Writer's Journal

09/29/21
For each exercise - choose a different person or issue  in the news today, including pop culture: 
1. Write your own version of thirteen ways of looking at something, inspired by Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" - write these 13 things about a way of looking at a issue or person
2. Listen to Baz Luhrman's "Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)" and write your own freewrite on the life advice you could dispense - imagine yourself talking to someone or an issue in the news today, including pop culture
3. Start with the prompt "You taught me" and freewrite - think about a person or issue in the news today, including pop culture
09/14/21​
  1. List point form all the stories you have to tell (real or imagined)
  2. List point form all the versions of you: Answer a few points for each of these: I was, I am, I will be, I wish ​
  3. Freewrite inspired by Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things specifically "Ode to My Socks" and "Ode to a Bar of Soap"​
09/10/21 ​
  1. Watch Brad Herzog's TED talk "A Writer's Secrets to Catching Creative Ideas"; make a list of everyday mundane things to wonder out loud about
  2. List all the things you're good at / know about, from the serious to the odd; in a second column list as many processes, phenomena, relationships, sequences etc that you can think of that have to do with the natural world - such as migration, constellations, planets with moons, a tidal wave, leaves falling, etc.
  3. Choose one from each column that make sense together - that people would see compared - to create your own analogy (like Herzog's writing is like fishing)
  4. List the qualities, steps, properties, aspects of each one to use as the basis of your comparison
  5. Freewrite a vignette describing (showing not telling) how these two processes / relationships / phenomena are alike
09/08/21
  1. Inspired by Anne Lamott's TED talk "12 Truths I learned from Life and Writing". List the 12 truths you know for sure.
  2. Freewrite and extend one of them. ​