Ways to see beyond your known world
Even if you’re too wet or dry to blink or think, tuck in and write. If you gave yourself 8 weeks: write every day; write to discover what to write; don’t make assumptions as to what you have to write about or for whom; be open to other interpretations of what have been your sacred cows; look forhabits of mind and actions to break; be open to walking through doors with strange names plastered on them; if at times you can’t write, throw paint, smash dishes, and tear up the newspaper and see what stares out at you.
- Write for 5 minutes each morningusing as prompts 6 words a day that begin with a letter that marches progressively through the alphabet each day. Ist day—letter a; second day-letter b; etc. Once done, illustrate some aspect of what you just wrote.
- Draw your family tree: pluck off a leaf from the family tree and write about it for 15 minutes; if you catch fire, go on. If not, pluck someone else. Go for the jugular; give yourself freedom to invent. You may not get the factual truth of that person, but you may get some emotional truth and energy.
- Vary the locations in which you write and journal: try the bath, front steps, treelimbs, bus, upsidedown, hood of your car, in the ocean…. What if you saw your writing as a sacred duty to be done in some form each day. Would you write m
ore or less? - Make a timeline of your life. Include some made up info. Give yourself a fake beard or startling past. Write where the heat is.
- In a list of life-shaping events, write about #9, # 14 and # 17. Draw them with bizarre colors—add feathers to one of them. Go deeper down the list and surprise yourself with a low-lyer. Draw it first, then write about it.
- If your life to date were an omelet, what new ingredients would you want to add? Which ones would you take out? Which would you want more of? Draw and write about your choices
- Reprocess the sausage. Name then write about a complex life event; then change the ingredients and give it a more positive spin; consider how your future might have been effected by that altered outcome. What lifeenhancing dreams, talents and opportunities are suggested to you by looking through that altered lens? Create a picture of what you see.
- Beckon the future by naming the chapters ahead. Plop yourself in the midst of a chapter and start paddling with pen and imagination.
Questions? Puzzlements? Motivation? Contact Kendall