Writing Ideas

Writing and Healing Idea #11: A Scavenger Hunt

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 24, 2006 in Healing Images, Writing Ideas

YOU ARE INVITED What: A Scavenger Hunt What to bring: Books, catalogues, journals What to hunt for: Images The goal of this scavenger hunt is simple: to hunt for images. But what’s an image? Here’s one way to think about it: in the early part of the twentieth century there was a group of poets in England, France and America who called themselves imagists. Ezra Pound was one such poet. Also, William Carlos Williams, who once said, “No ideas but in things.” An often-cited example of an imagist poem is a poem by Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow," that centers around the visual image of a red wheelbarrow glistening with rain water next to some white chickens. The imagists often concentrated primarily on visual images, but an image does not have to be limited to the sense of sight. An image can be more broadly defined as a word or group of words that appeals to one or more of the senses. An image is tangible. It’s a word you can see or hear or taste or touch or smell. A red wheelbarrow. Cinnamon coffeecake. Fresh orange juice. Hot black coffee. A yellow goldfinch. A cricket. A pumpkin. An acorn squash. Geese. The goal then of this particular scavenger hunt is to hunt for images—or things that appeal to your senses. Images that strike you. That surprise you. That please you. Images you want to remember. Or, simply, images you like. In your hunt, feel free to look through books of poetry, novels, children’s books, seed catalogues, field guides, magazines, any printed material including your own written material in the form of journals or pages. If you’ve ever written down any of your dreams, these can be an excellent source of images. Your memory can also be a source of images. Songs. Movies. Overheard conversation. The possibilities are endless. Make a list of images that appeal to you. Save the...

Writing and Healing Idea #10: Conjuring New Images and Metaphors for Healing

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 16, 2006 in Writing Ideas

Try this: Look at the word: HEALING Write the word: HEALING Write the word in large letters on a blank sheet of paper: HEALING Say the word aloud: HEALING Then close your eyes and say the word again—HEALING—and notice what comes into your mind. Say the word over slowly until some thing or place or person or creature comes into your mind. What you’re looking for here is a concrete something—a something or someone you can see in your mind. Write down this first thing that comes to your mind, even if it seems silly at first, or surprising, or irrelevant. Then write to describe the image in as much detail as possible. What colors do you see? What textures do you notice? What are its details? If you find it helpful, you can pause in your writing, close your eyes again, and try once more to see or feel this something in order to write about it. Summon as much detail as you can. If more than one something or someone comes, feel free to write about these too, but try, first, to write in detail about the first image that comes. Many people see places when they try this. A canyon for instance. A place next to a river. An island. A ship. Some people see creatures. Horses. Their cat. A particular dog. Some see an activity. Gardening. Skiing. Some see a particular person–or they might see themselves with this particular person. A grandmother. A teacher. A character from a book. Some people see a color. What do you see? Try it. And no matter what you see when you conjure the word HEALING—you simply cannot do it wrong. By the way, if you see nothing at all this can be a beginning. A nothing can be a something. A blank slate can be the beginning of a something. A blank slate can be waiting for something to be written upon...

Writing and Healing Idea #9: The Mystery of Language

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 4, 2006 in Writing Ideas

In Helen Keller’s memoir, The Story of My Life, she describes a now famous moment that occurred between her and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, when she was seven: We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. Helen Keller made a connection: between the cool stream gushing over one hand and the shapes of the letters traced upon the other: w-a-t-e-r Do you remember the first connections you made between letters and words and things? Do you remember, for instance, your first phonics book? The pictures in that phonics book? Or any of your early readers? What about the way the ABC’s looked in your first-grade classroom? What about the shapes of those letters? Or the way it felt to hold a pencil and write those letters? What about that paper with the dotted lines? Do you remember what you felt when you first discovered letters? Or what you felt when you first discovered that words and letters were connected to actual things? Choose one particular moment of remembering. Perhaps a moment in a classroom. Or perhaps you were riding in a car and you were able to read a sign for the first time. Or maybe you remember one particular book from childhood. Pick one moment or thing. And then conjure the details of it. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? Write the words that conjure the details. Make the words into sentences if you...

Writing and Healing Idea #8: Buy a Box

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 29, 2006 in Writing Ideas

What do you hold your writing in? A drawer? A folder on your computer? A series of folders? A box with a lid? Virginia Woolf was right. Writing does thrive in a room of one’s own. But what about when one doesn’t have a whole room for writing? What about a table of one’s own? A file cabinet of one’s own? A portfolio? A box? If you don’t yet love the container in which you’re holding your writing—consider buying a good box. (Even if you don’t yet have a lot of writing. Even if it’s just a few loose-leaf pages. Or a couple pages printed from your computer. Or a single page. Or a single word) If you’ve started, or restarted, a new writing project—or a new writing habit—consider buying a good box in which to hold it. A new box or portfolio can serve as a kind of sign—or signal—that a project is a serious one—and deserving of its own...

Writing and Healing Idea #7: Has Writing Ever Changed Your Life?

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 16, 2006 in Writing Ideas

Consider a time when you wrote something—a letter—a journal entry—a word—a blog entry—that changed something—anything—then begin to write about it—write about what you wrote—and then the change that happened after—or during—no matter how large or small the change—no matter how quiet. Or, alternatively, consider a time when you read something—a poem—a book—a letter—a blog—and the words you read caused something to shift—something—anything—write about the words—the experience of reading those words—write about the change that happened. Consider these words from a poem, “The Class,” in a collection entitled, The Crack in Everything, by Alicia Ostriker: Perhaps it is not the poet who is healed but someone else, years...

Writing and Healing Idea #6: Discovering Needs and Desires

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 8, 2006 in Writing Ideas

Here’s that succinct sentence again by Laura King, researcher in writing and health: WRITING ABOUT TOPICS THAT ALLOW US TO LEARN ABOUT OUR OWN NEEDS AND DESIRES MAY BE A WAY TO HARNESS THE HEALING BENEFITS OF WRITING. One could stop right here, right now, and write this question at the top of a clean sheet of paper: WHAT DO I NEED? Or, WHAT DO I WANT? Or, WHAT DO I LONG FOR? And one could write pages for an entire month (or a year) in response to this question. I suspect this would be life-altering. Or, then again, one could imagine one is an orphan, out on one’s own, and one discovers a boxcar like those children in the book. How would you set up your boxcar? What provisions would you lay in? What do you absolutely need to survive in your boxcar? And what else do you need? And then, if you like, you can consider that which you do you not particularly need but you’d really like to have it in your boxcar—because it would make your boxcar more comfortable—or more beautiful—or just...

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