Week One

Creative Kickstart

Introduction

Our internal editors and critics can launch their opinions far too early in our creative processes.  The trick is to sneak out the back door to have fun without them knowing about it. We will endeavor to do so through a series of timed exercises that encourage wild leaps and discourage rational reasoning.

The purpose of this workshop is to try various techniques to let loose, shut down our internal editor, and generate the seeds of new work through writing prompts and creative play.  Although led by a poet, this workshop might be useful for any of us trying to get out of our own way to let new ideas flow.

All will be encouraged to post some of their new (very!) rough drafts, but discussion will focus not on line editing but on the places in the work where energy is moving or where some fruitful directions may be revealed. Have fun, take risks, follow the movement of your mind, no matter how surprising.

The process each week will be the same: 

- Set up a timer for ten minutes, 

- read the prompt, and 

- write continuously without stopping for those ten minutes.

No stopping, no thinking. If you can’t think of anything to write, write the prompt out, rhyme the prompt, free-associate, write what IS on your mind.  Just don’t stop. 

If you can’t come up with a word, use a synonym or a definition that will remind you later of what you were trying to say. Just keep the hand moving. (I am assuming here the use of good old pen and paper, but I suppose if typing is your natural movement, that should work as well. And, again, although this is intended for writers, any medium will do. Just keep drawing, painting, dancing, humming, strumming.) 

Frustration has no place in this process. Keep it light. Keep it playful. Eventually, you will find the creative mind will break loose and let flow at least one interesting nugget of something that you may be able to use later for another prompt or a longer creative session. Again, the emphasis here is not to birth a fully formed and brilliant piece of work, but to allow, to leap, to tumble, to reach down, to toss outward, to flow.

Please try to post some work by the Saturdays of the week, so people have time to view and comment.

If you have any technical difficulties, please email me directly. Otherwise, please post any general questions in the workshop space so we may all learn from them.

Under the Library tab, you'll find some links to some poetry examples. 

Week One: The Power of the Ordinary

Over the course of the week, you will pick one item from the list below, set a timer for ten minutes, and write without stopping. Do a ten-minute session at least five times over the course of the week, choosing a different item from the list.  Don’t peek ahead at the topics listed below. For each session, pick one at random. Set the timer and go. Again, if nothing occurs to you, write the prompt out, write it backwards, talk to it, describe it, give it a voice, let it remind you of something totally different. Etcetera! 

Remember to invoke the senses when you write about something. Also, feel free to drift away off topic. Be illogical. 

Don’t look back on what you’ve written until the end of the week. Then revisit your passages, find one that feels promising, clean it up a bit, if it needs it, and post it. We’ll enjoy seeing where each other’s minds flew. 

Please provide positive feedback to others in the form of notes on where in the new pieces energy seems to reside, or what interesting questions are posed that would bear further investigation. No one is expected to be producing masterpieces in ten minutes, and our comments will reflect the experimental nature and spirit of play and inquiry these prompts invite.

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”

- Raymond Carver

Write for ten minutes on:

ring

grandmother

birthplace

voting booth

yellow

gnarled roots

broken mirror

A funny thing happened on the way to…

tattoo

something backwards

fabric

rotten apples

Life Savers

lake

Batman