A LIST OF TOPICS FOR WRITING PRACTICE

Sometimes we sit down to write and can't think of anything to write about. The blank page can be intimidating, and it does get boring to write over and over again for ten minutes of practice, "I can't think of what to say. I can't think of what to say."

Making a list is good. It makes you start noticing material for writing in your daily life, and your writing comes out of a relationship with your life and its texture. In this way, the composting process is beginning. Your body is starting to digest and turn over your material, so even when you are not actually at the desk physically writing, there are parts of you raking, fertilizing, taking in the sun's heat, and making ready for the deep green plants of writing to grow.

But until you get your own list, here are some writing ideas:

1. Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don't worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north----just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, half an hour.
2. Begin with "I remember." Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don't be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago. everything that isn't this moment is memory coming alive again as you write. If you get stuck, just repeat the phrase "I remember" again and =keep going.
3. Take something you feel strongly about, whether it is positive or negative, and write about it as though you love it. Go as far as you can, writing as though you love it, then flip over and write about the same thing as though you hate it. Then write about it perfectly neutral.
4. Choose a color----for instance, pink----and take a fifteen-minute walk. On your walk notice wherever there is pink. Come back to your notebook and write for fifteen minutes.
5. Write in different places. Write what is going on around you.
6. Give me your morning. Be as specific as possible. Slow down in your mind and go over the details of the morning.
7. Visualize a place that you really love, be there, see the details. Now write about it. When someone else reads it, she should know what it is like to be there.
8. Write about "leaving." Approach it in any way you want.
9. What is your first memory?
10. Who are the people you have loved?
11. Write about streets of your city.
12. Describe a grandparent.
13. Write about:

    swimming
    the stars
    the most frightened you've ever been
    green places
    how you learned about sex
    the closest you ever felt to God or nature
    reading and books that have changed your life
    physical endurance
    a teacher you had
    Don't be abstract.  Write the real stuff.  Be honest and detailed.
     
     

14. Take a poetry book. Open to any page, grab a line, write it down and continue from there.
15. What kind of animal are you? Do you think you are really a cow, chipmunk, fox, horse underneath?

 
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