Thirty days of lockdown writing

Spring and summer of 2020 brought a time of enforced isolation and high demands on resilience, patience and calm. During times like these you might find, more than ever, that writing could work its magic. We suggest that you aim to carve yourself a ten-minute slot each day for your own writing. Of course, you can write for longer, but ten minutes feels possible as a starting point.

You will know where, when and how this will work best for you. If you have a timer, set it, so that you don’t have to think about the time. Choose your preferred form of writing equipment – screen, paper, notebook, pen, pencil. Find the spot, inside or out, if you can, and let the words arrive.

You may choose to write alone, a blessed moment of quietness. Equally, this might be something you do with other family members. Even the youngest can draw along with you.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Quieten the editor. Don’t evaluate for a couple of weeks. Just get the words down.

We will aim to post a ten-minute writing prompt daily.

Use them as you wish. No need to do as we tell you!

Share the ideas.

Let us know what works for you. Send us photos of your writing nook, with or without you writing there.

These first prompts are from a wonderful book about writing memoir by Natalie Goldberg called Old Friend from Far Away. In the opening chapter the advice is to just keep going. Write into the margins if you want to. Write large or small. There are no rules. These bursts of writing can be thought of as training to run a distance. You have to start somewhere and you will build up stamina and skill and fluency and confidence. You can go back to prompts. You can have more than one go at an idea. Goldberg suggests: ‘Keep these topics in your back pocket and exercise them often.’

Prompt 1: I am looking at…

Here is the first one she suggests: “I am looking at”. Try going for the full ten minutes. Whenever you get stuck, write “I am looking at” again and keep going. ‘Be specific. Not a car, but a Ford Mondeo. Not tree but sycamore. But don’t worry if you write “bird” instead of woodpecker, you can work out what kind it was two weeks later when you re-read it.’

Prompt 2: I’m thinking of…

Staying with the Natalie Goldberg approach, here is the second prompt from her introduction. Start with “I’m thinking of” in the same way you started with “I am looking at..”

And here is another extract from her book which may be helpful: When you begin your timed writing, you enter your own mind, “I’m thinking of” is a way to begin, to help face the blank page. Once you start, you are on your own, but these two topics – I’m thinking of; I’m looking at – are basic good beginnings. They seem similar but each is a slightly different way to slice open your mind. When you begin with I’m thinking of,” you lodge yourself more up in the brain. “Looking at” directs you more visually and outwardly. Of course, once you get going they often cross paths. You can return to each one over and over.

Prompt 3: Three minute sprints

Goldberg sometimes suggests what she calls ‘three minute sprints’, offering lists of prompts; three minutes on each. Write quickly without overthinking. Try three minutes on each of these:
The best song of my life
What I can’t live without
What I can’t forget
What I can’t forgive
At night I think of …

These are big topics to squeeze into three minutes, but it’s good sometimes to snap to attention and get concise. One after the other, slice them open. Stay detailed.

Prompt 4: MORE SPRINTING

Here is another simple Natalie Goldberg-inspired prompt. I hope this one works for you. Another list to launch three minute sprints –or you could make it five.

Or you could choose one and write for ten. Stay with the details:

A memory of bread and butter
A memory of drinking out of a bottle
A hill you once knew
A recollection of mist
A moment in a library

Prompt 5: I remember

The simplest thing to do is to use ‘I remember’ as your sentence starter. Write for ten minutes – lots of sentences beginning ‘I remember …‘ or let the pen go. You might find yourself writing ‘I remember … and then simply running into an extended story of some kind, or a rant, or … well, it is your writing.

If you don’t fancy, ‘I remember …’, here are a couple of more specific ideas:

a picture of a teacher you had at primary school;
a time when you were in trouble in class;
how you first learned to read

Prompt 6: All the … of my life

This idea comes from Families Writing by Peter Stillman. Stillman wrote a list of all the cars in his life. He names them and adds a defining comment.

A ’38 Buick convertible with a rumbleseat and a fireball eight
A ’32 Packard Victoria with cut-glass bud vases and a 7-foot hood
A ’38 Packard sedan whose clutch my girlfriend blew out
A ’40 Plymouth 2-door with the shift right up there on the wheel
A ’42 Nash coupe, black and utterly uninteresting
A ’47 Cadillac convertible, long and sexy as a serious kiss
A ’35 Dodge thronging with old ladies’ ghosts
A ’51 Morris wagon, tiny and loathsome
A ’56 MG we souped up so hot it would barely run on gasoline
A ’62 Volvo 544, eye-shadow blue and indomitable
A ’62 Rambler sedan nobody had ever made love in
A ’48 Buick convertible that honest-to-God liked me
A ’65 Ford Galaxy in which I destroyed a Kharman Ghia, a privet hedge, and finally my relative innocence
A ’66 Ford Country Squire with the heart of a Clydesdale
A ’68 Ford Country Squire clean enough to take to bed
A ’70 Chevy wagon as drab as a submarine’s insides
A 72 Audi so corrupt I still can’t bear talking about it
An ’82 Rabbit that helped me discover where my sciatic nerve is.

You may not have owned so many cars – or be that interested, so what about shoes, houses, coats, pets, houseplants, mugs, … you name it. Make the list.

Prompt 7: tell me

Further inspiration from Natalie Goldberg.

Teach me something. It doesn’t have to be the traditional subjects. How about how to tie a shoe, be a good mother (or father), how to clean out the refrigerator, make a pudding, change a tyre? Something that is deep in your bones –driving in rush hour on the A140 to work each day.
Tell me some details about an uncle or grandfather. Make sure to name the uncle: “I remember Uncle Jack…”
Tell me about a time you remember rain. Rain might not be the main focus of a memory but write about a time when it was there with you as you said good-bye to your grandmother on a cold day in November or kissed your first girlfriend on the lips before school at 8am.

She writes: ‘Notice that each request begins with “Tell me.” It’s a little nudge…It gives your writing a direction. In the act of writing is the unspoken need of having another to listen.’

Prompt 8: APPles

Here is another prompt that springs from Goldberg but which, over the years, we have made our own. I have such good memories of the writing that this prompt has sparked.

Exactly how do you feel about apples?How do you like to eat them?
What about apple pie?
Have you grown them, picked them, juiced them?
Who do you think of when you think of apples?
What varieties do you like? Why? Name them.
Do you have apples in your house right now?

Tell me about apples.

Prompt 9: FROGS AND SNAILS

This little frog turned up in my watering can the other day. It must have jumped into the water at the bottom and then become trapped. When I tried to water some plants he was swooshed down the spout and jammed at its narrow end. You will be glad to know I managed to ease the frog out without any obvious harm. The photo was too good not to use! So ..

… tell me about frogs, or slugs, bumble bees, earwigs, gnats, woodlice. Go!

PROMPT 10: THrough the window

Today, what do you see from your window? And there is a twist: can you draw it first?

You may feel cautious about drawing; in which case, try ‘blind drawing’. That is, draw, using a smooth-running pen, without looking down at the paper. Just go for it, as you do when you free write. You will get the essence of the things you want to draw.

Once you have a drawing. Set the timer and write, using the drawing and the experience of drawing as your starting point. Write for ten minutes.

If you don’t wish to draw, that is OK. Just use the prompt as your starting point, as usual.

Tell what you see. Pick out the detail. Find the words to give the colours and shapes. What do you not see? What do you remember?

PROMPT 12: A SNACK

Draw today’s snack, or the snack you wish you had. Then write.

When I was writing the Introducing Teachers’ Writing Groups book, Rebecca Griffiths was writing the final draft of her dissertation. We exchanged photos of our snacks daily. Snacks are essential to hard writing!

Tell us about snacks. Ten minutes. Go!

PROMPT 14: EGGS

Hen, goose, duck, chocolate. Boiled, fried, poached or in an omelette. How do you eat them? Where do you procure them? Have you collected eggs from a coop?

Write about egg hunts, eggy bread, painting eggs, egg-blowing, about how you open a boiled egg, about your technique of separating yolk from white.

PROMPT 11: SHoes

A pair of shoes: are they your favourites?

If you could go out now and buy a new pair of shoes, what would you choose?

Tell us about the best shoes ever – and the worst.

Tell us where those shoes have taken you.

PROMPT 13: books by my bed

Which books do you have now by your bed? Or in the pile of being read and waiting to be read books? When did you not read? What about when reading was all you did? Did you always have your nose in a book? Some people claim that reading has saved their life…

What has reading done for you? What is reading doing for you now? Ten minutes. Go

PROMPT 15: PEOPLE

Someone who lives in the same house as you. Draw them. Draw them all. Or are you alone? Draw a self-portrait.

Tell us about the inhabitants. Tell us how they came to be that way.

PROMPT 16: HOME

Where you live now.

Take a tour around the house. Show us around.

Will you be estate agent, historian, gossip, family archivist?

What are the tourist attractions? The most frequented?

Show us a hidden treasure.

List its seven wonders.

Go. Ten minutes.

PROMPT 18: A Chair

This one can come back again and again.
Draw a chair in the room where you are sitting.
What is the history of the chair? Where does it come from?
What stories could it tell?
Do you like this chair?
Or are you thinking of a chair from another place, a chair that belonged to someone else? I think of the pair of chairs where my great-grandparents used to sit facing each other on either side of the fire, and the big carver which stood at the head of the table, and a wooden bench in the garden of a dear friend.

PROMPT 20: A photograph

Choose a photograph from your family album, from your photo stream, from your phone, from that box you’ve been meaning to sort out. Tell me about it. Where and when? Who is there, or not there? Were you there? Who took the photo? What does it remind you of?

PROMPT 22: EARTH DAY

April 22nd 2020 is Earth Day: a day this year to mark fifty years since the founding of the environmental movement in 1970.

Write for the earth. Write what you love about the earth and its landscapes and its creatures.

Write a praise song. It’s a list!

Share this list with one other or with many.

PROMPT 24: MY CHILD self

How were you described as a child? Were there labels? Have you outgrown them?

What did you dream? What did you expect? Where is that child now?

Go. Ten minutes.

PROMPT 26: FIVE MINUTE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

This is an interesting idea that can become compulsive. Set a timer and set out to write your whole life in five minutes. When the time is up, stop. You can have another go. You may want to try another five minute stint, starting from where you left off.

But to start from the beginning again is an interesting challenge. The idea is to get the whole life down in five minutes and so you can begin to try out strategies that allow you to do that. You can repeat for as often you wish.

PROMPT 28: small actions

Think of a small but very full moment you would like to describe. It should be a moment of about a minute. It could be pulling a cork from a bottle, mounting and setting off on a bike, making a cup of tea. Write a detailed, moment to moment description of the action.

PROMPT 30: YOUR WRITING SPACE

Drawing and writing. Draw your writing space. Is it always the same or do you move around? Neat or messy? Think of the places where you have written in your life: the school desk, the library table, the train station, the gallery café.

What are the elements that make a good space for writing?

Write about where you write. Go. Ten minutes.

(And, if you want to take a photograph and share it with us to add to our Writing Spaces page, please do!)

PROMPT 17: RECIPES

Think of a recipe you love. It could be as simple as a glass of milk. How did you discover it? What kind of glass do you serve it in? Have you discovered a new recipe recently? Are you using up old packets from the larder? Have you returned to an old favourite? Tell us about a recipe.

Ten minutes. Go.

PROMPT 19: QUIET

Quiet. Write about quiet.

What can you hear?

What is absent?

Have there been times when all you wanted was quiet?

Or when it was too quiet – often ominous for those of us with toddlers in the house.

Write about quiet. Ten minutes. Go

PROMPT 21: unsent letter

Write a letter to someone and tell them what you cannot tell them face to face - or wish that you had told them.

It may stay in your notebook, or…

PROMPT 23: OBJECTS

Draw an everyday object –the toaster, kettle, biro, milk bottle ... something that you see and use so often that you hardly see it.

And when you have drawn it, write about it. What is your relationship? What had you not noticed before? Have there been others in your life?

Go. Ten minutes.

PROMPT 25: STORIES

We all tell stories. We tell stories to make sense of our days, our lives. We have stories that are our touchstones, that define us or guide us or are just designed to annoy our relatives.

Write one of the stories you tell over and over again.

PROMPT 27: WHAT I LOVE

Think about something (not a person) that means a great deal to you and with which you have long experience. Describe it.

PROMPT 29: first meetings

Write about all the first meetings you’ve ever had: with a lover, a caretaker, a teacher, friend, lawyer, owner of a shop, a hairdresser.

Go.