Writing Practice 1.1
Day One: January 1, 2024. Plus, I sent you a voice memo.
Happy New Year, readers, and welcome to your first day of Writing Practice. Paid subscribers to this newsletter will receive daily Writing Practice prompts as well as related readings, and on occasion some tips and thoughts for how to structure and refine your writing. Free subscribers will receive weekly Writing Practice prompts on Mondays. If you’d like to upgrade your subscription, click the button below:
In my off-of-this-newsletter life, I teach writing courses. Those typically involve bringing a small group of people somewhere very lovely and hosting daily writing workshops that involve reading, reflecting, skill-building, receiving writing prompts, and then putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards). Most people who come to these workshops are not professional writers, but people seeking to establish more consistency with their writing, or hoping to make writing a more integrated part of their lives. The only way to do it is to do it – the only way to be a writer is to write.
But for many of us, writing every day is hard. So for this first month of the new year, I will send around the kinds of prompts I offer in my in-person writing workshops for those newsletter readers who are looking to cultivate a daily writing practice. These emails will all be titled “Writing Practice” so you can easily find them — and so you can easily skip them if writing isn’t your thing. Regular newsletters will continue as usual.
You can read more about what this month will entail in the introductory Writing Practice post here.
This first week we will be digging into the self: Who we are as writers, and how our backgrounds shape our creative work. You, the writer, sit somewhere in the world. You, the writer, have a story (many stories), and maybe some of them are about you, and maybe none of them are. But any story you tell will be shaped by the fact that you, with your history and experiences and interests, are the one writing it. Understanding who you are is critical for making work that is original and authentic. And so the prompts this week will ask you to consider your own sense of security, of scarcity, of rootedness, and of connection to your past and to the world around you now.
I’ve laid even more of this out in the voice memo below. Usually when I teach writing classes I’m talking, and so I thought it might be useful to hear me chat through some of the concepts we’ll touch on this week. Give it a listen if you want more context / this week’s bigger picture.
Happy New Year, and happy writing. Your first prompt is below.
Welcome to Writing Practice. The idea is simple: I send out a prompt, often with links to related published pieces to help fuel creativity. Then you write.
Write as much or as little as you like. I would recommend not over-thinking this, and just using it as an opportunity to jot down some words. I would also recommend just writing through – don’t try to make it perfect (that’s for later).
Some of these prompts may resonate, and you’ll find yourself writing paragraph after paragraph. Others will fall flat, and you’ll roll your eyes, or come up empty and feel frustrated. This, too, is part of having a regular writing practice. On those days of frustration or blockage, try to write something down anyway – even just one sentence, even just one word. And then take heart in the reality that, if we are lucky, there is always tomorrow.
WRITING PRACTICE DAY ONE
Where do you feel the most grounded, calm, and stable? Take us there. Using sensory detail, describe the place, how you feel when you’re there, how your body feels. Use the place to give us a little bit of insight into who you are. Then re-read and edit out cliches. Where have you used descriptors, phrases, or words that are imprecise or someone else’s, not your unique observations? Can you dig deeper to put words to how something actually felt / looked / smelled / was?
Here is a great piece to read today, and here is another.
xx Jill