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Before you read the lesson, allow the prompt of the day to seep into your mind. Don't actively seek the words yet, instead allow it to just be there, settling into your mind, as you go through the lesson itself.
Listen to the audio as you prepare to write.
Today's Teleconference Writing Session will be held, as usual, at 8:30 AM Pacific time and will go until right about 9 AM Pacific time. You may be a part of it by dialing (712) 432 3100 conference code 440137. I look forward to connecting with each and all of you!
One of the reasons I teach about writing from prompts is because I do a lot of writing from prompts. It works, it works, it works to move that pencil.
I have discovered more about myself from prompted writing than I can even catalog here.
Today, I wanted to tell you about a story from my childhood I discovered through a very simple prompt and how writing about it continues to move a-ha's, awareness and forgiveness through me.
If all we could do today was forgive one person and say thank you to another person, think of how the world would change. Yesterday, after I wrote this lesson, I bumped into a woman who is still able to illicit an enormous angry response in me, three years after an incident which I, at the time, deemed "unforgiveable." I think writing about forgiveness was actually the invitation for her to appear. I had thought she needed to ask me for forgiveness, but I was compelled, an hour after I saw her, that it was I who needed to seek forgiveness from her.
Even though what she did wasn't good or right and even though I wouldn't necessarily change what I did in response, I still feel compelled to seek forgiveness from her. I am still processing through this and I know from all these years of practice that just taking a prompt and writing it will be a potent way to get to the heart of the matter.
Here is a simple prompt I wrote from about a year ago: "Write about something you made as a child"
I clicked the OneWord.com timer and started writing. This is what came up.
When I was a child I tried to learn to sew.
Mom always finished my projects.
My speed, or lack thereof, frustrated her.
It made me feel not so very good, couldn't finish stuff, wasn't good enough or was too slow or whatever.
She would always scoop up my project and complete it HER way, which made me hesitate to start anything OR once I started something, I hesitated to put anything down to complete later.
I wanted to finish things my way.
= = =
The timer stopped and I continued with my awarenesses.
Wow. This tells me a lot.
I was unprepared to discover how many people share similar stories from their lives – both as the child and as the parent. I have had similar occasions with my children. Thankfully I am usually conscious enough to stop much of the time, but when I cross the line the experience tickles my gut. I sometimes ignore the tickling and keep moving forward, anyway.
This simple, innocuous, one minute prompt engaged the memory.
My job is to continue to grow the memory with words so that it becomes more fleshy yet stays simple and precise enough to retain its grit and finds a place to land in the memory of readers.
Yesterday I wrote at the One Minute Writer about calling the police and today I wrote about growth.
Here is what it prompted:
In what way have you grown the most in the last year?
Here is what flew from my fingers:
I have grown as an artist. I have grown in my skills and grown in my listening.
I have grown as a mother.
I have grown as a traveler.
I have learned to be hungry and not have to rush in and push that hunger away. I have been more hungry this year than in many of the past years and - this is actually a good thing. Odd, it may sound odd, but it is empowering, too.
Creatively, my painting. Ohh, my wordlessness. (Funny for a writer to say that, but wordlessness is such a gift.)
Trusting the lack of words and leaning into it.
I have grown, that way.
= = =
Neither of these moments of quick writing is necessarily brilliant writing – but it is a fruitful beginning, a just right seed.
The first prompt: about my mother finishing my project for me, is enormous.
Today: months after the writing from the first prompt, I wrote a poem about - guess what - my Mom's sewing machine and how it is so much a part of my memory and my experiences with her.
Listen to the words I wrote:
Mom and Her Pfaff
Mom didn't wear much
perfume or make up it was
her sewing machine that
adorned her like her
ubiquitous peach lipstick
Mom confessed it was
the cutting out she hated
the destruction before
the creation before the
machine's whirrrrrrrrr
I sought fancy details
(the very ones she abhorred)
ruffles, tucks, tweaks and slippery
fabric were famous for delaying
the revered final stitch
Later she stiched flowers onto
my wedding gown which I wasn't
so wild about, I didn't see her
bowing to my fancy, they were
her love and honor sewed in - -
The time the gong chased
me from my kitchen cabinet Mom
followed Sue's frightened prsence
sans sewing machint, that time
Only withered windex, comet, Tide...
Post spectrum discovery she
sewed Sam's shirts in a Motel 6 room
Her voice the foot pedal, "He needs
to learn. He needs to know.
You need to be......"
On Hawthorne Avenue, only late at night
when her dailiness was past
machine went to table top
her quiet, dutiful, necessary
love: useful, wearable art
sewn stich by stitch
= = = = =
Today we are going to take some of the energy that comes from childhood, incompletion and growth and weave them into our writing and our prompt.
Consider for just a moment, something you made as a child....
Consider for just a moment, something you wanted to do as a child that remains undone....
Consider for a just a moment, how you have grown since this time last year....
Don't stress the "thinking" before you start writing just allow the thoughts and images to float up and around you. Let's take a moment for engagement with these possibilities: What I made in Childhood, What did I want to do as a child?, growth....
In our prompt today, you may choose to write about childhood or long-ago-hopes and dreams or celebrate recent growth and discoveries... or perhaps your spirit wants you to go elsewhere. In writing, as in life, you may go virtually anywhere with words once you begin.
Today's Writing Prompt:
Today I am compelled to write about.....
Add a link to any blog entries you write which relate back to our writing prompts. We would love to read your words.
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