Category: Write for You Blog

by Nancy Casey

Sometimes when you sit down to write, your mind is full of the things you could put down on the page. Then you pick up the pen and your mind becomes suddenly blank. Nothing that you were thinking seems important anymore.

Sometimes you know what you want to say, but the ideas roil so uncontrollably in your mind that it’s impossible to start.

Other times, your mind feels truly blank. Maybe your whole self feels blank. The pen weighs 400 pounds. The empty page is wide and desolate as the Sahara. It doesn’t seem possible for an idea to form.

Regardless of what makes you feel stuck, freewriting can get you un-stuck.

When you freewrite you write anything at all. Anything. Throw all of the rules out of the window. Spell the way you want. Forget grammar. Don’t expect to “make sense.” Just write stuff, whatever bubbles to the surface of your mind. It could be a string of unrelated words. It might be phrases or sentences. Maybe there will be capital letters and punctuation and maybe there won’t.

Today in your writing practice, fill a page with freewriting.

Some people find this very difficult. It’s hard to chuck out all the restrictions that come with years of training in “correct” writing. You can feel a strong resistance to writing down anything that’s not meaningful. If that’s how you feel, here are some “directions” to get you started.

Begin with individual words. Just words. Whatever pops into your mind. Write them down next to each other, one after the other without thinking of any connection they might have to one another. If “bubblegum” is followed by “lizards” and “traffic jam,” that’s just fine. If “bubblegum” is followed by “bubblegum” is followed by “bubblegum,” that’s okay, too. Fill up about a third of the page with single words.

As you move into the next third of the page, write phrases, a couple of words at a time. “phone on the desk” or “mosqitoes in evening gowns” or “throwing up lunch.” It doesn’t matter. Just phrases. You can put commas or dashes or slashes between them. Or not. Keep your hand loose. If it starts to feel tired or cramped, make it looser and write more slowly. It’s not a contest.

By the time you get to the final third of the page, your mind is likely to have relaxed quite a bit. The blockages between your mind and your hand dissolve.

When the freewriting begins to flow nicely, you will settle into an easy pace. New words and phrases arrive in your mind at exactly the rate you can write them down. The tensions that come with trying to write correctly fade. The freewriting has become free.

When you are finished, read it over. Notice the journey you have taken. It will make some kind of odd sense to you, but not necessarily to someone else. (When you read it tomorrow, it might not make sense to you anymore, but that’s okay.) There might be parts that you really like. It might all seem like nonsense, but that’s not a problem because the important part is the simple experience of having done it.

Be sure to date your writing. Give it a title by writing whatever comes to mind as your hand hovers over the spot where the title goes. Here is an example of what your writing could look like, except that yours will be original, something only you can do.

Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. She has taught writing classes at the Recovery Center and will return again in the spring of 2018. If you have a writing project you would like help with, email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

by Nancy Casey

Everybody’s got to be somewhere. It’s part of the definition of being alive. Where are you?

We all live in the cocoon of our surroundings. What’s under you? A bed, a chair, your shoes? The floor, the ground, the molten core of the earth? What’s around you? A room, music, the weather?

Today, take in your surroundings. Notice what is big and vast, such as thunder and the stars. Notice the tiny things, such as pollen and the mortar the holds together the bricks in the buildings of your town. Don’t stop with what you see. Notice what you can smell and touch and taste and hear.

Notice it all, and sing its praises.

How do you sing praises? The important thing is to go on and on, lavishing happy words, slathering them recklessly about. Thinking up one thing after another which is marvelous about that which you are praising.

When you sing praise, you talk to the object of your admiration, not about it. You must cheer the plants for how brave they are, not simply observe that they are struggling valiantly in the cold. You must thank the bag of cat food for all the kitty-nutrition, rather than merely list the ingredients on the back. You must talk to the dishtowel like you are giving it an award.

Use the special vocabulary of praise. Try out old-fashioned formal-sounding phrases such as, “Oh ye who…” or “I hereby express my deepest esteem…” You could try writing like you are giving a speech, or borrow the language you hear in church. You can say, “Hooray!” You can say, “Look at you!” You can say, “Hallelujah!”

What can you praise something for? For being present in your world. For the greenness of its green or the blueness of its blue. For the generous service it renders or the wonderful way it tastes. For protecting you. For making the world around you interesting and beautiful. For making you interesting and beautiful.

Praise what amuses you. Praise what teaches you. Praise what inspires you. Up, down, side, back and all around, praise what surrounds you.

When you have finished your song of praise, give it a title and write the date on it as well. Here is an example of what you might write.

 

Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. She has taught writing classes at the Recovery Center and will return again in the spring of 2018. If you have a writing project you would like help with, email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

 

by Nancy Casey

Today you will need at least two sheets of paper: one for drawing and one for writing. The one that you use for drawing should be completely blank, with no lines on it.

Then pick something in front of you and draw it on the blank page. It can be anything at all, as long as it’s right there where you can see it and isn’t going to be moving around.

If you are part of that big chunk of the population who “can’t draw,” that’s okay. Just draw something anyway. Look at the thing. Make some marks. Look again. Make more marks. That’s what drawing is: looking at something and making the marks it inspires on a page. You don’t even have to look at the marks while you are making them!

Use ink or pencil to draw with, anything you like. Don’t get carried away with erasing. Don’t cross stuff out or scribble over it out of frustration. Just do your best to draw what you see and leave it at that.

When you have finished, locate some empty space on the page and draw the same thing again. You might want to rotate the page a little bit. Maybe you will decide to only draw one small part of the thing. Or maybe you did that last time, and now you are going to draw the whole thing. Just draw it somehow.

When you are finished, draw it again. And again, and again. Until the page is all filled up.

It might look messy. It might look goofy. But some parts of it will really please you. Guaranteed. Whether you “know how” to draw or not.

Many people say that when they draw something, a calmness comes over them after about 5 or 10 minutes. They stop caring how the drawing is going to “come out” and just enjoy what they are doing. Did that happen to you? What was your experience like?

Jot down some notes about your drawing experience on the second page. Tell what the experience felt like, and what your attitude was like as you did the work. If your mind wandered away to other things, write about those things.

Write a little bit about the object you drew. Tell why you picked it and the role it plays in your life. Did you notice things about it that you hadn’t noticed before?

Keep drawing things. Fill up pages with drawings instead of writing. Experiment with drawing something that you remember instead of something right in front of you. Or simply doodle. Is the experience the same for each kind of drawing?

Whatever you draw, or write, or doodle, be sure to put the date and a title on your pages. Here is an example of what a person could do.

 

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays. Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in. All are welcome. She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers. Call the Recovery Center 208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

by Nancy Casey

I’m writing this on a chilly, gray day. It’s pouring rain outside. That’s interesting, almost thrilling, because it’s been blisteringly hot here and it hasn’t rained like this for months. It’s the kind of day you can’t help but think about the changing season.

The season changes without any input from us. It never comes as much of a surprise. You can like it or not like it, but you can’t encourage it to arrive faster or tell it to wait. Ready or not. A new season. It’s yours.

To write about a changing season, have at least 2 pages handy. On one of them, draw a line lengthwise down the middle, and then draw another line across the middle of the page so that the page is divided into four boxes.

The left side of the page will be for the season that is coming on, and the right side of the page will be for the season that is giving way.

In the upper left box, write down all the things that you look forward to in the coming season.
To the right, in the upper right box, write down all the things that you will miss about the season that is almost gone.
Down in the lower left box, write down what you dread about the season to come.
In the remaining box, on the lower right, write down things that you are glad to see go away with the old season.

Fill up all the space on the page. Add illustrations as needed.

On the second page, write about a changing season makes you think of. What marks the change most for you? How are the changes about more than the weather? How do the changes affect your attitude?

Some people talk about life in terms of seasons, such as childhood, youth, and middle age. Careers and relationships can have seasons, too. There is a lot to say about seasons: how they change from one to the next, what we notice, and how it affects us.

Whatever you write, give both pages a title, and write the date on them, too. Here is an example of what a person could write.

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays. Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in. All are welcome. She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers. Call the Recovery Center 208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

by Nancy Casey

Nobody remembers everything.

Today you will write down some of the many things you have forgotten. As you write about them, one by one, begin each one with “I forgot…”

Sometimes we forget things momentarily, like somebody’s name or that there is road construction on your usual route about town. Everybody probably wishes they didn’t forget things in that infuriating way, where you find yourself upstairs, not knowing what you came up there for, but sure enough, you remember as soon as you go back downstairs, so then you have to go up again. What information has escaped unexpectedly from your mind lately?

Some things are probably forgotten for good, like the names of every single one of your parents’ friends and the type of coat they wore in the winter time. Everybody has memories of past events, both desirable and undesirable, that are unforgettably vivid. Even so, there will be things you must have known at the time, though they are lost and forgotten, now. The color of somebody’s shoes, perhaps, or whether your fingernails were clean or dirty that day. Was it sunny out or cloudy. What did you once know that you certain you will never remember?

Sometimes temporary forgetting can lead to permanent remembering. Do you have an odd fact stuck in your brain forever because you forgot it on the day of a test?

Songs have a tendency to sing themselves over and over in our heads. Sometimes we wish we could forget them! But is it the whole song that rings again and again, or just a line or two? You’ve certainly heard the whole song before. What parts must you make an effort to remember?

Occasionally, forgetting can bring on a cascade of problems. If you forget your wallet, for instance, or a very important password. It’s bad news when you forget to bring your library books in out of the rain. It can be even worse news if you forget you left a laundry basket in the middle of the floor and you trip on it in the dark. What have you forgotten that has changed your life?

Do you remember everything that’s in your refrigerator, and exactly where each item is located? Could you have forgotten about some of the things that are in your closet? What about your license plate number or the number on line 37 of your taxes in 2009?

We forget so many things. And remember a lot of them again later. Only to forget them again. All the while new things keep happening, which we either remember or forget. Have you ever forgotten anything on purpose?
Write about what you have forgotten, beginning each time with the phrase, “I forgot…” Here is an example of what you might write. Give your work a title when you are finished, and write the date on it, too.

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays. Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in. All are welcome. She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers. Call the Recovery Center 208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

Write for You:  Pep Talk Voice

by Nancy CaseA good pep talk puts the wind in your sails.  Pep talks get you and the big boat of your life aimed in the best direction for smooth travel.  Without pep talks you could be led to believe your ship might sink, or that it could be becalmed forever.  With a good pep talk behind you, you keep moving forward.

We talk to ourselves in many voices, and for a good pep talk, all you have to do is give the stage to Pep Talk Voice.

Pep Talk Voice is the most stubborn and single-minded voice in the choir.  It is incapable of saying anything bad about you. 

 If you start describing your life to yourself in terms of its failures, Pep Talk Voice gets all pumped up with applause, saying, “Look what you were up against!  Did you see that!? You’ve come through this far! We can do anything now!”

 If the tasks ahead of you in the next day, year or hour seem beyond your abilities, Pep Talk Voice says, “So what?  You’re doing everything that’s humanly possible.   Why wouldn’t that be enough?  There’s a path through this.”

 If you are tempted to carry on about all your faults of character, Pep Talk Voice just laughs.  “You expect me to believe that???”  Pep Talk Voice never doubts your worth.  “You are a fine person,” says Pep Talk Voice, stating the obvious.  “You are a fine person and you are doing your best. Here’s why…”

 Even when you are considering the things that you’d like to change about yourself, Pep Talk Voice will still find a way to say that you are just fine the way you are.  “Doing a few things differently will make you even more like yourself!” crows Pep Talk Voice, reminding you yet again how amazing you are.

 Today in your writing, give your pen over to Pep Talk Voice.  Just see how it goes. 

 Maybe your writing will come out as a dialog, where you say something and Pep Talk Voice adds what it thinks.

 You could try interviewing Pep Talk Voice. Ask it questions. 

 You can even tease Pep Talk Voice and try to get it to say something bad about you—but it won’t.  It can’t.  It doesn’t know how.

 Maybe Pep Talk Voice has a speech it’s been dying to give you.  Give it a chance.  Write down what it has to say.  Pretend you are taking dictation.

As you write down the things that Pep Talk Voice has to say to you, think about what “pep” is.  When you are peppy, you are alive with life.  You have vim, vigor, and vitality.  “Pep” isn’t something that you can wear or buy, it bubbles up from inside of you like the force of life itself.

 Pep Talk Voice is the voice of the one who knows you best of all.

 Put the date on your writing and be sure to give it a title.  Here’s an example of what you could write.

 

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in.  All are welcome.  She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

 

by Nancy Casey

Things go wrong.  They always do.  Whether your plans are for this afternoon, the coming school year, or a lifetime, the chance of something going wrong is usually pretty high.

Big things and little things plop into our lives and, in a single moment, change our course. Just as the door closes, you remember your keys are inside. You get an email saying you didn’t get that job you were counting on. The phone rings with news that is so terrible, the world falls away. Ping! In a single moment, life takes a new direction.  The next minutes, days, or years will no longer be the way you expected.

The worst calamities don’t transpire in a single moment.  They come at you as a series of moments.  A barrage of them.  One bad thing after another, and you have to deal with them all.

No matter what hits you, though, you keep going.  Even when you think you don’t want to.  Even when it feels like you can’t.  Because time only moves in one direction, and it never stops.

Today, you will write about moments in your life when the shape of the future suddenly changed for the worse.  They can be moments that changed your life, or moments that changed your afternoon.  They can be moments that put a glitch in your day or moments that turned you into somebody else.

The important thing is to try to focus on particular details of the moment:  the color of something you saw, the shoes you had on, the words that you heard, the music in the background.

You can zig zag back and forth in time, writing down the details of bad moments you have had, mixing the ones from yesterday with others from your childhood.  Or instead you could choose to list each excruciating moment of a disastrous event.

Whatever you choose to write, after you have noted down the details of one of those awful moments, you must then add the sentence, “I kept going.”  Because you did.  Somehow or other, whether it was easy or hard.

When you have finished with the series of moments, and recorded the fact that after each one you kept going, read back over what you have written and think about it.  Write a final couple of sentences that describe your ability to keep going and what that experience feels like.

Be sure to give your work a title and include the date somewhere on the page.  Here is an example of what a person could write.

 

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in.  All are welcome.  She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

 

by Nancy Casey
We hear a lot about saying, “I’m sorry.” How hard it can be. How healing it can be. The word itself is connected to ideas of sorrow and difficulty.
Have you ever been pressured to say that you are sorry when really you weren’t? Some people in that situation will just say the words to make the conversation end. Others avoid eye contact, keep silent and endure the discomfort. It’s not often that someone clearly states, “I’m not sorry.” That sentence isn’t part of many recipes for resolving conflicts. Even when it’s true.
So today you are going to write about not being sorry. You will do it using what’s called a “repetitive writing prompt.” The repetitive part is the phrase “I’m not sorry” which you will end up writing over and over again.
Begin by writing “I’m not sorry” without any particular thing in mind. As you write the words, open the imaginary trap door in the back of your brain and see what falls in. Whatever lands there, write it down. Don’t make a big deal of it.
Then begin again. “I’m not sorry…” and finish with the idea that forms in your mind as your write the words. Write the I’m-not-sorry phrase every time. Don’t skip it. Relax into it. With each repetition, your hand works a little bit more automatically, leaving more room in your mind for an idea to spring up.
Let yourself write what you write, however it comes out. Perhaps a couple of words or a sentence. Perhaps a whole big story.
Don’t limit yourself to things that you are not sorry about that other people wish you were sorry about. If “sorry” has to do with sorrow and difficulty, you can find many things to be not-sorry about if you look at the parts of your life that aren’t sad or difficult.
Don’t limit yourself to things that make perfect sense, either. That’s a lot to ask if you are going to write down the first thing that plops into your mind. If you start making demands like “making sense” or “being good” all the ideas will scurry away and the space they could fall into will shrink up. So just take whatever comes. You can decide what you think about it later.
So you might write that you are not-sorry that elephants don’t fly. You might say you are not-sorry it rained yesterday. You can say why, or you can keep that to yourself. When you have written enough about an idea, begin again.
As you write the words “I’m not sorry…” you might recall an important lesson you learned after a mistake that you made. A friendship you value might pop into your head. Angry thoughts could land there, or joyous ones. Write them down and go on to the next one. If you are going to strive at all, strive to be relaxed.
Be sure to give your work a title and write the date on it when you are finished. Here is an example of what you might write.
If you are feeling particularly stuck, you can begin by writing, “I’m not sorry that I woke up alive today.” If you can’t write that, call this number: 1-800-273-8255. Or stop by the Recovery Center, 531 S. Main in Moscow. Lots of people have that thought. It’s worse when you have it alone.

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays. Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in. All are welcome. She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers. Call the Recovery Center 208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

 

by Nancy Casey

Today’s writing will be preceded by a little bit of drawing, so as you gather your materials and settle in to write, make sure that you have a clean sheet of unlined paper with you, in addition to the paper you use for your writing.  You might also want to have colored markers, crayons or colored pencils handy.

On the clean sheet of paper, draw the outline of a body.  Your body.  The likeness doesn’t have to be perfect, of course.  Draw it so it takes up as much of the page as possible.

It’s easy to imagine ourselves in terms of the visible parts of our bodies. All the parts the general public sees, as well as the parts we don’t show the world.  And there’s a host of inner workings that medical imaging machines and surgeons can view.  But your body has parts that are completely invisible, too.

Instead of adding the typical, visible parts of yourself to the drawing, your challenge today is to come up with ways to draw in some of the invisible parts of you.  Such as…

Your ideas, for instance.  You can’t see them. Where do they reside in you?  Do they come in different colors?  What about memories and dreams?  Where in your body do you keep your plans for the future?

Do you ever get gut feelings?  Do they happen in the gut?  There are a whole host of feelings that many people find uncomfortable, such as fear, anger, or despair.  Do you feel physical discomfort  in the presence of certain feelings?   Where do you sense it?  What parts of your body are affected when you have feelings that are generally pleasant to feel, such as affection, joy, and comfort?

What else can you think of that is a part of you, and yet invisible?)  Where is your attitude located? Can you point to your ability to button a shirt?  What part of you holds your sense of “me?”  Where do you keep your talent?

You can add your invisible aspects to the drawing of your body in any way that makes sense to you.  Use blobs of color, circles and boxes, dotted lines, words, or any other marks that seem like a good idea.  Use the drawing and coloring as an opportunity to allow your mind to wander and perhaps stumble upon ingenious ways of presenting the invisible parts of yourself.

When you have finished the drawing, write a page or so about the thoughts that came to mind as you worked on it.  Maybe you discovered something about yourself, or thought about yourself in a different way.  Maybe you found this frustrating and hard to do.  Whatever your experience was, write a little bit about it. 

Writing might give you new ideas for things to add to the drawing, which in turn could give you new ideas to write about.  Go back and forth between the drawing and the writing until you are satisfied with them both.  Be sure to put the date and a title on both pages.  Here is an example of what a person could do.

 

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in.  All are welcome.  She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

by Nancy Casey

For today’s writing you will need a couple of sheets of paper, so be sure to have them handy.

On one of the sheets, write the letters of the alphabet, A to Z, down the left-hand side of the page.  If they don’t all quite fit, start a second column on that same page.

Next to each letter, write down the names of things and people that you admire which also begin with that letter.  If you think up more than one thing for a letter, include them all. Try to get at least one thing for every letter, even if you have to stretch spelling rules a little bit.  You can even make up words, as long as you know what they mean.

The word ad-mire is made up of two parts.  The “ad-“ part shows up in a lot of  English words that have something to do with bringing two things together, such as admit, advance, and adhere.  The “-mire” part comes from an ancient word that means “smile.”  Therefore, something that you admire is something that brings you a smile.  The feeling you get as that smile comes to you is called “admiration.”

Asking yourself what you admire is much the same as asking, “What makes me smile?”

Are there things or people that always make you smile?  What have you smiled at so far today? When has a smile struck you by surprise? Are some smiles more inward than outward?  Does every smile involve admiration? Let these questions run around in your mind as you keep adding things to your alphabetical list of what you admire.

After you have collected yourself a nice list of words, stop and admire it!  Then give some thought to the kinds of things or people you admire and why that is so.  Write a few paragraphs about that on a second sheet of paper.

Is admiring things the same as admiring people?  What did you write down that you admire about yourself?  Has what you admire changed over time?

Here is something else you can think about.  Not only is the word admire connected to the word smile, it is also related to the word mirror.  That means that when you smile at someone or something that you admire, there is some reflecting going on.  What you admire out in the world also exists inside yourself.  How is this true for the things on your list?

After you have had a chance to think about all these things and write down your thoughts, be sure to write the date on both pages and give each one a title.  Here is an example of what a person could write.

 

Throughout the week, continue to observe yourself smiling and admiring.  Notice when others smile at you.  They are admiring something, too.

 

Nancy Casey teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  Check the calendar for classes and times, or just drop in.  All are welcome.  She coordinates Recovery Radio, which airs on KRFP 90.3 FM in Moscow, Thursdays at 1:05 PM. Recovery Radio needs on-air and off-air volunteers.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.