Timeout for Fun

Take time off from your usual worrying or trying so hard to please everyone else.  Make a list of the five biggest worries on the left side of a sheet of paper.  Opposite each worry write why they would never-in-this-world happen.  

You'll discover you worry using creative improbabilities not creative reality.

Write a Dear Child of Me letter.  What would you like to do that's really fun, daring or outright wild? As you write, try to remember your fearless self.

Take a timeout and write yourself into Fun.

Play. Play. Play

Play with another poet's work to seek ideas and nuances for an exploration of possibilities. Type a favorite poem to feel the rhythm and pay attention to line breaks. Delving into a poem's structure and replacing nouns and verbs nourishes the creative process. 

Take a look at Pablo Neruda's poem.  Change the meaning with different nouns and verbs. Use repetition in varying ways. Follow the rhythm or change the sequences to fit as your mind takes over.

AN ODE FOR IRONING

          by Pablo Neruda

Poetry is white
Poetry smells green

it comes dripping out of the water
it rises flying into the sky

it gets wrinkled and piles up
it moves winged and floats up

We have to stretch out the skin of this planet
We try to reach into the clouds of the universe

We have to iron the sea in its whiteness
We need to unwrap the sky in its blueness

The hands go on and on
The feet kick higher and highr

and so things are made
and fins erupt

the hands make the world every day
The feet continue to awaken the world

fire unites with steel 
ice creates unity

linen, canvas and calico come back 
iris, daisy and geranium bloom

from combat in the laundry
from combustion in the clouds

and from the light a dove is born
after twilight a seagull snickers

purity comes back from the soap suds.
Intuition surges on a wave's bubbles


After interacting and replacing the essence in the lines with your ideas, combine what you have written and do a freewrite to each of your own lines.  What evolves?

Sidewalk into Story

Take a walk with a cell phone.  Record five images. Observe items on the sidewalk. Look right. Look left. Look up. Look back. Add sounds and scents. Play with illusions.

Begin with the photos below to warm up.
Try one word descriptions. Notice word rhythms.
Add action verbs.

It is rope or a snake
that wraps your ankle
or slithers to your waist?

An illusion
mirage
or
message
shimmers?

Texture of paws
pause
and retreat?

What's written in the note
or is it an elephant
about to trumpet?

Don't forget to look up.








Start a search and weave discoveries into poems or stories.