January Writing Prompts
Happy new year!
Like Janus, the Greek god of beginnings, gates, doorways and transitions, January is a time marker in the calendar, when we look back and look forwards. It is a two headed time. As such, it is commonly a time of reflection, of giving space to things lost and of making new plans, new commitments and intentions.
With reflection comes perspective. Our attitude towards, or memory of something can shift in a minute, a day, a year, ten. If we look back at the things we did ten years ago, twenty, it is informed by experiences that have happened since, often we can be transported back to significant times, the joyous ones and the difficult, in a flash. Time shifts about. This can be a rich source of material for writing, drawing on memories and how we relate to those places, those times, those people, now.
Reflection can be a helpful thing to do, often with our writing we need to put it in a drawer for a while, to digest what we’ve done, to get some perspective. It can be helpful to put things into perspective, to allow space for the joys and the challenges, to give time and respect to those memories and events before, to honour what has gone before.
Several months in to my residency at Rye Harbour, I am thinking again, about what I had planned, what is possible, and how to connect with people in sharing a love of words and language in response to the natural world.
This is the first of a series of twelve online workshops via email, as I map the course of the year, connecting with the process and craft of writing, along with the material and content of what is explored. Responses to these sessions are very welcomed, including sharing your own work in response to the prompts and resources I share. You can contact me via email and social media – links below.
I hope that in person workshops will be available again soon, and I will use this email list to share news of these events too, but in the mean time I hope this is a valuable alternative, and one that is more accessible and inclusive to a wider geographical area and to those of us for whom attending things in person is more challenging and riskier right now.
There is much to reflect on with a traumatic and turbulent twelve months, a collective grief as well as individual experiences which will all be very different. For many of us, connecting with the natural world and visiting places like Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, has been an important part of life.
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Free writing – warm up
I invite you to think back to a particular event, time, place or experience where you encountered the natural world, in a surprising or unexpected way and write about it. This could be for a few minutes or thirty, see where it takes you, but aim for just three. Try to keep writing, don’t go back to edit at this stage, don’t take your pen off the page or your fingers off the keyboard, try to be as unselfconscious as you can and allow the words to form with as little interruption from your brain as possible.
If you can't think of a particular incident, then write what you see from your chair or out of the window – is there a bird feeder, moss on the roof opposite, a spider in the corner of the room?
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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, written by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (published by Green Books), is an account of the author’s own surprising encounter with wildlife, while lying in bed with a prolonged period of illness:
“For several weeks the snail lived in the flowerpot just inches from my bed, sleeping beneath the violet leaves by day and exploring by night. Each morning while I was having breakfast it climbed back into the pot to sleep in the little hollow it had made in the dirt. Though the snail usually slept through the days, it was comforting to glance towards the violets and see its small circular shape tucked under a leaf…
As I prepared for the night, the snail moved in its leisurely way down the side of the pot to the dish beneath. It found the flower blossoms I had placed there and began its breakfast.” (pp15-16).
A friend visiting Bailey took in a pot plant for her, to sit on her bedside cabinet, a common gift of flowers and plants for the sick. The difference is, this one had a snail in it. It is the evolving understanding and relationship the author makes with the snail that leads to the book, as well as her own scientific research she discovers living in such close proximity, and living at such a slow speed, which enables her to learn more about aspects of this snail’s life and life cycle than would otherwise have been found.
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Writing exercise 1:
What creature/organism or plant have you encountered? Is there one from your free writing that you’d like to focus in on more? Is there an animal, insect or shrub that moves at the same pace you do, or shares other characteristics?
Do you have an animal/bird/plant that is (or has been) particularly meaningful to you, that you have met by accident, that has left a lasting impact on you and/or how you see the world?
Bailey found a terrarium and made the snail a home of moss, learned what it liked to eat, and fed and watered it. What might you imagine to be for your adopted creature, as large and ambitious and impossible as that might be, or as small and ordinary? How might you study and watch and learn from it? Where might you sit/lie to do this? Would it sit by your bed/chair at home like Bailey, or would it be vast and all encompassing, with you perched on a leaf shrunken to the scale of the animal/insect you have befriended? Try to be as specific as you can. Use scale and perspective to shift expectations and find surprising connections. Write for ten minutes (more if you can/want) creating this world, how do you encounter it, what are the smells, sounds, sights? How does your presence effect them?
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Writing exercise 2:
In a poem by Thom Gunn, he writes from the perspective of the snail, available on the Poetry Foundation website.
In the middle of Gunn’s poem he asks: “what is a snail’s fury?”
Exchange this for your own insect/animal/bird/plant – What is it’s fury?...
Write for another 10 minutes.
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Writing exercise 3:
Virginia Woolf wrote a short story, Kew Gardens, in which she encounters a snail. In this essay there is attention paid to the ordinary and memory, to which Gunn’s poem also refers.
Finally, write about the ordinariness of the insect/flower/creature you have written about so far – feel free to change tack and write about a different one if you wish – but press on if there is more for it to tell you. What is its day to day life like? How might you imagine it relates to other creatures of its species, of others? What are its ordinary superpowers? What are your ordinary superpowers? Things you find you’re naturally skilled at, things you’re able to notice that others don’t?
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