⚡Recap of "Simply Begin Again" Generative Writing Workshop⚡

so you can begin again on your own even if you missed the workshop

Oct 01, 2024

Welcome to Be Where You Are. I’m a poet and essayist & I teach writing workshops for the Madwomen in the Attic. My most recent book is the poetry collection, The Falls—you can find more info on Instagram or my website.

⚡Recap of our Simply Begin Again: Generative Writing Workshop⚡

This weekend, we had our first generative writing workshop focused on simply beginning again, and it was so much fun. The massive grin on my face in this still shot on the video below is from real, true joy. As one writer put it, “it was an important reminder for me that there's pleasure in the process if i get out of its way!” Amen.

You can watch the workshop in full here and write along with it if you need some prompts to get going again but you missed it live.

Here are prompts & highlights in writing if that’s more your cup of tea

Even if we have a solid foundation of a writing practice, life is always intervening! There are always more pressing or important things to do than slow down and write. But writing is important and we—and the world—gain so much by making time for it.

Meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein says we should “try to “delight in” that moment of “remembering” or realizing that we’ve gotten off track, rather than judging ourselves. Delighting in realizing I'm off track feels like a stretch for me TBH! But I love it as an ideal.

Reflective writing: Medicines and Poisons

We’re going to start with a reflective writing prompt called “Medicines & Poisons” that will help us clear out the cobwebs in our brains and hearts a bit. I do this exercise in my notebook every few months. I wrote about this prompt in more depth here: https://emilymohnslate.substack.com/p/medicines-and-poisons

It’s really helpful to apply this to your writing life (but if you’d rather apply it generally to your life and emotional, mental health, that’s great, too).

Take a few minutes to reflect and write your own lists focused on your writing life or your life in general.

What are your medicines?
What opens you up and brings you energy? What makes you feel more alive, or safe, or most fully yourself? What helps heal you when you feel stressed or overwhelmed? What gets you going again with your writing? What helps you keep writing?

What are your poisons?
What stops you from writing or from believing in your voice? What closes you off and keeps you in the corn maze of your own mind? What makes you feel trapped or small? What are those things that you can convince yourself will feel good, but actually, ultimately, make you feel bad?

Lastly, take a few minutes to reflect on these before we move on. Look back at your lists:

—How can you bring more of certain medicines into your life?

—Are there any poisons on your list that you’ve known about for a long time, but keep taking anyway?

—How can you mount another effort to bring more of that medicine into your life, or not to take that poison?

Word-collecting prompt

The next exercise is one I call “Word-collecting.” Sometimes, a good way to get started writing again is to let yourself fall in love with words again through reading and listening to rich language, and just try to collect or find words that are already out there rather than starting with a totally blank page. This exercise came to me from a dear friend, poet and writer, Sharon Fagan McDermott. She has an excellent craft of writing book that just came out last year, co-authored with M.C. Benner-Dixon: Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life.

Here’s the prompt:

I’m going to read a poem aloud and your job is to listen and “collect” words. Just listen and make a list of words that vibrate for you, that call out to you.
1. (Note: The poem is by Carolyn Oliver, from her first book, Inside the Storm, I want to Touch the Tremble. Here’s the poem, “My Son Asks if I’d Rather Live in a House Infested by Bees or a House Infested by Koalas”—if you’d like to see the text as well, while listening to me read it in the video above. Also: look out for an interview from Carolyn soon!)
Try to resist making the words connect to what you want to write about, at least at first, while you’re collecting. Just jot down a list of words that sound good to your ear— the ones that have an energy that call out to you. That sound good and feel good to you…
Then, write a draft using your list. Try to use at least 5-10 of the words (but it’s really up to you and your process).
It can be any genre, any style. Just write…don’t edit. Just write, try to get into the flow…don’t beat yourself up if you don’t. Just write what comes.

7 observations

The last prompt is another old trusty that’s helped me get going again many times. I wrote about this prompt last fall here. I learned about this prompt from another dear writer friend, Jennifer Stewart Miller. We were talking about how hard it is to write in the midst of all the things and she said that the poet Elaine Sexton suggested that even on your busiest days, you can always make a list of seven observations. Jen said to me, “I tell myself, come on, you can just list out 7 things!”

So, let’s do it:

My favorite way to do this is to go on a short walk – even just up the street and back. If that sounds good to you and doable to go on a short walk right now to do this, go for it.
You can also just go sit somewhere else in your house where you don’t usually sit b/c you tend to notice what’s around you more in a slightly new space. But you can also do it just as well from your chair or in your home! And just try to really look with fresh eyes
Wherever you are, look around and really try to see what you’re seeing.
Make a list of 7 observations.
Be sure to include sensory details.
Don’t worry about full sentences. Just get the details down. You’ll be surprised what you forget later when you’re not in the moment.

Set a timer for ten minutes. Then, come back and do the next step.

Once you have your list, look back over it and circle the one or two that have the most “heat” or power for you.
Write using that as your on-ramp…in any genre, style, etc.

If you need another on-ramp, try one or two of these:
- Pick out a noun/object from your list and use that with a verb or adjective from a different line in your list. See what combining those disparate elements does…
- Bring in at least one hedging word (a word that expresses doubt) (examples: sometimes, perhaps, maybe, might, etc)

Moving forward: you can do this as a back and forth process with a friend – esp if one of your medicines that helps you write is external accountability – ask a friend to do an exchange with you (email or text, etc), like Elaine did.

Please share this post with a friend that could also use a friendly kick in the butt to get going again. 💥

And, if you’d like to share anything you got from these prompts, or any of your favorite exercises to get writing again, please share them in the comments! I’d love to hear.

Be Where You Are