In the News

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.

by Nancy Casey

If you want to be out and about in polite society, you have to wear clothes. So people tend to have lots of them.

If you were to count up all the people in the world and all the places and reasons they wear certain clothes, not to mention the clothes they own and don’t wear, and the clothes they wished they had, you would probably have a number equal to the number of stars in the galaxy or gains of sand in the Sahara desert.

What about your own clothes? Chances are you have quite a few. And different groups or categories of them, too. You can divide them into categories in many ways. Clean and dirty, of course. Or, whites, darks, and colors if you are standing in front of a washing machine. Underwear and outer-wear. Summer clothes and winter clothes. Hats, shoes and gloves. Pants, shirts and sweaters. Clothes you love and clothes you hate.

You can divide clothes into categories according to when and where you ought to wear them. Some situations (such as work, and fancy restaurants) require certain clothes. Other situations have special clothes that aren’t exactly required, but people tend to conform. Think of the gym, the beach, or church.

Do things that you always wear, like glasses and jewelry, count as clothes? What about a purse, satchel, or backpack that you never leave home without?

Do you have a collection of clothes that you never wear but don’t get rid of? Perhaps you expect to wear them someday, or maybe they have sentimental value. Do you keep clothes around because they belong to someone else?

In your writing today, think about all the different categories of clothes you have and write about some of your clothes by category.

Begin with any category at all. (In my closet… At home… My uncomfortable clothes… My favorite clothes… In the laundry basket…) Write about the clothes in one category, then move onto another category until the page is full.

Your page could turn out to be a big list of different clothes. Or you might have so much to say about the first article of clothing you write about that it fills up the whole page. Maybe you will decide to draw the clothes as you think about what you will write.

However your page comes out, give your work a title. Make sure the date is on it somewhere, too. Add any decoration and color that you think the page might need. 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. Here is an example of what a person could write.

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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.