In the News

by Nancy Casey

You will find today’s writing to be an exercise in anti-planning. In other words, you’re not going to be able to think up what to do ahead of time. When you have finished, you might say, “I never would have planned that.”

When you make this page, you will start by drawing and then write some words. Before you begin, draw a line across the top of the page where you title will go.

Next, make six or eight random squiggles that are spread evenly over the page. They can be roundish or angular, made of a single line or a couple lines, twisty or straight.

You mission will be to fiddle with the squiggles until you can get a face to emerge.

Take a look at your collection of squiggles and pick one that reminds you of a face or a head, or a part of one, somehow. Add a couple more lines to make it look even more like a face or a head.

You can color your faces and your not-yet-faces. Mindless coloring helps new ideas float into your mind.

Fiddle with each of the squiggles until a face emerges. Some will be easy. Some might take some coaxing. Just keep fiddling, going from one squiggle to another, skipping around, adding details, until you decide each face is finished.

Here are some ideas for fiddling:

• Draw one facial feature, such as an eye, an eyebrow, a nose, or an ear. Just draw one of them. Put it randomly near the squiggle, in no particular spot. Then take a look at the whole thing. Does it look any more like a face now?
• Draw a hairdo over the squiggle. Does that give you a new idea?
• Give the squiggle a hat. Is there a face there yet?
• Draw another squiggle on top of, around, or next to what you already have.
• Make a shape near the squiggle. A triangle, circle or dash. An exclamation point! What does it look like now?
• Remind yourself that there’s no requirement to draw a human face. It can be any creature at all. Real or imagined.

Draw some lines to separate and frame each of the faces. Or maybe you want to divide them into groups that seem to belong together and frame them that way.

In the background, write down some words to go along with each face. You can use a cartoon bubble to show what they are thinking or saying. You could also write a title or a caption for a face.

When all of the framed faces are finished, and each has something to “say,” take a look at the whole page you have made. Make small changes if you want to. Can you think up a title that hints of a story that connects all of the faces?

Write your title 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. It’s not possible to have an in-person Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center at this time, but if you are interested in writing coaching, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

What do you find easy to do? Everybody is different—in the ways their minds work, in their physical abilities, in their preferences about how they like to spend their time. The constellation of activities that come easy to you is unique.

Today, write about one or more of the things that you find easy in life.

Consider your everyday activities. Are some of them so easy that you hardly even think of them? Do you procrastinate doing certain tasks, thinking they’ll be hard, only to find out they were pretty easy?

What do you find easy to do in a grocery store, with friends, or outdoors? What, in your opinion, is easy about having a family, going to school, or being in relationships?

Consider some of the skills you have acquired in your life. As you acquire a skill, an activity that you once found difficult becomes easier. What comes easy to you now that wasn’t so easy in the past?

What kinds of things do you find easy to remember? Are certain things easy to forget?

What have you found to be easy so far in this day, this week, or this year?

As soon as an activity that you find easy pops into your mind, write down a little bit about it. Describe how you do it and explain, perhaps, how your ability has developed over time. If you can, explain why you think this activity comes easy to you.

Then move on to another activity that you find easy, until you have filled a page with one description after another of activities that come easy to you. Read back over what you have written and make small changes if you like. Decorate the page if you like, and keep thinking about what you have written until a title pops into your mind

Write your title at the top of the page. Write the date on the page also, 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. It’s not possible to have an in-person Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center at this time, but if you are interested in writing coaching, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

When you write today, you might not make a lot of sense. Or you might make sense in a different way. Maybe, in a peculiar way, you will make more sense than usual!

You will make today’s writing a little bit goofy by only writing words that contain four letters or more.

As you think the words you are writing, little words will naturally pop into your mind. English has zillions of them: the… of…, a… up… to… and… I… us… You can’t say much of anything without these words, so don’t try to skip them in your mind ahead of time. As you write, skip over them without writing them down. If you write one by mistake, you can always cross it out later.

For example, if you remove all the words that are 3 letters or less from the first paragraph of this post, you end up with:

When write today, might make sense. might make sense different. Maybe peculiar make more sense than usual!

It’s certainly odd. That’s your mission today: to write in a way that’s odd. Peculiar. A little bit goofy. Just for fun.

Set up your page in the usual way, with a line for a title at the top and some space for an (optional) illustration. Then draw a dot mid-way across the page and about a third of the way down. (Later this dot will remind you that you have used up a third of your space.) Draw a second dot that marks a spot that two-thirds of the way down the page.

Launch into your writing. You can tell a story from your life. Or simply describe your day so far and tell how it is different from yesterday. You could write about all of the things you have to do. You can write whatever you want and even make it up as you go along.

The only rule is that as you go, you only write down words that are more than 4 letters long. Don’t let your brain wrinkle over this. Try to find a rhythm where you relax and hear the little words in your mind, but skip over them as you write. When you get to the first dot, a third of the way down the page, give it a rest.

Reread what you wrote, just the way it is. If you notice that some little words have slipped in, scribble them out. Can you read it aloud in a way that (sort of) makes sense?

Continue writing, and continue skipping the smallest words. Pause again when you get to the dot that marks two-thirds of the way down the page. Go back and scribble out any words that are less than 4 letters. Again, read aloud with as much expression as you can.

Finish up the page in the same style, and read the whole thing all over again once more.

As your worked your way down the page, how did your mind and your writing adjust themselves to make the task less awkward? Do you like what you wrote? Are there places that were especially clever and unusual? What title pops into your mind?

Write the title at the top of the page. Write the date on it 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. It’s not possible to have an in-person Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center at this time, but if you are interested in writing coaching, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

Today in your writing, you will be challenged to notice objects in the world, but instead of describing the thing itself, you will describe its shadow.

Unless we are trying to see something in good light, or perhaps if we are seeking shade on a sunny day, we tend not to pay a whole lot of attention to shadows. Wherever there is light, however, shadows are cast. Look for the shadows around you.

If the light is bright, shadows are clear and well-defined. What color are they? Not exactly gray or black. What other colors faintly appear? (Neither gray nor black is a color in the rainbow. Gray and black are made by combining several colors. Brown, too.)

When the light is faint, shadows are still there.  Look at the edges or cracks where an object touches the floor or another object. Is there a shadow in there? What shape is it?

Notice places where two shadows combine. Shadows inside shadows. What can you say about those?

Take a look at something that seems pretty uniform in color. The floor perhaps, or a wall, maybe a piece of furniture. Snow. A cloud. A road. The more you look, the less the color seems uniform. Are some of the different shades caused by shadow? What do those shadows look like?

You can set up your own shadows with a lamp or flashlight. Arrange objects around it for the fun of seeing what kinds of shadows they cast. Fool around with them. Make a “shadow play.”

As you set up your page, shift your mind over to the idea of shadows. Draw a line at the top where the title will go. Set off a space for illustration, or draw a frame around the whole page that you can decorate later if you like.

When your page is ready, sit for a moment and take in the shadows around you. As you notice a shadow you never paid much attention to before, begin writing. Describe it however you like. If there’s still room on the page, look around for another one. Keep describing shadows until the page is full.

Go back over your work. Make small changes if you want to. Add more decoration if there is room. If you have made a drawing, you can add shadows to it and notice what effect that has.

Think up a title. 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. It’s not possible to have an in-person Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center at this time, but if you are interested in writing coaching, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

A story can be just about anything that you tell someone else or yourself. A story from your life? That can be just about anything, too.

Some stories are about the past. They might begin with “Once…” or “I remember when…”

A story about the future might begin “Someday…” or “Tomorrow…” or even, “I would like it if…”

A story that centers on a place could start out, “This is the place where…”

Some stories begin with action. They start out by telling what you or someone else was, is, or will be doing.

A lot of stories have a high drama—confrontation, danger, tragedy, scary and overwhelming stuff.

Even more stories are kind of boring, or they might seem that way. If you tell the story of a time when nothing happened, it will turn out interesting somehow anyway.

Today in your writing, tell a story from your life. Any story, as long as it fits on a single page. Think about the huge range of big and little stories you have to choose from as you set up your page.

Draw a line at the top where the title will go. (Don’t decide on a title until the end, though.) Leave aside some room for illustration.

Draw a tiny dot in the very middle of the page.

Begin writing.

(If you can’t think of a story right away, start by describing something near you or an object that you remember. Anything. Make some comments about it. Some kind of a story will begin to latch onto it…)

Regardless of how your story unrolls from your pen, when you arrive at the dot in the middle of the page, stop for a minute. Reread what you’ve written so far. Think about what’s left to tell in the story and notice how much space you have left.

You might need to squeeze or stretch your story to get it to fit on the page. That’s okay, even if it changes the story from the one you started with. Can you bring the story to a close so that the very last word that fits on the page is also the last word of the story?

Read over the whole story and draw or doodle on the page while you think about it. See if you can coax a good title into your mind.

Write the title 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. It’s not possible to have an in-person Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center at this time, but if you are interested in writing coaching, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

When something breaks or malfunctions, it grabs our attention. When it does exactly what it is supposed to do, we are often less aware of it.

Today is a chance to sing praise for the well-made things in your life. The objects that are reliable, whose performance makes your life possible, easy or pleasant. Look around youself and draw your attention to them.

Consider the tools you use to carry out the tasks of your everyday life, at work and at play. Do you make use of any machines that are so reliable you forget they are there? Do you have certain skills which give you insight into what makes certain objects well-made?

Some objects are well-made for you, whether by accident or by design. Do you have a favorite piece of furniture, cup, or article of clothing? What features have been built-in to make it right for you?

If your gaze or touch is often drawn to a piece of art, it is well-made somehow. Ask yourself why. Music is that way, too. Can you identify any music that is well-made for your taste? What about other forms of entertainment?

A three-dimensional space can also be well-made. A living space that is organized for your convenience is well-made. The “systems” you use to organize your possessions—clothing, office supplies, recycling—can be well-made. Are there any well-made public spaces that appeal to you?

Any time or any place that you can notice that somebody’s effort has contributed to making life a little better, there is something well-made involved. Look around for some of those well-made things and describe one or more of them today.

There’s no requirement that the world be perfect. There are plenty of not-so-well-made things all around us, and we get by. The well-made things are kind of special. Applaud them today!

Leave room for a title at the top of the page before you start writing, but don’t actually decide on your title until after you have filled up the page and looked over your work.

Illustrate your work, too, if you like. In general, when people look back on their pages later, they like the ones with a little illustration on them the best. Even if the drawings seemed goofy or inept at the time.

When you are completely satisfied with your page, put your initials or signature on it, along with the date.

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. It’s not possible to have an in-person Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center at this time, but if you are interested in writing coaching, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.