WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM?
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A Writer's Notebook is a small notebook that a writer uses on a daily basis to write down ideas, bits and pieces of dialog, and other story data. It is a place to reflect on your writing process and gather ideas for a future writing projects. You might write down interesting words you overhear, descriptions that suddenly come to you, or ideas you want to remember. Ideally, writers carry their notebook with them everywhere because ideas can strike at any time. Maybe while walking through the mall, you see an interesting shopper and want to remember what she looks like, her quirks and descriptions, such as clothes worn, different habits, mannerisms, and other characteristics unique to that individual. A Writer's Notebook is a way of capturing a little slice of life.
Use your notebook to breathe in the world around you. You can write about:
All these ideas come to you from Ralph Fletcher's site, which is full of great ideas for aspiring writers.
During our first week together, we'll be trying to generate a variety of ideas for potential pieces in our Writer's Notebook. We'll play with a number of writing prompts and styles in order to give us some ideas for writing more polished pieces later on in our quarter together.
Writer Georgia Heard offers some wonderful advice in her book on writing titled Writing Toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Finding Your Way on where to begin your search for ideas. We will begin our search for ideas by reading selection from Ms. Heard's book. Each selection ends with a writing prompt, which we will complete in our Writer's Notebooks.
I call gathering words this way creating a wordpool. This process helps free us to follow the words and write poems." (10)
white puppy petal
you gorgeous milk fluff
sleep all day lick
tiny love from time
and dream
Good writing, writing that really speaks to us usually connects with us because the writer has made him or herself vulnerable.
Good writing is not generic or vague. It is specific, it is detailed, and often the writer has taken a personal risk to share something personal with us the reader. So here's what I'm going to ask you: take a risk. Good writing comes from a vulnerable place. Now I'm not asking you to write about your most painful memories or experiences. Instead, what I'm asking you to do is to be willing to step outside your comfort zone. If you usually poems, take a risk and try rewriting one of your poems as an essay. If you generally write fantasy stories about a distant future, step outside your comfort zone to write a poem. By taking that risk, by being a bit vulnerable, you may just be surprised about the writing that you can do!
Here's what Susan Goldsmith Woolridge in her book Poemcrazy has to say about taking risks:
Chapter 20: Snowflakes and Secrets, pages 74-75
Let's try this exercise:
excerpt from Poemcrazy
Chapter 21: Listening to our Shadow, pages 76-79
When I was young my favorite book was Now We are Six by A.A. Milne. My mother tells me I never wanted to turn seven. It seemed like a serious mistake to me. I wasn't eager to become a grownup along with everyone else wearing tie shoes. Before turning seven, I wanted time to stop.
Later I learned that the psychologist Carl Jung suggested (as A.A. Milne and I must have known instinctively) that when we're about seven we separate from and then bury or repress whatever parts of us don't seem to be acceptable in the world around us. According to Jung, these unacceptable parts become our shadow.
If we're shy and withdrawn, it's our shadow who's doing flamenco dances on a table in a nightclub. If we're always doing good turns and being obedient teenagers, it's our shadow who's sneaking out the window at night and coming back muddy and hung over at dawn. If we're rebellious, disobedient and procrastinating, it's our shadow who's on the honor roll.
Laura, with long blond hair, a health food, vegetarian diet and a hand-built house in the pines, discovered her shadow dresses in tight black leather, wears spike heels, has straight black hair, red lips and black nail polish. She smokes cigarettes through a long, metal cigarette holder. Another friend who dresses in baggy sweats has a persnickety shadow in tailored business suits.
I meet often with my shadow. She's a statuesque Greek goddess who sometimes brings me messages through a cool and unavailable grey cat. I've taken the more boring role of wife, mother and responsible citizen (though my daughter tells me not to worry, I'm weird enough).
To become more fully who we are, it's a good idea to invite our shadow to speak now and then. In the meditation/visualization I practice, I talk with my shadow most evenings about the next day. I'm disorganized and she's the master planner. She knows how to give me free time, which I rarely allow. And I try to spend Thursdays letting her inform me and often take me shopping. She's more extravagant than I am.
Once in Santa Monica she urged me to buy an outrageously expensive ocean green, ripply dress like the one she wears, Greek leopard straps. She wanted me to wear this to a high school reunion, but I didn't have the courage. Here's a poem I work to her shortly after our shopping trip,
My shadow wears
leopard shoes
ocean dress
leopard hat
and she knows
the order of things. Her hair
in green vines
and she lives
to drive men wild,
they walk babbling into the sea.
The mousier I act
the more men she drowns.
My shadow is a grey cat
who makes lizards drop
their frenzied tails
and makes me
wear her
shoes.
Since then my shadow has come closer. I'm listening and we're usually friends. I just shut my eyes and ask her to appear. Sometimes if I've neglected her, she seems negative or angry until I begin to listen. I ask her what she needs from me. Lately she's been telling me to wear white. She likes me to dance. I need to ask her where and when. Often she wants me to shut doors and get to bed by ten to read. She likes to help me cut my writing. She always reminds me to breathe more deeply. She wants to be on the cover of this book in black, leaping.
Recently my shadow has been asking me to follow her through a rocky valley without looking back. Last week she showed me how to dance me how to dance a little jig along the way. She's dressed in white herself in what appears to be a bridal gown. I think she wants me to wed her, the disowned half of myself, and begin to experience the unknown: the feeling of being whole.
PRACTICE:
Find a quiet place, sit down, shut your eyes and ask your shadow to appear. Your shadow may be angry, weak, sad or frightened because he or she hasn't had a chance for expression. When you bring your shadow to consciousness and begin to meet his or her needs, the figure's appearance will probably change.
Begin a conversation with your shadow. If you're willing, invite him or her to become part of your life.
Describe him or her. Not the changes in appearance as your conversation continues.
Ask what your shadow needs from you to have a positive role in your world.
Where can you meet? What would your shadow like you to do together?
Make a date to meet with your shadow once a week or, if you prefer, every day at a certain time. Let your shadow pick the time and place.
Write all this down.
Let your shadow write a poem.
As writers, we are sometimes guilty of censorship. Not of censoring others, but of censoring ourselves. We write what we think others want to read, not what we really think or feel. Writer Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge writes about this in her book poemcrazy. One way that she thinks about this self-censorship is as her shadow. She says that we hide parts of ourselves that we think will not be accepted; they become part of our shadow-selves. "To become more fully who we are, it's a good idea to invite our shadow to speak now and then," she writes (77).
What does the voice of your shadow have to say? It's time you give your shadow voice.
OUR ASSIGNMENT HANDOUT, DIRECTIONS FOR POSTING, AND GRADING RUBRIC
Having trouble coming up with ideas for your writing? Check out these resources: