ready to write?
When I started this year I gave myself a challenge to write more. Well, to be honest that’s a resolution and challenge I give myself every year. Over time, I have gone through fluctuations of writerly energy. Sometimes prolific and disciplined, other times barren. I won’t lie; it has been quite a few years of low page counts.
So I’ll give myself the guideline: one page a day, twenty minutes a day, writing when I first wake up, writing on my lunch break, finish a story before starting the next, writing whatever comes to mind. I always start strong, but eventually peter out. In 2019, I started the year by pulling a tarot card each morning and then journaling about it and how I saw the themes showing up in my life. I was also meditating for at least 10 minutes a day. I felt amazing starting my days like that. Unfortunately, though, my deep love of sleep won out and I eventually cut down my morning routine until it was back down to basics. It was nice to get more sleep, but I felt guilty about not writing even that little bit.
This year, I decided to use one of my planners as a daily journal. The nice thing is that the small box for each day feels incredibly low-stress. I can write three sentences about my day and consider it a win. Ironically, this is the year that I’ve had the most time to write (hello, work from home), and the most to write about (2020 truly feels a matryoshka doll, housing at least a decade within it). So my baby step of a writing schedule is actually helping. When I run out of room in my little box, I actually have the energy and enthusiasm to go to my computer or notebook and continue writing.
So that is all to say that I hope you’re being kind to yourself right now. I hope you are finding schedules and metrics that work for your unique blend of interests, goals, and guilt. I hope that you are taking baby steps, celebrating your small wins, and riding that wave of energy and enthusiasm joyfully when it rolls on through.
jen’s piece, Shadow Work:
Dust off the cobwebs
in the corners of your mind
where the guests forget to look
slipping on their coats
and heading back out into the night.
They remember the lights
and the laughter of the party
not the creatures in the corner
spinning their own universe
into existence.
In the twilight you find them
in the hard to reach places
where the light forgets to shine
and they see you seeing them
and you both freeze.
The moment before
you sweep them all away
you stop to stare and wonder
right from wrong
theirs from yours.
Hope is a candle you light in the dark.
How curious the little souls
illuminated in wonder.
prompt #10:
I’ve been reading a lot about trauma, memory, and narrative therapy recently; in particular, the power of reintegrating stories of our history into our narrative of self. This has made me think about the nature of memory and how it shifts and changes, depending on how we integrate a memory into our current understanding of our overall narrative.
A person could retell a difficult childhood memory by focusing on how challenging the experience was, how innocent they were, or how they grew and learned from it. Same story, three different themes or foci of the memory.
For today’s prompt, I want you to do just that. Take a memory, good or bad, and look at it from various perspectives. One simple way to make this shift is to reflect on it in present tense and then again in past tense. In this way, you embody the memory as it was then, and then reflect on it with hindsight and an understanding of how it plays into the overall narrative of your life and your sense of self.
If it helps to have constraints, set yourself a timer for 5 minutes. Write about this memory in the past tense. Then, start that timer again and switch your tense. When you are done, take a look at that story. Use it as the seed of a new piece, if you like. Or maybe integrate it into something new? See what feels right to you.
ashley’s piece:
My stomach drops to the bottom of my torso and my cheeks flame. Mom has anger in her face and I can’t tell if it’s for me or for them.
I can only imagine her confusion. How much to tell me and how much to shield. She must have wanted to protect me for a little bit longer from the nasty, petty humor of bored, selfish women. But she knew I was headstrong and wouldn’t obey this order without explanation.
Her decree is a slap. My face stings. No more letters. No more letters. I can feel pools in my eyes threaten to overflow. I can’t believe he did this to me. He can’t have known. He couldn’t have done it.
I can see that little sunburnt boy now. Running off to meet friends, pile of mail on the kitchen table, no second thought to the weird letter with his name on it. In over his head in this strange new world of girlfriends and nodding his head as sister and mom giggle.
I turned my anger on Mom, the one who tried to protect. Embarrassment colored my world. The childlike love I felt for that silly little boy drained from my body and was replaced by heavy betrayal. A fear of vulnerability and a deep red stain through that innocent belief that throwing yourself into the deep end will be all right.