Writer’s Notebook Prompts, 1-8 (Journaling)

These prompts are designed to help you develop a regular writing practice. Each handout will provide a set of writings prompts that will ask you to draw on your personal observations. Some will be based on readings from our class OpenLab site. Try to do 2-3 from each handout on your own time. Please note: you are not required to do all of these; you are to use them as inspiration for freewriting.

1. In Rumi’s “Don’t Go Back to Sleep,” the poet discusses the importance of staying “awake.” He encourages us to cultivate a sense of wakefulness or consciousness in order to more fully live our lives. Read this poem on our class site. Then, do this:

• Observe and note throughout the course of a single afternoon experiences that make you more aware of being present or awake.
• Note how doing the exercise affected your attention to “paying attention.”
• Write a notebook entry of 200-400 words in paragraphs, sentences, or lists that detail what you observed from your single day (some have called such observances ”specimen days” ) and/or what you learned about paying attention to details that ordinarily go unnoticed.

 

2. Read Virginia Woolf’s diary entry for Aug. 20, 1932 on our website. Notice how Woolf doesn’t simply say the day is hot. She illustrates “hot” with images of people she sees dealing with the heat and provides statistics, “it’s not been so hot for 20 years.” Woolf also gives an account by hour of the heat. After you have read, do this:

• Go outside. In 200-400 words, describe the weather using Woolf’s diary entry as a model.
• You might use her example of choosing one word and illustrating it with multiple images. For example, if it is cold, how do people you see respond to the cold? Is there salt on the subway steps? Do you see things on the ground because you are keeping your head bent?

 

3. Read again Virginia Woolf’s diary entry for Aug. 20, 1932. After her vibrant description of the weather, she writes of the importance of noticing the “width and amusement of human life.” She describes at length an old woman who is suffering and then ends the entry with a conclusion about human life based on her observations of that one person. Do this:

• Describe someone you see but don’t know. You might choose someone in the subway, a café, or in your workplace. It may be someone you speak to or someone you simply observe online in a Zoom class.
• Use Woolf’s writing as model. What is the person saying? What is the person looking for or at? What is the person physically doing as you make your observations?
• Importantly: end your observation with a conclusion that is larger than just the individual as Woolf does. Make the experience “pan out” to include others or even the reader.

 

4. In Joan Didion’s essay “Why I Write,” the writer explores her creative craft and process. For Didion, certain memories or events have a “shimmering” quality to them. (For her, good sentences also have the possibility of “shimmering.”) These memories that “shimmer” are stories she knows or senses she will be compelled to write even if she isn’t certain why when she begins the process. Do this:

• Find and describe a physical object that literally shimmers for you. Choose something, an object, windows on a building, a glass sitting in sunlight, the sun striking the side of a falafel cart, a silver bowl on a metal countertop, the subway train emerging from the tunnel, a set of metal measuring spoons hanging on a rack in a bright restaurant kitchen after midnight, anything! Seek out an object that shimmers and try to describe, in 200-400 words the object as well as that particular sense of light.
• In keeping with Didion’s essay, write about an experience that metaphorically shimmers for you. You may not know why this experience is so clear in your memory. Write your way to understanding why you come back to this.
• If you get stuck, reread Didion’s essay, “Why I Write” on our class OpenLab site.

 

5. In the TedTalk “Where Does Creativity Hide?” the fiction writer Amy Tan discusses ideas about where her creative process began and how she cultivated it. In the first minutes of her video, Tan discusses her family stories and the role she played in them. Think about family stories that get told and retold in your family. These might be stories that involve you or stories that involve other members of your family, present or past. This unique material, the good, the bad, the uncomfortable, is one of your great sources of material. Do this:

• In 200-400 words, write a story that comes from your family. This story will be easiest to record if it has a clear beginning and end. Avoid simply writing about a single image or memory.
• If you get stuck, listen again to Tan’s TedTalk, “Where Does Creativity Hide?”

 

6. This is a freewrite we typically do in an in-person class when we discuss the Writer’s Notebook. This freewrite generates lots of ideas and the important thing is to write for ten minutes without stopping.

• Start with the phrase: I remember. . . .
• If you get stuck, end the sentence that you are on and begin the next sentence by repeating the phrase: I remember…
• By the end of ten minutes, you will have a series of memories that may be disconnected, but the phrase “I remember” will make them stick together

7. This is a two part exercise for noticing things in your daily life and for trusting what Didion calls the “implacable I” in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook.” Even if you don’t go outside much these days, you can do this.
   1. Think of yesterday’s course of events. Write down a few events from the day.
   2. Choose one of these events and describe that one in detail. Think of places, people, and overall movement in the scene.
   3. Add a feeling that you had when experiencing this event or a feeling someone else present might have had.
   4. Add colors to your description. What colors might illustrate the feeling that you experience?
   5. If applicable, add dialogue that highlights the feeling you remember.
   6. How does this relate to the “implacable I” Joan Didion writes about in “On Keeping a Notebook.” How is this perspective particular to YOU or your experience?

Then…..read aloud what you wrote, preferably to someone else.

• When reading, focus on your own words. Who is this “I” that Joan Didion mentions?
• If reading to someone else: the listener should not comment until you are finished reading. When you are finished, the listener should try to repeat what the reader just wrote. The goal is not for the listener to “memorize” what the reader is saying or repeat it by reading the selection again. The goal is for the writer to hear what was heard.
• If reading out loud alone, how does the “I” feel? If you were told not to use “I” when writing, this may be a particularly useful exercise.

 

8. In James Baldwin’s Paris Review interview “The Art of Fiction, No. 78”, he states: “a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality.”

Think about why putting down what you see might be a risk and who might want to control your reality. (This will be different for everyone.) To explore further, try this:

• Write 200-400 words about a memory or experience that feels risky to record. Write without stopping. Write anything that comes up.
• After you get to the end, take a break. Then come back and reread what you wrote. What can you add as you re-write? Try not to censor what you’ve written; just notice where you can add more.
• You might add a second section writing out why this feels risky. How does this memory make you feel? What are the consequences of writing about this scene?