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Write for You:  An Alphabet Book

by Nancy Casey

Every once in a while I make an alphabet book.  You know the kind:  A is for this, B is for that…  It is a process that helps me clarify my thinking.  Especially when the thinking is murky, or when the thinking won’t stop.

One of the best things about an alphabet book is the way you make one:  page by page.  You don’t have to start with A.  You don’t have to say what the book is “about.”  There’s not much to plan.  You just get yourself set up and make a page.

To get set up, make an “Alphabet List.”  Write the letters A-Z down the left side of the page.  Next to each letter put words that begin with that letter.  Use words that are significant to you.  Perhaps you already have a collection of words to draw from.  Keep adding to the Alphabet List throughout the project.

To make a page, consult your Alphabet List and pick a word and a letter.  Here’s what goes on a page:

• The letter, showcased in some fancy way. You can write it extra big, put it in technicolor, decorate it, give it arms and feet, or whatever you decide.
• The phrase that says what word the letter stands for. (T is for Thing… B is for Bus stop…etc.)
• A sentence that has the word in it. (“The thing that rattled all night was a shutter that had pulled loose.”  Or, “Here is the bus stop where I see the same seven people every morning.”
• A picture. You can draw the picture or tape (glue) down a picture you have found somewhere.
• Lots of other words that begin with that same letter, maybe written in fine print.
• Some kind of decorative border around the whole page.

You don’t have to put these things on the page in this order, though.  Sometimes when I haven’t decided what letter or word to use, I just start working on the border around the page until an idea comes to me.  Same for thinking up the sentence.  When I don’t know what to write yet, I work on the decorative parts.

After you’ve made one page, make another, and another until you have made all twenty-six.

By the time you have made 26 pages, you will have thought up a really good title.  So make a title page.  Put the author’s name (you!) on the title page along with the date.  Here is an example of a page from an alphabet book and a title page.

Make a cover for the book.  It should have the title and author, and a picture if you like.  It’s nice if you can make it out of heavier paper than the pages.

Making an entire alphabet book is a process that will take quite a while.  But that’s okay, because it’s also the kind of process that you can interrupt and get back to easily.  There isn’t a single big job that you have to do, only a series of little ones—picking a word, making a border, drawing a letter, writing a sentence…

Finish off the book by assembling the cover all the pages and binding them together somehow. You can staple or sew them, put them in a notebook, whatever is going to work best for the book you have made.

Now is not the time, really, to get all focused on finishing the book.  For today, just make a page.

Nancy Casey teaches at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  531 S. Main St. in Moscow.  Check the calendar for classes and times.  All are welcome.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

by Nancy Casey

Think about a story that you can tell from your life.  Something that happened to you, or something you witnessed.  It can be an event from a long time ago, or something recent.  Something sad, happy, scary, fun, or boring.  It just has to be something that happened when you were there. 

As you assemble your writing materials, let your mind roam around your experience and decide what to write “about.”   You won’t be writing about it in the usual storytelling way.

Your mission will be to write about the event in a way that nobody recognizes it but you.  You will not change any information, or add anything that is false.  Instead, you will write down details from the story, but no details that actually give the story away.

Confusing?  Here’s an example.

Let’s suppose that I went to a party and at that party I had an interaction with someone that had a big effect on me.  Let’s say I was startled at the time, and thought about it for days afterwards.  Maybe it was funny.  It could have been kind, or mean.  Maybe it was a piece of good advice.  Or bad advice.  Maybe I’ve thought about it for years afterwards and it changed the way I see everything.  Maybe I have shared this story with lots of people. Perhaps I have never told a soul. 

How can I write about all that in a way that nobody but me really knows the “true” subject matter?  It’s all about the details.

I could describe the food at the party, tell what I ate and how much.  I could describe the location of the party, what the place looked like from the outside.  Do I remember first thing I saw when I walked in the door?  Maybe I can recall the shoes somebody was wearing.  (What shoes was I wearing?)  Perhaps I can dredge up a recollection of the furniture, the bathroom, the weather, or the music.  Of course I would remember everything about the important interaction, but I would leave all of that out.

Here is an example of the kind of thing that you might write.  Don’t forget to put a title at the top of your page and to write the date on the page somewhere as well.

This is a handy exercise to do when you want to write about something and you don’t know where to begin. 

It is also a good way to maintain your privacy if other people read your writing.

Regardless of what you have chosen to write about, when you return to a page of “irrelevant details” later, you will like it.  No matter who else reads it and or how hard they might study it, nobody will ever understand it the way you do. 

During the week, be alert for an event or two that you could write about in this way.  If you go to the grocery store or out for a meal, look around for details you could relate about the experience without any hints about what the experience really is.

If it’s snowing out and your feet are cold and wet, as you go about your day, take note of everything that doesn’t involve your feet.  If you write these details down, chances are that years from now, you could find that page and say, “Ah, that was the day I had such cold feet.”

Nancy Casey teaches at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  Check the calendar for classes and times.  All are welcome.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

by Nancy Casey

You are going to need a sentence to start out with.  Any sentence.  As you gather up your writing materials and loosen your body, think up the sentence you will use.

You can begin with a sentence that describes something you see.  “The dish towel is on the table,” for instance, or “It looks like rain.”

It can be a sentence that might be true. “The cat is chasing a moth,” for example.  Or a sentence that is likely to be false, such as “The chicken swam the English Channel.”

You can choose to write something random and nonsensical.  “The eyeglasses took out the garbage.”  Or perhaps, “The table carried the ocean to the zoo.”

If you don’t want to make up a sentence, borrow one.  Something you heard on the radio.  A random sentence from a book, a newspaper, or online.  Any old sentence that you get from anywhere.

Once you decide on your opening sentence, write it out on the first line of your page.  On the next line, change one word in the sentence and write it down again.

For example, you might begin with “The child smells smoke.”   For the next line you could write “The child smells elephants,” and follow that with “The child plays with elephants.”

Instead of always changing words, you can add words.  After “The child plays with elephants,” you could write, “The child plays with dancing elephants.”

Continue to fill up the page, changing one word at a time.

You might find yourself describing something or telling a story.  Maybe the page reads like a slide show of images, both likely and fantastical.  You might have yourself a private laugh at the things you come up with.  Maybe it all makes sense or maybe it’s all nonsense.  Maybe a combination of both.  Maybe it’s nonsense to others but makes sense to you.

However the page comes together, write the date on it somewhere and give it a title.  You can see an example here.

If you try this a few times, each time will probably be different.  You can do it with a partner, where you pass the page back and forth and take turns changing the sentence.  Or you can do it with a group of people and pass the page around in a circle.

If you want to make it tricky and more interesting, you can start with a long sentence and change two words at a time.  “Last June when my birthday came, we built a fort in the willows,” could turn into, “Last June when the relatives came, we hid in a fort in the willows.

Another way to complicate things is to first make a list of 10 or 15 words.  Any words.  (Here are more suggestions for doing that.) Then, as you fill up the page with sentences, see how many of those words you can slip in.

No matter what you end up writing, each time you fill a page, you will demonstrate how the smallest changes can lead to big surprises.

Nancy Casey teaches at the Recovery Center on Thursdays.  Check the calendar for classes and times.  All are welcome.  Call the Recovery Center  208-883-1045 or email latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com for more information.

Listen to Recovery Radio! 1-2 PM on KRFP 90.3 FM on the Palouse or online at krfp.org. To help with the show or suggest topics, contact the Recovery  Center any time (208-883-1045 and latahrecoverycenter@gmail.com) or stop in on Thursdays and meet Nancy.