Remember what you’ve already learnt
It takes a Substack community to raise a writer
I need to challenge myself a bit more. As you would already know if you’ve read the last couple of newsletters, I’ve been very conscious of my creativity at the moment. Capturing it, crafting it, honing it. The lot. I’ve lost my groove a little. There are flutters of ideas floating around in my head without gravity. Nothing is anchoring my ideas down at the moment. I’ve struggled to commit enough time to write over the summer and I feel ready to put a bit more graft in as we move into September. I’ll stop there as I don’t want to keep repeating myself or sound like a broken record. I’m not trying to bore you to sleep here. STAY WITH ME.
So, I thought this week it would be good to push myself into Drafting something a little more creative. I decided to channel what I learned from going to
’s workshop a few weeks ago and write a new piece of nonfiction using her prompts. If you missed it, read about what I took from the session here. I went for the same method of brainstorming emotions, places and items and then picking one from each category. I ended up with mournful, shopping centre and blanket.You begin with the sentence “When she looked at the [OBJECT] she felt [EMOTION]” and then keep writing continuously without stopping to think of major edits or improvements. Here’s what came out this time around…
When she looked at the blanket she felt mournful that summer was nearly over. She’d popped to the shops for some milk as she desperately needed a coffee before work and had initially woken up feeling pretty good. It had been something of a rarity for the past few weeks. Since the breakup and moving into her sister’s place nearly a month ago, she’d trudged along day after day in a thick, impenetrable haze. Her sister worked abroad a lot and so she’d spent a lot of time alone, sometimes going days without speaking out loud to anyone at all. Ignoring the texts and calls from concerned friends checking in. Accepting only the most basic freelancing requests on Fiverr to avoid conversations with strangers. Surviving on a diet of mostly biscuits gone soft and PotNoodle.
Today had felt different. She wasn’t scared to face the world. No longer driven by anxiety to order groceries from Deliveroo to avoid showering and leaving the house. There was a spark; an ember. Something that morning had pushed her to get up and get on with things. So she did.
It was a huge mistake. She hadn’t given much thought to the fact it was the summer holidays and so as soon as she got inside there was a sea of flailing arms, sticky hands and too much screaming to contend with. BACK TO SCHOOL was printed in big letters, suspended from the ceiling over the aisles selling lunch boxes and uniforms. She felt a pang and for a second wished she was one of those children. That her mum was here right now buying her new school shoes so she could watch her dad polish them in the shed the night before school started, as butterflies took flight in her tummy.
Near the front of the store was a big cardboard box of reduced-to-clear summer sale items. That’s where the blanket was. The exact same as the one she and her boyfriend had bought on a whim last summer. They’d planned an impromptu picnic in the park and whilst getting supplies she’d convinced him they needed something other than their jumpers to sit on. The blanket was a milky white with a red checked pattern, almost like tartan. At each cross of the check pattern were flowers in all different colours. He’d hated it. This made her like it even more.
There you have it. The end result of harnessing some creative energy. I sat and wrote straight for around 20 minutes without stopping, staying entirely focused on the next sentence. Not fixating on if this is a work of marvel- it’s not- and it’s not supposed to be either. But it’s such a useful way to get back into a flow and dedicate even the shortest amount of time to producing something, anything. If you have a go yourself, would love to hear how you get on!