Twist your words, bend your body back
Writing tunes: Crane Your Neck, Lady Lamb
I know I promised fiction. I know I promised a break from the mundanity of non-fiction, of every-day article writing. But the truth is promises are made to be broken, no matter what Disney-infested dream world you (we all) grew up in. I’m simply not ready to publish my fiction. The cobwebs lie too thick upon my creative bones.
Here is my process on shaking those bones out.
Trying to write for myself after years of writing for the masses is no easy feat, so I’ve been experimenting in tasks and tactics to relinquish my firm hold on understandability and let some nonsense flow. Nonsensical is the devil to content marketers. Nonsensical is what I’m now driving towards.
Generally, writer’s block is what I trip over when it comes to creative writing. There are too many formulas rattling around in my head to pick one out and start building something out of it. Think of my creativity as a giant tub full of LEGOs with no instruction manual. There are infinitesimal possibilities of builds- how can I choose just one?
Enter Magic Realism Bot. Twitter is [can be] a beautiful thing, especially when it creates super random writing prompts that are totally nonsensical and in a genre I enjoy.
“In Dublin there is an orchid which has petals in the shape of prime numbers.”
“A princess decides to marry every piglet in Wales.”
“A rabbi makes a samosa. Inside it is disappointment.”
“An anaesthetist is playing ping-pong. Suddenly, the ping-pong ball turns into a fashion stylist.”
Is your brain not already exploding with possibilities?
The task:
- Choose a tweet/prompt
- Sit down at typewriter and set timer for 10 minutes
- Write without stopping
One of the biggest fears of writing is imperfection, is taking a story in a way you didn’t mean to. This is why I explore these prompts the old fashioned way with my typewriter (yeah, yeah, I guess I’m a little bit hipster). There is no delete key on that thing. There is only forward. I have to just go with whatever I’m building and make it work.
Sometimes I totally fail, and that’s ok.
The point is that I’m writing, finally.
The problem is that it’s all up to me to actually do this exercise. Who is holding me accountable? Who is pushing me to create? This was my struggle. No one was pushing me to write, I just did it when I wanted to, when I felt the drive to sit with a pint of beer in front of my old typewriter and playact at being Mary Oliver.
Find a creative partner.
Luckily I already have a very creative partner. Her day job is teaching elementary school kids art, but she struggles with exactly what I struggle with. Namely, we never create for ourselves anymore. I don’t write for myself; she doesn’t make art for herself.
So I stole an idea from my dear friend, who is also doing this writing project with me. It was similar to the aforementioned structure, but added another person to the mix.
Make a creative prompt exchange.
My partner and I both chose our own prompt that spoke to us. With the timer set, we sat down and either wrote or painted. Then we would switch. I would write a story based off whatever she drew and she would illustrate something from whatever I wrote. At the end of the process we would share what the original prompts are. Think of it like Exquisite Corpses 2.0.
Since there are two of us we are both beholden to the other. We push the other to sit down and create, to work together to make something nonsensical. It means there is accountability.
I strongly urge you to find your own way to create, to find what inspires you to create. But most importantly, how to push yourself to create and not just zone out to yet another episode of something terrible on Netflix. Let’s do this together.
If you want someone to hold you accountable, or someone to trade prompts with, let me know! Let’s create something!
Writing [Creative] prompt generators:
- Magical Realism Bot (Twitter)
- Dystopian YA Novel (Twitter)
- Seventh Sanctum Writing Prompt Generator
