In the News

by Nancy Casey

By now you’ve probably seen the of images of empty shelves in stores. Or heard lots of jokes about hoarding toilet paper. Maybe you have done some stocking up. It’s perfectly reasonable not to want to run out of things that are important to you.

What don’t you want to run out of?

Think about that as you set up your page for a bit of writing. Draw a line at the top where the title will go, and set off a space for doodling or illustration.

What matters to you in your life?

There are material things, of course. Most people care about food, shelter and clothing. Food gets consumed and you will always need more. Clothing wears out or becomes wrong for the season, or sometimes you just don’t like what you have anymore and want new things. Running out of shelter entirely is a tragedy, and you also don’t want to run out of the things that make your shelter clean, sturdy and comfortable.

What specific things in the food, shelter, and clothing departments don’t you want to run out of?

Beyond the basics, there are other material things that we want to have in our lives—art supplies, technology, gasoline, potting soil, novels, candy… The list is endless, and nobody should be ashamed of what they want.

There are also non-material things that we don’t want to drain from our lives. Affection, perhaps? Laughter? Information? Understanding? What invisible things would cause you a visible or invisible wound if they left your life and never came back?

Write about what you don’t want to run out of today. To get started, you can use a sentence in the form of:

I don’t want to run out of ­­­______, because….

You can then explain why this thing is important for you. You might also want to expand a bit and tell what you do to make sure you don’t run out of it. Or tell a story about how much you didn’t like it when you did run out of this thing.

Maybe you will write about one thing. Perhaps you will write about many.

Different things are important to different people. Noticing what you don’t want to disappear from your life can help give you direction. It can also help you better understand yourself, your situation, and your motivations.

After you have filled a page, read over your work. Make small changes if you need to. Add some color or decoration to the page if you haven’t already. When you are satisfied with the page, give it a title and write the date on it, 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. She occasionally teaches a Write-For-You class at the Recovery Center. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

Draw a line at the top of your page to save room for a title. Set aside a bit of space for drawing or doodling. Then write a sentence. About 10 or 15 words long.

It can be any sentence: a remark about your surroundings, something entirely made up, a memory, a wish—anything you think of.

One by one, consider the words that you have written. What is the opposite of each word? For some words, you might have to stretch your imagination a bit to come up with an opposite. Other words might not have opposites at all.

Pick out a word that is the opposite of one of the words in that first sentence, and weave that word into your second sentence somehow. Your second sentence can be about anything at all. You don’t have to make it connect to the first sentence unless you want to.

Consider the individual words of the second sentence and choose one of their opposites to use in your third sentence. Write the third sentence however you want.

Keep going like that. Work your way down the page writing sentences so that each sentence contains a word that is the opposite of one of the words in the sentence before it.

Write down whatever occurs to you. It’s not necessary to try to make the sentences all go together in a story or “make sense” somehow. You really can’t plan ahead. It’s more important to think about the interesting opposite words, notice the sentences that pop into your mind, and write one down when it seems like a good one to you.

When the page is full, go back over what you have written. Make small changes if you need to. Do the opposite words stand out very much? Did your writing turn out to be “about” something, even though you were writing somewhat random sentences?

Add some color or decoration to the page if you haven’t already. When you are satisfied with the page, give it a title and write the date on it, 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. She taught the Write-For-You writing class at the Recovery Center last summer and will return again in the spring. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

You can’t know everything. Nobody can. Even if you take every fact that everyone on the planet knows and put them together, all sorts of things would remain unknown.

We fill in the gaps with our opinions. When you pay attention to your opinions, you understand yourself and grow. Today, write about some of your opinions—what they are and where they come from.

Set up your page so that there will be space for a title and some room for illustration. If you are of the opinion that you have nothing to write about, doodle in the illustration space until ideas start to come to you.

Some opinions have to do with taste: what you like and don’t like, what you think is beautiful or ugly. When something bores you or excites you, it’s because of opinions you hold.

Almost everything you think about the future is an opinion. Things you hope will or won’t happen. Your ideas about how future events will unfold. As the future becomes the present, those opinions could change or get stronger.

Your experience is a source of opinions, too. Whether you consider memories to be happy, sad, or confusing comes from your experience. So do a lot of ideas about whether a course of action is a good one or not.

We get our opinions from other people, too. Sometimes we adopt their opinions because we admire or respect them. Sometimes we form an opinion because of the emotions others show when they speak or act. Sometimes we observe people—friends and strangers alike—and opinions grow out of what we notice.

Take stock of your immediate surroundings. Travel backwards in memory through the events of the day so far. Consider what you have been watching, reading, listening to, and thinking about. You’ll start noticing your opinions. Write about them.

Tell what your opinion is. Explain, if you can, where the opinion comes from. Are there facts or information involved? Other people? Your experience? Your taste? They are your opinions. You can write anything you want about them.

After you have filled a page, read over your work. Make small changes if you need to. Add some color or decoration to the page if you haven’t already. When you are satisfied with what you’ve done, give the page a title. Write your initials and the date on it, too.

When you finish, you’ll have an opinion about what you wrote. The more you notice your opinions, the better and more interesting they get.

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. She taught the Write-For-You writing class at the Recovery Center last summer and will return again in the spring. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

There are lots of things you can’t do, and lots of different reasons why.

Maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you don’t know how. Maybe you know how, but it’s beyond your physical abilities. Maybe it’s not humanly possible. Maybe someone or something is preventing you.

Whatever the reasons, there are gazillions of things you can’t do. Write about some of them today.

Set up your page first. Draw a line at the top where the title will go and set aside some space to draw or doodle while you are thinking.

Begin your first sentence with, “I can’t …” Then continue on to describe something that you can’t do. Then write the word “because”  and explain why you can’t do it.

Maybe this thing you can’t do is so complicated that it will take your entire page to write about it. If not, and there is still room on the page, describe something else that you can’t do and explain why you can’t do it.

Continue writing about what you can’t do and the reasons why until you have filled the page.

Read over your work. Make small changes if you need to. Add some color or decoration to the page if you haven’t already. When you are satisfied with the page, give it a title and write the date on it, 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. She taught the Write-For-You writing class at the Recovery Center last summer and will return again in the spring. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

Begin by writing a word or a phrase in the center of your page. Any word. It can be an idea that you have been thinking about, something from your surroundings, or simply the first thing that pops into your mind.

Draw a heart around it.

From the heart draw a spiral, a long circular line that goes round and round until it reaches the edge of the page. You will be writing on this line. Knowing that will help you gauge how far apart the lines should be from each other as they circle round and round. As you get close to the top of the page, don’t let the line go all the way to the edge. Leave some space where you can put a title when you have finished writing.

Starting at the center of the spiral and starting with the word or phrase in the heart, write one long sentence that fills up the whole long line of the spiral, all the way out to the end. It will be a long and convoluted sentence, but that’s okay.

To keep your sentence stretching longer and longer, use connector words like because, unless, which, until, whenever, although, nevertheless, however, and so forth. Keep adding to your sentence until you run out of space to write on. You will probably have to spin the page round and round as you write. Don’t go back and read what you have written until you get to the very end.

When you have run out of room to write, bring your sentence to a close and then return to the beginning and read it. Make small changes if you would like to. Add color or decoration, too, if you think your page needs it.

In some ways, your overly-long sentence will seem strange and disconnected. Did it turn out to be “about” anything in any way? Is the phrase inside the heart really “the heart of the matter?” You are the only one who really knows.

See if you can make up a title that connects everything together somehow. Put your initials and the date on the finished page.

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. She taught the Write-For-You writing class at the Recovery Center last summer and will return again in the spring. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.

by Nancy Casey

Today, like every day, is a good day to celebrate all the things you have done right.

A good way to do that is with an exercise called Before That where you start in the present tense and then work your way backwards through time, starting every new thought with “Before that…”

While you set up your page, think about all the things that you do or have done right. When you do something right, it doesn’t need your attention anymore and it’s easy to forget about it.

Let your mind wander around to your many areas of competence while you draw a line across the top of the page where your title will go. Set aside a space for doodling or illustration if that seems right to you. Keep thinking about the different kinds of things you do right.

Think of all the things you know how to do. The things you have fixed. Things you have kept from breaking, freezing, getting wet or drying out. People or pets who would have starved without you.

Every time you do something good for yourself, you are doing something right, so don’t skip over any of those. Remind yourself of all the things your body does right without your needing to pay attention: breathing, digesting, dreaming…

When you try to do something and it doesn’t work out the way you planned, you might not like it, but you still did a lot of things right.  Trying, for instance. And learning.

When you try something new and the whole enterprise is successful, you have clearly done all kinds of things right.  Has that ever happened to you? What did you do right before that?

Start with right now. You are doing your own writing.  You can’t possibly do it wrong. Describe yourself writing and how you are doing it right. Then write the words “Before that …” and continue on describing something you did right before you started writing. At the end of that thought, write “Before that…” and soon you will remember something you did right earlier.

Keep going down the page that way, using the words “Before that …” to start each new thought, skipping backwards in time from one thing you did right to the next.

When the page is full, read over your work. Make small changes if you need to. Add some color or decoration to the page if you haven’t already. When you are satisfied with the page, give it a title and write the date on it, too.

The page will be just one more thing you did right.

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. She taught the Write-For-You writing class at the Recovery Center last summer and will return again in the spring. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Center.