In the News

by Nancy Casey

Gratitude is appropriate any day of the year, but this week marks the official season of giving thanks. Once we begin looking, we can find much to be thankful for—people and relationships, pets and houseplants, life lessons, personal growth, and STUFF. Yes, stuff. Our stuff. The inanimate objects that populate our lives and living spaces. And perhaps even clutter them up.

It’s rather fashionable these days to decry how much stuff we have, to say we’re supposed to downsize and not behave like a hoarder. Maybe you live surrounded by oodles of stuff, or maybe you live sparse and lean like you are on a backpack trip. Whatever the case, you have some stuff and you wouldn’t have the stuff that you have if you didn’t like it for some reason.

Today in your writing, celebrate your stuff. Look around you. What do you see? What do you have? Maybe some of the things you see make you tired or make you wish they weren’t there, but for the most part, we like our stuff, it does something for us.

As you set up your page, meditate on all of the inanimate objects that you call “mine.”

Draw a line across the top of the page where your title will go so you are certain to have a place to put it when you have finished writing. You can also draw a box or blob that you’ll use for illustration. Or make a border that you can decorate. Sometimes the drawing helps settle your mind so ideas can flow in.

Concentrate on your stuff—what you can see, what you know is behind you, in a different room or even in a storage locker or at a friend’s house. Consider why the various objects are in your life. Remind yourself what they do for you. Some things have important memories attached. Others are just plain useful. We own certain things for the simple fact that we like the way they look.

Pick an object that you like and tell why you are glad to have it. If that doesn’t take up a whole page, pick another one and sing its praises on the page. If there’s still room, write about another object, and another. When you feel like you’ve written enough, stop. If there’s still room on the page, fill it with drawing or decoration.

When the page is all filled up, look it over carefully and make small changes if you like. When a title idea floats to the surface of your mind, write it at the top of the page.

Write the date on the page too, along with a signature or your initials.

Here is an 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.

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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. In-person Write-for You classes have been suspended for now, but when Covid recedes, they will return.

by Nancy Casey

The Thanksgiving season is upon us. The holiday represents many things, and it differs for different people, but the one thing all the celebrations seem to have in common is eating.

Some people are enthusiastically planning meals. Others are dreading and dodging invitations. Some folks revel in the chance to overeat, while others will only be nibbling tiny bites.

But we all eat. Hopefully 365 days a year. All the pressures of the perfect Thanksgiving aside, what is your idea of a perfect meal?

The obvious way to consider perfection in a meal is by imagining the food or foods it will have in it. Do you have a stand-out food that makes a meal feel perfect every time you eat it? Are you someone who loves so many foods that they couldn’t possibly fit into a single meal? You could write about an imaginary perfect meal that would be impossible to eat at one sitting.

Beyond food, there are many other ways that perfection can slip into a meal.

Maybe what makes a meal good to you is the company you are eating with, who they might be, what they have in common with you, what they say, how they behave. Perhaps you find that you yourself alone makes the best company of all—why would that be? Maybe your best meals are eaten with a pet nearby.

Another way that perfection can slip into a meal is the context. The place where you eat can influence your appreciation of the meal—the sights, the sounds, the smells. Think of favorite forks and spoons, plates and cups, a favorite table or chair, the best lighting or view.

Sometimes what makes a meal so good is that a certain person cooked it. Or the experience of several people cooking together. Some people say that their favorite food is anything that somebody else cooked. Other people only like their own cooking.

For some people, the gathering of ingredients is the best part—shopping, gardening, gleaning. Or maybe the cutting, chopping and stirring. Or the place you cook it.

What if your favorite meal is one you don’t have to eat? Or full of foods that aren’t good for you? Then maybe you’ll focus on the complications of living in a society where so many people are focused on effortless eating.

Think about the interesting parts of your relationship with food as you set up your page. Draw a line across the top where your title will go. You can also draw a box or blob that you’ll use for illustration. Or leave space to decorate a border around your work.

Begin writing by describing some kind of perfect meal according to your standards. Delve into any aspect of it, from eating partners to recipes or doing the dishes. If all the details you can think of don’t fill the page, think of another type of meal you find compelling and describe that one, too

When you feel like you’ve written enough, stop. If there’s still room on the page, fill it with drawing or decoration.

When the page is full, look it over carefully and make small changes if you like. When a title idea floats to the surface of your mind, write it at the top of the page.

Write the date on the page too, along with a signature or your initials.

Here is an 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.

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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. In-person Write-for You classes have been suspended for now, but when Covid recedes, they will return.

by Nancy Casey

If you are making marks on paper, is it writing? You would say yes, if the marks were words, all in a row, organized into paragraphs and having a meaning that other people could read about.

What about scribbles, do they count as writing? Is drawing a form of writing? Doodling?

Today, do a little experiment with yourself and see what you think. You will start your page with drawing, and then, optionally, add written words to it. What will you draw? Your thumb! Yes, your thumb.

Before you get started, draw a line at the top of the page where you can write a title when you have finished.

Lay your non-writing hand on or near the page where you can see it, and begin to draw your thumb. Plan on making 3 or 4 drawings of your thumb.

Here are some tips:

• Use ink, not pencil. If you give yourself a chance to erase, you’ll get caught up in the idea of perfection. You’re not trying to make a perfect rendition of your thumb. You’re trying to find out what it’s like to look at something and mark up the paper because of what you see.
• Try looking at your thumb and drawing it without looking at the paper. This is called “blind contour drawing” and many artists use it as a warm-up. The results are interesting and sometimes amusing.
• Make an entire thumb-drawing without ever lifting your pen from the page.
• Make your drawing with only dots. Or curlicues.
• When you have “finished” a rendition of your thumb, look at it some more and add something else to your drawing.
• Make a 5-second drawing of your thumb.
• Instead of drawing your actual thumb, draw all the shadows you can find in and around it.
• Instead of drawing your whole thumb, zero in on a small part of it and only draw that. Maybe even use a magnifying glass.
• After you have drawn your thumb a couple of times and you feel quite finished with thumb-drawing, draw it one more time.
• As long as you are looking at your thumb and marking up the page, you can’t mess this up.

When you feel as if you have drawn enough, add some words to the page. You can write in the empty spaces. You can write straight over the top of your drawings.

You could write about what the experience of drawing your thumb was like. You could comment on what your thumb looks like. Maybe you were thinking about something that didn’t have anything to do with drawing or thumbs as you drew, so you could write about that. Perhaps you are reminded of a story that has a thumb or two in it.

Do you think drawing and writing are two versions of the same thing? Or two entirely different things?

When the page is full, give all your work a good looking-over. Make small changes if you like. When a title idea floats to the surface of your mind, write it at the top of the page.

Write the date on the page too, along with a signature or your initials.

Here is an 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.

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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. Covid-permitting, in-person Write-for You classes at the Recovery Center will return in the spring.

by Nancy Casey

When we face a difficult task or some kind of challenge, the activities involved don’t often escape our attention. It’s the easy things that often slip by without notice. Today in your writing, focus on what’s easy.

It’s pretty easy to set up your page: draw a line across the top where your title will go. You can also draw a box or blob that you’ll use for illustration. As you do this, think over all the things that are easy for you. So easy perhaps that you hardly even pay attention to them.

First off, there are the skills that you have. Maybe you have rebuilt dozens of computers and you could rebuild another one with your eyes closed. Perhaps you are great at frying eggs. Are you a fast reader? A good athlete? Can you make dogs wag their tails? Are you able to type really fast on a phone with your thumbs?

Think about your daily routine. Is it easy for you to leap out of bed, or are you good at sleeping in? Is it easy for you to spend time on social media? To connect with certain friends? Are you good at talking, listening, or giving people the benefit of the doubt?

What’s easy for you to forget? What’s easy to remember?

Some things are easy for us, even though we wish that they weren’t. Maybe it’s easy for you to lie awake in bed at night trying to change the past. Perhaps you would have no difficulty eating a whole bag of chips, or marshmallows. Would you find it easy to skip school or work? Is it easy for you to lose your temper?

A lot of people dread and procrastinate various tasks, only to discover once they do them that they were quite easy after all. Does that ever happen to you?

Even though the difficult things can take up much of our attention, life is peppered with easy things, too. Begin your writing today by describing one thing that is, or has been, easy for you. Tell what it is, and write a little something about it.

You could fill your whole page by telling the story of that one thing—why it’s easy, how to do it, what it’s like, how often you do it, and so forth. Or, after you have written everything you have to say about one easy thing, you’ll still have room on the page to write about another easy thing. And perhaps another, and another. Maybe your writing will be more like a list.

If you can’t decide what to write, begin by scribbling or drawing. That can help your mind relax so you can think more clearly. When an idea about something easy pops into your mind, write it down and see where it takes you. Don’t be too fussy about how you start. One idea usually leads to another one.

When you feel like you’ve written enough, stop. If there’s still room on the page, fill it with drawing or decoration.

When the page is full, look it over carefully and make small changes if you like. When a title idea floats to the surface of your mind, write it at the top of the page.

Write the date on the page too, along with a signature or your initials.

Here is an 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.

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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. In-person Write-for You classes have been suspended for now, but when Covid recedes, they will return.

by Nancy Casey

Sometimes it feels like nothing ever changes. Other times things feel so chaotic, it seems like nothing stays the same. The truth about life and living, of course, lies somewhere between these two extremes. Whether it’s easy to see that or not.

Today’s exercise will give you a chance to notice parts of your life that lie on both ends of that spectrum, which helps you see that change and stability are always operating at the same time.

Begin by setting up your page.  Draw a line at the top where you will write your title when you have filled up the rest of the page. If you are going to set aside a box or a blob to fill with illustration, put it in the middle somewhere. Then draw a line, straight or squiggled, that will divide the writing space in two relatively equal parts. Label one side of the page “Old” and the other side “New.”

As you do the setup, relax your mind and try to notice what’s old and what’s new in your life. You can think about things—the objects around you and your various possessions, like dishes, clothing, electronics, and furniture. You can also think about where you keep your things or how and when you use them.

Locations can be old or new to you—your home, your workplace, your favorite or un-favorite places to go. The appearance or disappearance of people in your life can be old or new.

Many intangible things can be old and new as well. Your beliefs. Your attitude. What you do and don’t understand.

On the “old” side of the page, write down what’s old in your life. Say what it is, make a comment or two about it and move on to another one. Do the same for the “new” side of the page. You can fill one whole side of the page and then the other. Or you can skip back and forth by letting various objects and aspects of your life float into your mind and then asking yourself, “Is this old or is this new?”

You can pause anytime during your writing to draw or doodle. Sometimes that helps ideas come to mind. If you prefer you can do all of the drawing at the beginning, or the end. Or you can skip the drawing altogether.

Allow you page to come together however it will. When it is full, take a break and look over everything that you have done. When a title pops into your mind, write it on the line at the top of the page. Put the date and a signature somewhere on the page, too.

Here is an 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.

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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. In-person Write-for You classes have been suspended for now, but when Covid recedes, they will return.