change, creative writing, creativity, lyrics, nature, song, writing, writing prompt, writing workshop

Each week, I share one of the writing prompts used in my workshops, along with an example of what was written in response. Today’s prompt (we did it as a warm-up, so just 3 mins in total) is simply to connect with your favourite season, in that moment, and write about it. I chose Autumn, and this is what I wrote, unedited…

Autumn is for abundance – bringing in and giving thanks for the harvest, the explosion of colour in the trees and the preparations as we prepare to move into the shorter days. Warm soups and open fires – new beginnings as school terms begin – and we come in from outside and begin to shift our focus inwards, for the light is becoming more golden and tired and the colder weather makes for brisk walks and buttoning up – it’s a transitional season when the intensity of summer’s joy and pace can slow down a little – we catch our breath and give thanks.

I’m reminded, as I type this up, of a song I wrote (wow, five years ago in turns out!) as I drove through a stunning Autumn landscape in the Scottish Highlands singing for my life as the beauty threatened to take my breath away, and not being able to take my hands off the wheel to write it down I had to repeat and repeat so I wouldn’t forget it…

I called it Colour My World…

 

Colour my world with the blue of the free skies

Colour my world with a rainbow of butterflies

Colour my world with the magic of evergreen

Colour my world with the silver of full moon sheen

Colour my world

Colour my world

Great Painter

 

*Chorus*

Beauty my world with all animals running free

Lighten my heart with the laughter that tickles me

Beauty my world

Lighten my heart

Creator

 

Colour my world with the pink cheeks of happiness

Colour my world with the grey on my father’s head

Colour my world with the soft white of feather down

Colour my world with the river’s rich peaty brown

Colour my world

Colour my world

Great painter

 

*Chorus*

 

Colour my world with the dark blue green oceans deep

Colour my world with the bright yellow blackbird’s beak

Colour my world with the red of the robin’s chest

Colour my world with the orange gold pink sunset

Colour my world

Colour my world

Great painter

Oh Beauty my world

Please Lighten my heart

Creator

 

What’s your favourite season?

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

 

Wednesday Writers’ Well

Tags

blackout poem, compost, creative writing, creativity, fable, first time, found poem, gratitude, hero, heroism, humour, imagination, job, joy, mistakes, nature, poem, poetry, river, soul food, spring, story, TED talks, well, well being, work, writing prompt, writing workshop

“The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only half way down a well. coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. The frustration is immense. But you must keep doing it anyway. After many years of practice, the chain draws unexpectedly tight, and you have dipped into the waters that will continue to entice you back. You’ll have broken the skin on the pool of yourself.”

 – SEAMUS HEANEY

Welcome back after a brief break, to this regular slot each Wednesday, which I call Writers’ Well because: it’s intended to be a source of nourishment and inspiration for the writer in you, it expresses my belief that creative writing can benefit our well being on many levels, and…I love the above quote from Seamus Heaney. It gives me goosebumps every time. It also resonates with my own intention when leading writing workshops. It’s not about producing good writing, it’s about brave, real writing. Writing that goes down deep within to draw up something unexpected.

Writing Prompt:

My recent trip to Scotland included several visits to my mother, who still has a couple of shelves of my ‘ unthrowable away stuff,’ some of which will eventually become ‘throwawayable’, when I have time to sort through it. Among all this I found some personal treasure – a collection of writing prompts and some responses from the very first creative writing sessions I held, five years ago, filed in a folder I’d made immediately after that first session, driven by the buzz of joy and playfulness I’d been left brimming with. I made it from a gift bag left over from my birthday.

This week I’d like to share a very simple prompt, which was part of that very first writing workshop I held – when I had just one participant. It’s super simple and has never failed to bring lots of playful laughter, and some rather random stories. I’ve used it several times since, especially when I’m writing with just one other person.

Each person writes the first sentence of a story, anything at all, and then passes it to the other person who then writes the second sentence and passes it back etc etc writing just one sentence at a time. The speed helps the imagination as does the cross pollination with someone else’s style and ideas. If you want to try this on your own…I guess you could write two stories at a time, alternating between them, and adding just one sentence at a time to each.

This is one of the stories my first ‘student’ and I co-wrote, five years ago. I think I originally set the task at 10 minutes, but we couldn’t stop so I think it ran longer! This particular story ended up in a style for children…I don’t know why, just because. If you look at the photo closely you can see the different styles of handwriting, and the blue VS black ink marking our different contributions. Completely spontaneous and unedited, written in about 10/15 minutes. Enjoy 🙂

Once upon a time there was a wizard living at the bottom of our garden. This wizard really wanted to build a fish pond so he could observe the fish swimming. Of course, with magic, it doesn’t take long, and with a wand he built the pond, filling it with beautiful fish. But then he thought of something else the pond needed, was it a bridge or a swing? He closed his eyes and asked the fish what they wanted, to make their pond even more beautiful and grand.

The fish were not aesthetic experts, but they knew an architect just down the road. The architect was a toad who went by the name of Mr Knowit. Mr Knowit was delighted to come over – he loved giving advice, especially to lowly fish. In his superior way he made his own slow hopping round of the pond and declared, ‘I know exactly what this pond needs!’

They all clamoured to hear this pronouncement, but first he said it needed a brass band as an introduction to his speech. Well, where would they find a brass band at such short notice they wondered, and asked Mr Knowit, ‘Would a chorus of birds do?’ 

Yes they would do, but only if they first had a practice. Could they sing God Save The Queen for example? Well of course, that was one of their favourites the head fish assured Mr Knowit, and with a loud splash he called the birds to the nearest tree.

But Mr Knowit suddenly had a moment of shyness; perhaps he didn’t really know what was best for the fish! There was a loud intake of breath – Mr Knowit DIDN’T know it, so NOW what were they going to do!? Perhaps they could have an attunement, but alas they had no hands to hold, only tails. So they all faced out and, like the most skilled synchronized divers, touched their tails together in the centre and closed their eyes.

A strange silence came over the group and the wizard appeared and said, ‘What did you get?’

There must be a bridge woven from reeds that all may come to seek the wisdom of the fish!

Mr Knowit knew some other toads and a neighbourly beaver who, when called upon, were more that happy to lend their skills to building the bridge.

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

 

 

Wednesday Writers’ Well

Tags

blackout poem, compost, creative writing, creativity, fable, first time, found poem, gratitude, hero, heroism, humour, imagination, job, joy, mistakes, nature, poem, poetry, river, soul food, spring, story, TED talks, well, well being, work, writing prompt, writing workshop

“The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only half way down a well. coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. The frustration is immense. But you must keep doing it anyway. After many years of practice, the chain draws unexpectedly tight, and you have dipped into the waters that will continue to entice you back. You’ll have broken the skin on the pool of yourself.”

 – SEAMUS HEANEY

Welcome to this regular slot each Wednesday, which I call Writers’ Well because: it’s intended to be a source of nourishment and inspiration for the writer in you, it expresses my belief that creative writing can benefit our well being on many levels, and…I love the above quote from Seamus Heaney. It gives me goosebumps every time. It also resonates with my own intention when leading writing workshops. It’s not about producing good writing, it’s about brave, real writing. Writing that goes down deep within to draw up something unexpected.

Writing Prompt:

Each week, I share one of the writing prompts used the previous Friday in my weekly workshop, along with an example of what was written in response. Today’s prompt (take about 15 mins in total) begins with completing the following sentence five times – ‘It was the first time…’

Now, for the next ten minutes or so choose one of those sentences, and expand on it… This is what I wrote:

May I introduce…the river Findhorn. I’m heading up to Scotland today – can’t wait!

 

It was the first time she’d spoken to the river. It didn’t feel like anything special. Actually it felt entirely natural, the most natural thing in the world. It didn’t occur to her until later that she may have been seen, overheard.

‘Help me,’ she’d begun. ‘Take this away.’

The immediate wordless response took her breath away. It was gone! She looked all around her. It must be a trick. Who? What? Nothing. But the sadness she’d arrived with really had disappeared. She began to giggle, and it felt like the rapids mimicked her joy as they rushed, white-tipped and wild, towards her. She began to sing, directing her song to the movement of the water, until her new lightness turned into a contented emptiness. She sat on a rock and watched; not anything in particular, just watched.

She began to play ‘what if’. What if I jumped in, where would it take me? What if I knew how to build a shelter and stayed for a night right here on the river bank? What if I could ask this rock to tell me all that it’s seen and heard? What if I were perched on the top of that tree, light as a bird – what would I see? What if being me weren’t so different from anybody else? What if I belonged? Fitted in…

The game stopped. She didn’t fit in, but just maybe that was a good thing. She stood, with new resolve, and bowed to the river. As she turned to walk uphill, back the way she’d come, it didn’t feel like she was climbing, for inside she was already ‘up’, and could see more clearly where she wanted to go.

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

 

 

Wednesday Writers’ Well

Tags

blackout poem, compost, creative writing, creativity, fable, found poem, gratitude, hero, heroism, humour, imagination, job, joy, mistakes, nature, poem, poetry, soul food, spring, story, TED talks, well, well being, work, writing prompt, writing workshop

“The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only half way down a well. coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. The frustration is immense. But you must keep doing it anyway. After many years of practice, the chain draws unexpectedly tight, and you have dipped into the waters that will continue to entice you back. You’ll have broken the skin on the pool of yourself.”

 – SEAMUS HEANEY

Welcome to this regular slot each Wednesday, which I call Writers’ Well because: it’s intended to be a source of nourishment and inspiration for the writer in you, it expresses my belief that creative writing can benefit our well being on many levels, and…I love the above quote from Seamus Heaney. It gives me goosebumps every time. It also resonates with my own intention when leading writing workshops. It’s not about producing good writing, it’s about brave, real writing. Writing that goes down deep within to draw up something unexpected.

Writing Prompt:

Each week, I share one of the writing prompts used the previous Friday in my weekly workshop, along with an example of what was written in response. Today’s prompt (allow around 15/20 mins total) is in two parts, and is on the topic of – heroes or heroism.

To begin, take no more than 10 minutes to just write whatever comes as you reflect on this topic. You might describe an individual whom you consider to be a hero, or you might explore the qualities or demands or what we term heroism. Just write.

Now, for the next ten minutes or so you’re going to read what you’ve just written and extract, carve out, discover…a blackout poem. This simply means you underline, or circle, or in some other way highlight words (or parts of words) from the text to make a poem. Ideally you won’t change the order or form of the words at all.

This is what I ended up with:

Unsung heroes

meet

daily living

with honest graft, heart

write them

sing them

the world wouldn’t turn

without them

mothers go without

so children thrive

bus driver leaves his seat

to help

never mind the timetable

everywhere heroes

keeping us human

hearts standing strong

hope alight

your stories all around me

make lots

of little differences

 

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

 

 

Wednesday Writers’ Well

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compost, creative writing, creativity, fable, gratitude, humour, imagination, job, joy, mistakes, nature, soul food, spring, story, TED talks, well, well being, work, writing prompt, writing workshop

“The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only half way down a well. coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. The frustration is immense. But you must keep doing it anyway. After many years of practice, the chain draws unexpectedly tight, and you have dipped into the waters that will continue to entice you back. You’ll have broken the skin on the pool of yourself.”

 – SEAMUS HEANEY

Welcome to this regular slot each Wednesday, which I call Writers’ Well because: it’s intended to be a source of nourishment and inspiration for the writer in you, it expresses my belief that creative writing can benefit our well being on many levels, and…I love the above quote from Seamus Heaney. It gives me goosebumps every time. It also resonates with my own intention when leading writing workshops. It’s not about producing good writing, it’s about brave, real writing. Writing that goes down deep within to draw up something unexpected.

Writing Prompt:

Each week, I share one of the writing prompts used the previous Friday in my weekly workshop, along with an example of what was written in response. Today’s prompt (allow around 5 mins) is to write briefly on the topic…but something else happened instead.

This prompt was inspired by this TED talk, which I watched recently. It gave me and my perfectionist tendencies plenty to think about. Check it out:

 

This is what I wrote:

Something else happened instead

They say God laughs when you plan because, so often, something else happens instead. That something is an invitation to trust I guess, though sometimes I don’t want to ‘invite’ or ‘welcome’ that something else at all! I want everything to go exactly as I’d hoped, wished, made for it to happen – but then I would’ve missed out on so many important moments – moments of joy, learning, surprise, the opportunity to grow and practice my resilience and responsiveness. 

I thought that poem would go down a storm. But something else happened instead. I was scared to send that email, expecting an angry response – but something else happened instead.

Life likes to keep me on my toes!

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/