Writing helps heal, inspire, and celebrate self, family, and community.
Writing helps me find clarity and understanding, answers questions, and sharpens the focus of my senses on feelings through creative expression. Writing is one way that allows me to walk through pain and confusion and emerge with deeper insight and healing. It is also an excellent way to celebrate family and community, helping me feel more connected with my life. Most of my poetry comes from memories and feelings I have explored through my daily writing practices. This practice is short – 15 minutes maximum but it is a guaranteed way to get your juices flowing and fill your page with new ideas, jumping off points for your poems and stories.
A Short Daily Writing Practice That Will Enhance Your Writing.
Take a moment to stop and look around you. Look with curiosity and compassion. It is amazing what happens when we sit and watch the world. There is a tiny part in all of us where wonderment lives, the place where questions begin to form, and we begin to ponder.
One of the first practices I developed when beginning to write was to learn how to watch the world.
I usually start my morning writing practice by sitting still and looking at the horizon within any room that I’m in. I open my eyes to take in a broad, comprehensive view, taking in everything within my sight, slowly allowing my attention and vision to become narrower. When I do this, it can bring beautiful things to the surface. The world begins to speak to me in extraordinary ways.
The first step in developing a meaningful writing practice is to find this state of wonderment in our surroundings and allow ourselves to feel in the moment.
“The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.”
Eckhart Tolle
PRACTICE:
Tuning into our environment is good practice to help us sink into our minds and open the doorway to our feelings and memories, which often makes us feel appreciation, gratitude, and a connection to life.
Looking around you, what do you see? (example a lime green chair sitting in the corner of your room)
Ask yourself a few questions about this chair.
- Begin your practice by writing words that describe the lime green chair. Write down every word that comes to your mind without questioning it.
Sample answers for #1. Describe the lime green chair.
- restful
- big cushions
- white wood
- charming
- delightful
- gorgeous
- comfortable
- cozy
- feathery
- snug
- secure
- creaks
- lime green
- chartreuse
- cavalier
- mildew
- baby powder
- dusty
2. Secondly, look at the chair again and ask yourself, “What does this lime green chair mean to me in my life? Do I know this chair? What is its significance? How do I feel about this chair?
For example,
- The fluffy lime green chair in the corner of my bedroom holds me while I write.
- It saved me when I was sick
- It helps me to feel solid and secure.
- This seat is where I nursed my baby every day for nine months.
- I blew out the candles on my 50th birthday while sitting on this chair
- my son sat on my lap, and I read to him.
- My mother loved this chair and gave it to me when it no longer fit in her home.
- This chair reminds me of my mom.
- I felt loved when she held and read to me in this chair.
This short 15-minute morning writing practice can act as a doorway to hundreds of memories, and each memory is a jumping-off place for a poem in waiting. A poem about my 50th birthday party, nursing my children, and feel loved and supported all surround the lime green chair.
I take my journals full of daily writing practices just like this, and once every few months, I go back through them and pull out the lines and words that speak to me, just like the ones above. My journals are full of my life, and poetry and writing come from my life experiences. This practice has helped me write hundreds of poems.
(This is a quick poem I wrote as an example) Tribute to A Chair The humble lime green, dusty chair my confidant, thats always there, standing in place. Waiting, for me to get home, calls out to me to rest these tired and aching bones. My quiet need. You've held my weight through out the years, while nursing babies, crying countless tears. Thank you, for being there in the corner, so cavalier.