WRITING PROMPTS ROUND UP

Ooops, a little late in putting these up. Many apologies.


Mon: The secret gold mine in her garden

Tues: She has become an angry knitter

Wed: Her fingers start talking without her

Thurs: She sees the dog vote. It even winks at her.

Fri: The decline and fall of Emily Scrivens


And just a reminder, you can get these daily from my Twitter account.

WRITING PROMPTS ROUND UP

1, But not even to save your life...?

2. The trees have been dreaming again.

3. Things that once scared me but don't any more.

4. His flat is crowded with life size models of celebrities.

5. The hotel room speaks.

Enjoy!

More prompts here: Daily Writing Practice and some thoughts about using them. I put these prompts up daily on Twitter, Monday to Friday, follow me here.

WRITING PROMPTS

I haven't been keeping up with the writing prompts I used to put up daily in my side bar. Bad Sarah.

However, I have been writing daily myself to prompts I put up on Twitter. Good Sarah.

You can follow me there - @sarahsalway - please do, and please say hello. But I'm also going to put up a week's worth of the writing prompts regularly on here. Perhaps there's one that takes your fancy. I tend to use these prompts for no reason other than to wake up my writing muscles, force myself not to take the first option that comes to mind when I read them, and to just enjoy the writing rather than concentrating on the product. I write something like this six days a week, and sometimes just for five minutes, but I miss it if I don't do my writing stretch!

And the prompts:

* hiring a private investigator

* the questions I'd really like to ask you

* 'jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day" (Alice in Wonderland)

* two truths and one lie

* if I weren't here, I'd be .... (thanks to Kate for this one)

* staying in bed when there is a world to save.

How to write

The best thing you can do as a writer is to find out what kind of writer you are.

And that means forgetting the set of rules which tell you that there is only way to write.

Some of us are slow burners, we carry a story or an idea around with us for days, sometimes months, and it has to find its own way of getting out. Try to force it and the story will just shrivel up.

Others prefer to be pushed. Set the timer, give us a starting light, and watch us go.

Some of us like writing in groups. Or the feeling of groups. On-line, in classes, with friends.

Others need complete hermit-like solitude. Even sitting in the same room as another writer freezes us.

None of these is wrong. In fact, I am and have been all of these. Sometimes it depends on what I am writing. Sometimes it depends on me, the writer, and how I feel.

But, over time, what I've come to realise is that I like a warm up before I start writing. Owen Sheers called it 'letting the rusty tap run clear.'

There are two ways I do this.

The first is morning pages. Every morning I sit down - often over a cup of coffee before anyone else is awake - and just write three pages of whatever comes into my head. It's an exercise from Julia Cameron. What I write depends on how I feel. Sometimes it's a list of moans ... I'm so tired, I'm so bored of hearing myself whine, I'm really cross with xxx ... but most often it starts of as a moan, and then something starts to connect. I write myself into ideas. I write myself out of ideas. I write myself into making sense of all these ideas, and into what I can do about them. I try out characters, reject them, write scenes, remember what it really feels like to have toothache, anything and everything.

My morning pages are an essential part of my day now. (I also do a fourth page of affirmations, but I want to write about that in a different post.) It's a way of establishing myself as a writer for the day. Even - especially - if it's the only writing I manage to do that day. I don't look back often, but when I do, I'm constantly surprised. It's better than a diary because it has the same ability to bring me back to how I was feeling at that moment, but more direct. it gives me back the fleeting thought I would otherwise have lost.

The second way I warm up is through my writing prompts (see the sidebar for my daily list, or follow me on twitter). Sitting down and writing something from a random idea is a completely different experience, almost as if another part of my brain engages itself in the act of writing. If my morning pages are about drifting across the lines, bringing up thoughts and feelings I wasn't aware of, using writing prompts mean I'm wholly aware and active on the page.

I often - no, always - don't know where I'm going, even though I wrote the prompt myself. I become aware of how I make conscious decisions as I go along. Not least in the shaping of the piece. My fifty word stories engage the same part of the brain too.

With my morning pages, I often finish mid-sentence. But with my writing prompts I am constantly crafting. It's good to start to realise what both feel like, and that I need somehow to combine the two in my 'proper' writing.

I'm not going to publish either set of pieces, or even edit them, but by doing the two together as part of my practice I can almost feel my writing muscles shift into gear. To expand. And both sets feel like gifts to me. To use a vegetable gardening analogy because I'm addicted to my allotment at the moment - my morning pages are unearthing what's already planted, however deep rooted, while the other is sewing new seeds and building new beds.

And now because I'm away for the next few days, here are some of my writing prompts for you to follow if you want to. Please feel free to link to whatever you produce in the comments section, or email me if you'd prefer. It's always such a real pleasure to see how the same few words end up with such totally different results!!!

Thurs 17th - She prays he won't come and sit next to her, but ...
Friday 18th - The list of things that annoy him about her
Sat/Sun 19/20 - You've never been up so early
Mon 21st - Things we never did together
Tues 22nd - I've taken up flying

And if you want to try other exercises, then I did a different kind of warm up on Scott Pack's blog recently. Also if you want to send me your favourite writing exercises, or warm ups, to share that would be great.

Weekly writing prompts

Sheila asked if I could put up the list of last weeks writing prompts for ones she missed and have now slipped off the side panel, so here goes:


Sunday 2nd - different chairs I have loved
Saturday 1st - the sound of love
Friday 29th - the things I have stolen
Thursday 28th - what you didn't say
Wednesday 27th - Before computers
Tuesday 26th - There was never any need
Monday 25th - Let me tell you about the plan

And for today - If I could do it all again

Writing Prompts

I have decided to organise my prompts better so instead of putting them in posts which you sometimes don't get until the evening, if at all, they will now be in the sidebar right below my biog details. There may be several days up there at a time, if I'm not sure when I'll be around, but the prompt for each day will be clearly marked, and you will be able to access it at a time that suits you.

If you hate this idea, then shout and I'll revert back, but it seems to make sense to me!

Perfection in a bar ....

Could it get better than this? Sadly, not a real Valentine's present but a photograph courtesy of the ever-web-vigilant and scrabulous ace, Alex:


But I was generous on Valentine's eve, and actually shared my own secret chocolate supplies with my writing group. (Sharing chocolate is something I do so rarely that it actually rendered my daughter speechless, so I must remember this in future when she starts telling me off for leaving my computer monitor on and single-handedly ruining the planet):



Although I noticed something interesting when everyone had gone and I was counting the buttons left (no, not really... oh well, OK, maybe a little bit) - no one seemed to like the white ones!



Yes, the writing life continues its hectic thrilling pace... not helped by the fact the dog still hasn't adjusted to her diet, and keeps checking her bowls just in case I've relented or the dog-food fairies have visited:




And my writing prompt for today is ... in the shop window ...

Your weekly dance ....

Kathryn and Alex, are you taking notes? We expect this on the poetry cafe ceiling next year...

And my prompt for today is ... dancing with a photograph ...

The Thing

I've written before about The Thing, a quarterly 'publication' whereby subscribers get a mystery, text-based object sent regularly. You can see a photograph of my blind by Miranda July up on the website here - I don't know why I get so much pleasure from Tunbridge Wells being featured on the world map here, but I do. Wish I'd thought to lean a bicycle up against it though, how cool does that look? Anyway, Issue 2 has been delayed and I'm eagerly waiting to see what Issue 3 will be, so if you're near San Francisco and fancy wrapping up my 'thing' for me so it gets here quicker, I'd be very grateful...

THE THING ISSUE #3
Wrapping Party at Chronicle books in San Francisco
If you are in San Francisco on Friday, February 15th, and looking for a way to perhaps wrap packages, tape boxes, drink beer, eat pizza, and listen to music on an old portable record player, then you are in luck because we will be doing all of this at the same time at Chronicle Books for the Wrapping Party of Kota Ezawa’s issue #3 of THE THING.
That’s right, Chronicle books is hosting the THE THING’s Issue #3 wrapping party in their very spacious lobby (which is not even a year old... it’s very nice). And we will be there wrapping from 4:00-7:00 PM. And we will have free beer and pizza (for a while at least). And you can bring a record and listen to it. And we will be very excited to say hello to you if you stop by.
Wrapping Time:
Friday, February 15th
4:00-7:00 p.m.

680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

And I didn't put up a prompt yesterday so here are two - yesterday, I worked with a list of brand names, writing down as many as I could and then shaping them into a poem.

Today will be ... It's very simple. It is love ...

Pearls before swine....

Happy to pass this on because it looks good...

A Call for Submissions

On 20th March Short Fuse Stories will be presenting a special themed line-up of short tales at The Komedia, Brighton.

We are currently inviting submissions for this event so if you fancy a bit of the Short Fuse literary limelight then please send us a story. Story selection is based purely on quality and not on performance experience or publication history.

The theme is "Pearls Before Swine"

Generally, to “cast pearls before swine” is to share something of value with those who will not appreciate it. Certainly food for thought but please interpret as you wish.

The word count should not exceed 3000 but can be any number down from that to 50.

Please send stories as Word attachments with your name as the document title by no later than 5pm on 14th March.

We look forward to reading your tales.

Tara Gould and Polly Tuckett
shortfusestories@yahoo.co.uk

So that will be today's prompt ... pearls before swine ... Think I'm going to have fun with this one!

Dailiness

I've been think about this a lot recently, the importance of Dailiness, not just because a friend has been talking about it and how important it is to her, but I've been wondering if it's not at the heart of my writing process. Just that practice of adding things on and on, rather than making huge random bursts of running at 'it'. It's not so much 'ordinariness' as one dictionary definition has it, but more as Randall Jarrell's poem celebrates,

And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

Surely, it's that wheel turning of its own weight that makes it all worth while.

This is why my daily prompts have been proving so useful to me. Not because in themselves they are producing fantastic pieces of work - or at least not for me - but because they are all adding slowly, slowly to the weight behind my process. It's a bit like meeting up with a friend you haven't seen for a long time. Sometimes you get lucky and you click back together as if you were only with them five minutes before, but just as often, anticipation sets in beforehand and it feels as if you HAVE to make it a big occasion. At these times you find it's only five minutes before you have to go that the two of you start talking about what's really important. And then you have to wait six months until the next meeting.

I can get like this with writing. If I don't do it for several days, I'm aware of circling the page, almost afraid of it, because when I do finally sit down and write, then I should be producing a brilliant piece of work - a 'big occasion'.

No, much better for me to try to inject some dailiness in my writing. Little ordinary things that will let me take the page for granted, in the hope that when something that does matter sneaks in round the side, the ground will be well prepared.

So my writing prompt for today is ... I thought I was meeting a stranger ...

And on the subject of prompts, I have put a new blog up on the sidebar. Sarah Charsley, one of the Your Messages contributors has started a new blog, with regular postings. Definitely worth reading.

Your Messages trailer...

Look, Your Messages has made You Tube, thanks to the amazing Jamieson


And my writing prompt for today is ... it could only have one ending ...

Shall we dance?

OK, it's not quite Spring in full bloom yet ...




But I started my writing classes again yesterday in my favourite cafe with a big, big heart, and it was great to be back ...



And it's one of my favourite eating days of the year ...




So all in all it feels good to be alive, and I'm keeping to my routine of begininng every writing session with a quick dance before sitting down. Vampire Weekend are doing it for me right now, not least because they sound like every band I've ever known, but new suggestions are more than welcome.

Although, of course, there's no need to dance if you don't feel like it ...



And my writing prompt for today is to start with the phrase ... I look at the photograph and I think ... five times, with five different photographs, five different scenarios.

Your Messages Round Up

There are posts about the Your Messages launch here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. I am sure there are even a few more I've missed so do please let me know, but in the meantime, I'm happy - just clicking back through all these and thinking how a little idea Lynne and I had about doing some writing together grew into this amazing project with such amazing people taking part.

And as announced at the launch, Jamieson Wolf put his message into a podcast so he could take part with all of us. It's here.

What exactly did we do before the internet? Hmmmm...

And the writing prompt for today is ... inheriting someone else's dreams ...

Yoga, cake? Cake, Yoga?

One of those Saturday morning choices I find it hard to make, but it looks like yoga's winning, so before I go and polish my halo, here's a quick writing prompt ... his hands ...

More later because several people have commented that the photographs below make it look like we had ourselves a bit of an earnest party. So, although I do have to say my idea of a good time IS when everyone just sits down quietly and listens to me, I want to do a round up of all the blogs that mention Your Messages and that's going to take some time ...

It's all about YOUR MESSAGES!

How very very beautiful is this ....?



A copy, hot off the press, of the Your Messages book, which contains a selection from the November collaborative project, Your Messages. I haven't been able to stop reading them - they're fantastic, and it's going to be a great evening tomorrow night meeting many of these writers personally. The strange thing is that I feel I know some of them already through the pieces they contributed throughout November, so it's going to be interesting to see if I've got it right.

And what's more - all the profits from the Your Messages book go to the charity, Kids Company. Think I'm proudest of that than anything else.

Because it's going to be a busy few days, here's a list of the prompts I'll be working with ...

Wednesday ... just like your mother...
Thursday ... It's no joke ...
Friday ... Fear me ...

I think they really liked me in Virginia...

One of the artists there even invited me to be photographed and included in a piece of work:



The fact that it's captioned, 'Sarah - dying - very painful' was perhaps a bit surprising, but nevertheless, I could still be the next Mona Lisa (if the lions don't get me first). It's strange looking at it, not every day you get to see your own death.

You can see more of Carlos's work here, I'm really excited about it (even if, a little disappointingly, it doesn't all feature me). Also his blog here.

And today's writing prompt is ... I need to tell you something ...

Lamb House and Co-incidences

One of the books I picked up in New York was this one, Lions at Lamb House:



It's a novel about a visit paid by Sigmund Freud to Henry James at his house in Rye. Part of the pleasure of reading it was that it reminded me, not just how much I like reading Henry James, or that I'm only half way through Peter Gay's brilliant biography of Freud, but how much I love Rye - luckily just an hour away from us at home so this weekend we went to the beach at nearby Camber Sands:



Everybody and their dog (and horse) seemed to be there too:



And after our walk, we went for a cup of hot chocolate in Rye and to see Lamb House:



One of the lovely scenes in Edwin M. Yoder's novel is a dangerous bicycle ride Freud took - arms and legs akimbo - down one of the cobbled paths leading to the sea road. I could imagine it perfectly when I saw this:



And of course, another writing resident of Lamb House was E F Benson, author of the fabulous Mapp and Lucia books. It was good to see that their gossipy spirit lived on in one of the Rye windows:




And my writing prompt for today is ... looking out of the window ...

Great Chieftan of the Pudding Race...

Of course for anyone with Scottish connections, there was only one thing to eat on Saturday night (should have been Friday but we were busy)...



We missed out the neeps but had tatties and cabbage. Look at the beauty spilling out when the casing gets split open ...



I interviewed someone from MacSween's once about their haggis, and was very impressed by them saying how their vegetarian version started off as a one-off joke but is now a best-seller. Last night we were trying to work out how many other successful business ideas started off as playing in some way. It's a bit like writing - the worst thing you can do is to try too hard to get it 'right' and forget what fun it should be.



And my writing prompt for today is ... what's in the shadows ...

My three nice things

I have been wondering about facebook. I'm on there, and am determined to win at least one game at scrabulous and scramble before I leave, but there's something about the status updates that are too weirdly addictive for me - both to write and to read. Maybe it's because you have to speak about yourself in the third person? Anyway, yesterday I put up that I wasn't nice to be around, which - as most people who know me will admit - isn't that much of an unusual thing and got some lovely emails asking what was wrong which cheered me up and made sense of the 'friends' thing. So today, Sarah is pure sunshine, and that's also partly because of three nice things that happened to her yesterday. They are, in no particular order:

1.



Watching Central Station. This has to be one of the strangest, funniest, sweetest films I've seen. Hurrah for Amazon's 'you might also like...' for introducing it to me.

2.



Reading Suzy Zeus Gets Organized by Maggie Robbins. I love novels in verse anyway, and Suzy Zeus is the genuine nobody's nice girl, so she was just right for my mood. After all...

'Suzy Zeus likes guys with handguns./Suzy Zeus likes beer in kegs.'

And she's also got a loser boyfriend called Harry:

'Touch him and she'll break your legs.'

A perfect model for my no-more-lovely-Sarah year, I feel ...

3. Hearing that the Blow Monkeys are getting back together. Of course, I've pre-ordered their forthcoming album, and am not listening to any of the rude comments I've been getting (you know who you are, Mr P...)about my boys, particularly Dr Robert.





And my writing prompt today is ... They always come to me ...