In the News

by Nancy Casey

In the world of English grammar, verbs are the words that describe action. Action is everywhere. Every living thing is doing something all the time, and so are non-living things, even if we don’t pay much attention.

In your writing today, you will be on the lookout for action and try to notice it in lots of different ways. When you do that, you are thinking up verbs.

Begin with a clean sheet of paper. Settle into a place with a lot of things in front of you. Maybe you’ll be looking out a window or across a room. You could be in a public place like a library or a park bench. You could be in your home. You can even be someplace where you are convinced nothing ever happens. (If you are sitting two feet away from a blank wall, maybe you will want to choose a different location.)

In your mind, start naming what’s in front of you. Write down a list of the names of the things (or people, or animals) that you see. Write the words in a column down the left-hand side of the page. Skip a line between each one. The words you write won’t be verbs. They are nouns, the names of things (or pets or people.)

Nouns come to life when you think up verbs to go along with them.

For each of the things (nouns) on your list, write a sentence that describes what it is doing.

For some things it will be easy—kids running, windshield wipers swishing, water boiling. For other things, you have to wake up your creativity and see the world from their point of view.

Often your first thought will be that an object is not doing anything, but even lying there doing nothing is doing something! Things that don’t appear to be doing much could be waiting or remembering. Dust covers a table. Grass can push up towards the sky or uncrumple itself after being walked on. The air fills up with moisture when it’s humid and sucks the moisture from your skin when it’s dry. The trick is to turn your mind sideways and try to see the world from the point of view of the thing you are looking at.

As you go down your list of nouns, if you have trouble noticing what something is doing and don’t know what to write, just skip it and go on to the next one. By the time you get back to it later, you will probably have an idea that you can use. Try not to use any verbs more than once.

By the time you have filled the page, you will have demonstrated to yourself that even a quiet room can be a busy, active place!

When you have finished, give your work a title. Make sure the date is on it somewhere, too. Add decoration and color to the page as needed. Here is an example of what a person could write.

Share what you have written! Post it as a comment below. You can type in your work. Or post a picture of it.

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Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. Sometimes she teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center. You can find more of her work here. She offers (free!) writing help to anyone in recovery. This can be for any kind of writing project—resumes, letters, stories novels—email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

by Nancy Casey

In the heat of the summer, it’s awfully hard to remember winter. In the middle of winter, it seems like summer just isn’t possible.

Today in your writing, you will be thinking about summer and winter at the same time.

Begin with a blank sheet of paper which is oriented in the “landscape” position. That is, with the longer edge as the width and the shorter edge as the height. Fold the paper in half to make a dividing line that goes down the middle from top to bottom.

On each side of the center line, draw a whole-body picture of yourself. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece (although it might turn out to be one!) I just has to remind you of you.

The image on the left side of the page will be your summer self. The right side of the page will represent your winter self. Add clothing and accessories. Try to remember what you wear or carry with you in winter and in summer.

As you work on those two drawings, let your thoughts roam around your life and surroundings and how they are different in the hot and cold seasons. Find ways to add those details to what you have drawn.

If you enjoy drawing, this is a chance to “write” a page by drawing only. If you prefer to write about how you and your routines change with the weather, you can write words and sentences beside your drawing. Or you can do a combination of both—make some sketches and add captions or labels to include additional information. Keep trying to picture yourself in summer and in winter and fill up the page with details that come to mind.

The clothes you wear undoubtedly change with the season. As does the view out your window. Do you have different daily chores depending on whether it is hot or cold out? Does the weather affect how you entertain yourself? Do your job duties change? What about your eating habits? Do you use different forms of transportation or see different friends? Do certain items—tools or toys—go in and out of storage depending on the season?

Fill the page somehow, summer on the left, winter on the right. Use whatever combination of drawing and writing seems right.

When you have put in as many details as you can possibly think of, rest for a bit. Do something else for 10 or 15 minutes while you are open to the possibility of new ideas coming to mind. When you think up new things that can go on the page, add them.

When you have finished, give your work a title. Make sure the date is on it somewhere, too. Here is an example of such a page could end up looking like.

Share what you have written! Post it as a comment below. You can type in your work. Or post a picture of it.

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Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. Sometimes she teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center. You can find more of her work here. She offers (free!) writing help to anyone in recovery. This can be for any kind of writing project—resumes, letters, stories novels—email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information

by Nancy Casey

You can use your writing practice to ride out a heat wave if you take yourself on a field trip to the delicious air conditioning in the public library—and write about it.

If you aren’t a big reader of books, you might doubt that there can be much in the library for you. The library has a lot more to offer than books, however. You can think of it as a place for people who are curious about the world. If the world is feeling a little dull to you, the library can make it interesting again.

Unlike a store, a restaurant, or a movie theater, you don’t need money in your pockets to enjoy what’s in the library. The only rules are basic manners: keep your voice down, be polite, and don’t break or steal things.

Libraries are a perfect place for shy people. You don’t have to mingle or talk to strangers. You don’t even have to talk to the people you know. You can relax in a good seat at the edge of the room and watch what’s happening—or just fool around on your phone. Nobody will think you are a wallflower who doesn’t know how to make small talk. They’ll just think you are someone who happens to be in the library.

There is plenty to look at in the library. Usually a display or two with interesting things to check out. Bulletin boards with information about the community. Children doing the goofy and clever things that children do. All types of people just being people.

You can learn about anything in a library. Librarians are trained to help you find anything you are looking for. They like it when you ask. A librarian can point you to books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, and computers where you can learn about things you care about.

Wander around and see what kinds of books they have. Books in the sections on arts and crafts can show you the huge variety of things that people can make. You can even learn how to make them if you are so inclined. Do you like science, or history? Music and poetry? Weightlifting? Rocks? Bikes? Animals? Religion? Classic cars? It’s all in the library somewhere.

You can pull any book at all off the shelf just to ask yourself, “What’s this all about?” Open it up, page through it, and put it back. It’s fun to wander around and allow yourself to be impressed with all the things a person could know.

You don’t have to read books to enjoy them. “Oversize” books are some of the best. These are the books that are too tall to fit on the regular shelves and weigh a ton. They tend to be full of amazing photographs—art, cities, wildlife, outer space, people, and anything else you can imagine. You can lug a couple of them to a table, turn the pages and enjoy what you see.

You can flip through magazines, too. New ones or old ones. Look at pictures and advertising, read a story or two. You can also read the newspaper.

For your writing practice today, take yourself on a field trip to the library. Expect the unexpected. Relax. Beat the heat. Write about what you see, hear, do and think.

Whatever you end up writing, give your work a title. Make sure the date is on it somewhere, too. Add decoration and color to the page as needed. Here is an example of what a person could write.

Share what you have written! Post it as a comment below. You can type in your work. Or post a picture of it.

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Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. Sometimes she teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center. You can find more of her work here. She offers (free!) writing help to anyone in recovery. This can be for any kind of writing project—resumes, letters, stories novels—email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

Reading the World

by Nancy Casey

Some people read books, but everybody reads. Today in your writing, describe the reading that you do that isn’t traditional book-reading.

Walking around town, we read things whether we want to or not. Think about the word Exit, for instance or the names of businesses along the street. Do words jump out at you from billboards or people’s clothing? At a traffic light, you read symbols to know when it’s safe to proceed.

Do you read on a device like a phone or a computer? Are you a reader of social media? Do you read short things or long things? Sometimes you probably read pictures. Do you prefer to read pictures that are still or pictures that move? Do you like there to be silence or sound with your pictures? Do you like words with the pictures?

All kinds of reading take place on the job. Some people read words on paper, others read numbers. A person reads a machine when they watch what it is doing and know when they should intervene.

It might seem odd to think about reading that doesn’t involve words. We read words to understand or imagine things and, maybe learn something, too. But we learn and understand from paying attention to lots of things, words included. In that sense, we are reading the world around us all the time.

We read social situations in order to decide where to sit or stand in a room. We read people’s faces and figure out all kinds of things. What can you figure out from reading the sky?

Today in your writing, describe some of the ways that you read words and read the world. Tell what you learn from what you read. What kinds of reading in the world do you like the most?

When you have finished, give your work a title. Make sure the date is on it somewhere, too. Add decoration and color to the page as needed. Here is an example of what a person could write.

Share what you have written! Post it as a comment below. You can type in your work. Or post a picture of it.

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Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. Sometimes she teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center. You can find more of her work here. She offers (free!) writing help to anyone in recovery. This can be for any kind of writing project—resumes, letters, stories novels—email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information

by Nancy Casey

Write down a fact. A one-sentence fact. Any old fact.

You can describe something that’s in front of you or tell something about a memory. You could choose a fact that comes into your mind from the media, or from friends. Just some random fact.

The fact should take up about one line on the page.

Start a new line. Write new a sentence related to the fact. Write something that turns the fact into a bummer. Do this by adding new information that twists the fact around. Make the new sentence sound depressing somehow, or gloomy. It doesn’t even have to be true.

• For example, a person could begin by writing: There is strawberry ice cream in the freezer.

• Then they could follow up: At my cousin’s fifth birthday party, I threw up strawberry ice cream all over the cake.

After that sentence, start a new line. This time write a sentence that takes an idea from the gloomy sentence and turns the “conversation” cheerful or positive.

• For example, a person could follow the bummer recollection of throwing up at a cousin’s birthday party with something like: When I was growing up, my cousin was my best friend.

Then use that positive-sounding sentence as a springboard to say something gloomy or depressing. Maybe something like: In grade school, my best friend moved away and I never saw her again.

Continue down the page, that way, writing sentences that take turns changing the subject and swinging from positive to negative, back and forth like a rocking horse.

Just go sentence by sentence. Don’t pressure yourself to tell a coherent story. You can write things that are true, or completely made up, or somewhere in between. The important thing is to make the attitude swing from gloomy to cheerful, and back, and forth.

When you are three-quarters of the way down the page, stop. Draw a squiggly line under what you have written. Go back and read it over. Make small changes if you like.

Finally, in the little bit of space left on the page, comment on what you wrote. How did you have to make your mind work to change the attitude with every single sentence? Was it easy, hard, or a little of both? Were parts of the writing funny or annoying? Does the page you wrote seem like two people talking, or is it more like one person having a discussion with their own thoughts?

Write comments for the rest of the page, and when your work is finished, give it a title. Make sure the date is on the page somewhere, too. Add decoration and color as needed. Here is an example of what a person could write.

Share what you have written! Post it as a comment below. You can type in your work. Or post a picture of it.

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Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. Sometimes she teaches writing classes at the Recovery Center. You can find more of her work here. She offers (free!) writing help to anyone in recovery. This can be for any kind of writing project—resumes, letters, stories novels—email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.