If you fancy doing a bit of writing but you're not sure what about, or you want to dabble the way an artist might play with mixing colours / making marks, this is the perfect Writing Skill for you: the magic of writing where you discover what it's about, instead of deciding in advance, and some very special creative constraints that'll shape it in surprising ways for you.
So give yourself the gift of a cuppa and ten minutes, grab your notebook and pen, and set off on a mini writing adventure into the unknown. And in the spirit of the unknown, I'm going to ask you to trust me for a bit and not scroll down to read the whole Skill before you start. It works better that way and you'll be able to brainstorm more freely. So do Part One, then I'll explain the rationale, then do Part Two.
Part One
For half your time (five mins if you want to keep this a ten-minuter), brainstorm all the words you can think of with "aw" and "ah" sounds. For example: aw: baulk, caught, Lord, etc. ah: mark, party, harsh, etc. Do that before you scroll further.
Here come the don't-scroll greenery:
🌿 Don't
🍃 keep
🌱 reading
🌳 till
💚 you've
🌲 done
🌳 that
☘️ bit
Why you're doing this
The first thing we all learn in linguistics is that words don't inherently mean anything: there's no reason why a "pen" is called a pen, and so on. And that's why languages are different. BUT there are some exceptions to this. Certain vowel sounds have instinctive meaning for us, which runs across languages. Awe and Ah sounds, in particular, have associations of things being slow, large, and heavy. So if you use heaps of those sounds in a passage or a poem, it'll create a mood of slowness, largeness, and weight. Even if that's not the meaning of the words you write. Nifty, huh?
Part Two
Now, for the rest of the time you've got, draw on your collection of slow, large, and weighty feeling words, to write either a poem or a passage of description. Cramming as many of those in as you can will decide your subject matter for you, and also what you say about it. And whatever you're writing about, the words will set the mood for you. So let the words take the lead, write to find out what they end up saying, and have fun!
Want to play with this more?
- For a companion piece of small light sounds, use the vowels /I/ and /i:/ - the vowel sounds in ick and eek.
- And for an interesting exploration, try the same brainstorm-then-write approach with words beginning with "gl". (This one only works in English, but it's super fun to discover.)
Enjoy!
Why this Skill?
Writing to discover new approaches, angles, and even thoughts can be wonderfully illuminating. We get to find things out through the process of writing, rather than deciding in advance with what we already know. Adding creative constraints is a great way to do that: through a group of words we're fitting in, like this, or through another nifty patterns like using specific letters, rhythms, etc. And creative constraints are always great for inspiration.
If you want to explore this more, the free poem-writing workshop, Play with Poetry, will take you through a live guided writing to try out other fun creative constraints and ways of writing to discover. Click here for the details and to sign up, completely free. No experience necessary, and poetry sceptics and poetry afficionados are equally welcome!
