The Curious Creative: Week 8

Photograph as Prompt

This is the eighth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for the busy individual interested in exploring her creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.  

My Thoughts:

In Week 6, you played around with composition in photography. This week, you will take one photograph from your Week 6 scavenger hunt, and use it as a writing prompt. In case you did not complete Week 6, I will give you a photograph to work with. If you desire to take your writing a step further beyond the 10-minute creative play, you have the option to use your freewrite to create a poem with sensory details and metaphors.

Your Turn!

1. Choose one of your photos from Week 6’s scavenger hunt. Or use this photograph as your prompt: 

   

   photo credit: Dale Scroggins

2. Freewrite for 5 minutes: What is the concrete object in the photo?
What do you think is happening in this picture?
3. Read your freewrite, and underline the golden phrases in your freewrite (phrases that stick out for their beauty, irony, poignancy, etc.).
4. Make a list of adjectives that describe the object in the photo in terms of sense imagery (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch).
5. For several of your sensory adjectives, brainstorm a different object that shares that same quality. (ex: pink – cotton candy; waterproof – Gor-tex jacket)
6. Write several metaphors/similes comparing the objects. (ex: Dew rolls off the rose petals like rain on a Gor-tex jacket.)
7. Combine one-two golden phrases you underlined in your freewrite with two metaphors/similes to create a short poem.
8. Come up with title for poem.

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment boxes below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

The Curious Creative: Week 7

A Tree  

This is the seventh installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for the busy individual interested in exploring his creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

If I could do a wordle of all the poetry ever written, I bet the word “tree” would show up as one of the most prominent words. This week, like all great poets, you are going to spend time with a trees.

Your Turn!

1. Pick a tree from your world. It should be one you see or notice all the time, maybe on your commute to work, or outside your office window, etc.
2. Put your notebook near your vantage point and keep it open for a few days so you can jot down little things you notice or feel about the tree. Pay close attention to its shapes and sounds, colors, smells, and textures.
3. Sketch it. 
4. Research it online. Jot down any interesting folklore or facts about it.
5. If you have any, write down personal memories or associations with this tree or one it reminds you of.

By the end of the week, do you have a messy but rich list of words/phrases inspired by this tree? And maybe even a new obsession with this tree?

6. If you want to take this prompt a step beyond the 10-minute exercise, try writing a series of short poems about this one tree or begin a short story or nonfiction piece using this tree as your entry point.

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment boxes below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

This prompt was inspired by the “Tree Poems” prompt from “The Time Is Now” in Poets & Writers magazine (September 2016 issue).

The Curious Creative: Week 6

Photography Scavenger Hunt

This is the sixth exercise of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for the busy individual interested in exploring his creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.

My Thoughts:

Composition is the placement or arrangement of ingredients in a work of art. In writing, it involves decisions about what content to include and how to organize and order it. In photography, it involves what to include in the image and where to place the subject in relation to the viewer. I love dabbling in different art forms to help me understand how a principle works in writing. Therefore, this week, we will play with composition in photography.

Your Turn! 

Poet Walt Whitman kept a writer's notebook in which he wrote down specific 1-2 sentence notes about things he saw: “Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery” and “Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees.” Instead of a writer's notebook, "jot down" pictures. Photograph anything that catches your eye: various objects and creatures around your house, yard, street, neighborhood. Try not to be too judgmental in your choice of subjects: a tiny bug well observed, an object you've had for years, an old pair of shoes that should have been thrown out long ago, the bit of dying shrubbery outside your window, dust particles suspended in a ray of light, etc.

Complete this Scavenger Hunt of photographs taken:

1.        Take an overall photo of an object, such as a building. Then take six-to-twelve detail pictures of the same subject. 

2.        Look up and take a picture of something above your head.

3.        Look down and take a picture of something below your knees.

4.        Tilt the camera and take a picture of something from underneath.

5.        Tilt the camera and take a picture of something from above.

6.        Take a picture holding the camera at a tilted angle.

7.        Fill the frame with the subject of the photograph (example, of an entire person, feet to head)

8.        Take a two-third cropped picture of the subject (example, just above the person’s knee).

9.        Take a one-third cropped picture of a person (example, chest and up). 

10.           Frame the subject with a doorway, archway, window, between two trees, etc.

Which ones are your favorites? Why? More importantly, how did you feel as you walked around and took photographs from different perspectives?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account, so you can share your creation in the comment boxes below. This week, post your favorite photograph. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box on the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

The scavenger list is adapted from “Learn to Take Better Photographs” by Susan Caplan Macarthy https://suite101.com/a/ learn-to-take-better-photographs-a142953 

365 Women a Year

My play, "The Asymmetrical Embrace," about Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law, Johanna Bonger van Gogh, has been included in 365 Women a Year, an international playwriting project of over 200 female playwrights who wrote plays about extraordinary women in history. 

"The project’s goal is to write women back into the social consciousness as well as empower and promote female playwrights around the country." -Jess Eisenberg, founder of 365 Women a Year

You can learn more about the project here.

The Curious Creative: Week 5 Exercise

Erasure Poem

This is the fifth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for the busy person interested in exploring her creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.

My Thoughts:

Recently, "found poetry" has become a popular sub-genre of poetry, and many literary magazines these days accept it, some exclusively. To create a found poem, you must choose a text and use only the words "found" therein to create your piece. Ideally, you should create a piece that has a different topic or meaning from the original. You are not merely summarizing the text, but transforming it into something other. There are many different methods for creating found poetry, all very playful. One of the most fun ways, because it involves the inherent satisfaction of crossing out things with a thick black marker, is called Erasure Poetry.

Your Turn!

1. Find a text. It can be an article from a magazine or newspaper, a recipe from a cookbook, a letter, a page from a novel, etc. It shouldn't be too long. A page or less will do; otherwise, you'll feel overwhelmed. I chose a gardening article from Pacific NW magazine.

2. Move through the text, either circling the words you want to use, or crossing out the words you don't want to use. I looked for strong verbs and nouns that were specific, interesting-sounding, unique, or active. Die-hard found poets also circle prepositions and connecting words that will help the piece make sense. However, you can also add (make up) those words later if you'd like.

3. Handwrite the words you chose onto a fresh sheet of paper. Start to make decisions about line breaks. Do you want long lines or short lines? You can also change word order.

4. Repeat Step 2 by circling words on your handwritten draft. Pay attention to meaning as you piece together words into phrases and sentences that make sense.

5. Repeat Step 3 by copying those circles words/phrases onto a new piece of paper. Change word order and move lines around if you need to. Add connecting words and punctuation. 

6. Repeat this process as many times as you'd like. Continue to make new decisions about line breaks and word order.Create stanzas. 

I started with a gardening article about how to grow flower bulbs, and through this process, I transformed it into a political poem! Since it's on all my American friends' minds right now, I was in the mood to express the vibe of election day nearing, and how terrified we feel. Here's my final creation:

Bare the Time

A star- 

attention-seeking

so transparent

prefers mistakes.

We- 

cornered amid a fall

bare down for more.

Blast us with color

and right the space

not yet frozen!

How did you do? Did your text transform into something new? Does your poem make sense? Do you at least have some beautiful phrases and lines that you might use as inspiration for further writing?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account, so you can share your creation in the comment boxes below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box on the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!