by Nancy Casey
You can find writing all over the place. In books and on food labels. Road signs. Fine print. Where else?
Today, write about where writing can be found, whether anyone reads it or not.
Consciously notice all the writing that you see while you get ready to write. Get out your stuff. Organize your space. Move or stretch your body a bit. Take a big breath in and a long exhale.
At the top of a clean sheet of paper, draw a line where you will put your title after you have written a page. Mark off some space for illustration if you like. Or draw a frame around the page that you can decorate if you like to draw and doodle while you think.
Where can you find writing? Write down the very first answer that pops into your mind. Tell something about that writing, but don’t tell what it actually says. You could tell what kind of writing it is or how the letters or marks look. You can explain where the writing is and who, if anyone, is likely to read it. Maybe you know who wrote it. What language is it in?
After you have written something about one bit of writing, look around you and scour your memory. Where else can you find writing?
Maybe you want to stretch the definition of writing to mean something other than what people do with words and letters. If you can read animal tracks, do they count as writing? Geologists talk about what is written in rocks. What does it mean if something is written all over your face?
If you think about all the different places you can find writing, you end up thinking about the places where you can’t find writing. If that’s interesting to you, write about that!
When you get to the bottom of the page, look back over your work. Pause to add illustration or decoration if you like.
Do your ideas form any kind of a pattern? Do they seem to be about a bigger idea that you hadn’t really planned on writing about? If they do, maybe you can use that insight to think up a title. If they don’t, make up some kind of a title anyway and write it at the top of the page.
Put your initials or a signature on the page, too. And write the date on it. Here is just one example of what someone could write.
You can share your work by posting it as a comment below. You can type it in, or take a photo of it and upload the image.
Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. You can find more of her work here. If you would like some help with your writing, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.
Latah Recovery Community Center, Inc. 