Writer's Day - 23 January 2010

Saturday morning had me awake at 6:30, thinking about the day ahead. Writing day for four poet friends, and I was *do* looking forward to it. Out of bed at 7:15, and I spent the next hour + hunting and gathering:

1 pillow
1 leopard print fleece snuggle blanket
1 pr. LLBean boots
1 fleece sweater
socks
fleece slippers
2 journals
2 poetry idea books
laptop and cord
20 flax seed cookies
1 bowl of flour + rising ingredients
buttermilk
green onions and grated cheddar
1 bag of Staci's pita chips
reading glasses, 1.25
various notes and assorted papers

I know there was more. I was like a camel, ready for a trek across the desert. Only, when I arrived at A's house, I stocked a plate with fresh fruit and granola, a glass of OJ, and camped directly on the sofa, my pillow beside me, my laptop on my lap, and the woodstove going. We were ready to write.

There were four of us: me, A, K, and J. K and J supplied us with many wonderful exercises, and if you want to see what we did (not the end results, but the actual exercises), check out K's blogpost for other juicy details.

We began with a few 3 and 4-minute warm-ups, with prompts, then launched into the good stuff. One of our favorites is the anagram poem, where we all chose a word, looked up anagrams for said word, and wrote a poem from that.

The Anagrammer site: http://www.anagrammer.com/

Our anagram word was: "Separately"

Here are some of the words that could be used in the poem:

Paralyse, parley, parsley, tersely, pearly, lately, etc. You get the idea. If you really want to challenge yourself, end each line of your poem with one of the anagram words. Use anywhere from 10-20 words.

Another great exercise was a DIY poem. K copied off a few do-it-yourself instruction sheets, with anything from building a bird house to how to speak in public, changing the subject of the how-to by switching the word. For instance, instead of building a wall, you would change the word to "emergency," but keep the instructions the same. To find some good how-to's, visit Wiki How.

Or, write a poem from a couple of fortunes. Requirement, you must open and eat two fortune cookies before commencing writing.

You get the idea. . . it's a few hours of reaching in to find your creativity. If you feel brave, share your work in between exercises. Remember to stop for lunch, snacks, a yoga break, a walk on the beach. Here are a few photos of our beach walk:


We wrote from about 9:30 until 4:30 or 5, with brief breaks in between. I got 11 pages of stuff to play with now, and a couple of poems that are nearly done. Well worth it! Oh, and remember to have dinner at the end, and enjoy a glass of wine.