Five Things
Dear all
I have been getting in a rut with my morning pages. I have also been giving myself far too many things to do now I am entirely self-sufficient and don’t have a part-time job. I am a very demanding boss to myself and the things to do all appear during my morning pages. I then have to go through all of it to decide which ones are important and which can be ignored or left for another time. It can be exhausting before I’ve even started doing any of the things! So this week, I have changed my process and decided to distract my busy brain by writing five things instead. This is inspired by Summer Brennan’s five things essays.
The idea is that I write five different things, maybe a paragraph on each, maybe a sentence. The benefits of this method are:
It’s a container. I know when to start and when to stop.
If I have a time limit for this exercise, say half an hour, then knowing I have to write five different things will stop me ruminating and going round in circles.
It provides a resource for future writing which is easier to search (then cut and paste) because it is in small chunks.
Linking ideas together is essential in the lyric essay, which is the form I’m practising this year for my Moonpause project. And with five different things coming from my mind each day, I can look at them later to find connections.
A five things essay could be a lyric essay in itself.
Five things remembered from a day is an excellent way to journal.
When writing, I occasionally struggled to think of a fifth thing, so I pulled a book from my shelf and picked a random line to respond to. This was so helpful to take my mind in a different direction.
Five things
1
And so, I begin with what I notice. Lying on the sofa looking through the doorway of the lounge through the doorway of the dining room, through the slats of the dining room window, I see silver birch. Through its spindly feathery branches I see the house at the end of our garden, but when the leaves are grown, all I will see is green. I see a small bird or two flying in and out of the silver birch branches. I can’t see which kind of bird. I don’t have my glasses on. And I can see beyond, on top of the house at the end of our garden maybe, where it looks as if more pigeons have made a nest on the top of a tv arial. I promise myself I will get out binoculars to take a closer look. I realise that this essay may be just as much about pigeons as about silver birch.
2
Silver birch sends me letters. They are always about ageing. About how her bark has split on the trunk and is all rough and gnarled and further up on the smaller branches, a green coating has spread on her white bark. She wants me to take a closer look. I tell her I’ll need the binoculars. Get them, she says. But now she is older, pigeons have started nesting in her branches, and now on the sawn off main trunk. She likes being a home to the pigeons. She likes watching the squabs grow and take their first flight from one branch to another.
3
Today, I planned my 30 days of moon activities. I planned them in accordance with the moon phases to create rhythm in my untethered peri-menopausal life. According to Kirsty Gallagher in her book, Lunar Living, today (or tomorrow?) is the dark moon, before the new moon and it is a time of inward reflection of planning and setting intentions for the coming month. I think a 30 day cycle, beginning with the new moon could work well when planning to write a short piece like an essay or short story. I will go with the plan this month to see (planning to begin with, then writing and reaching peak of creative energy at full moon, then taking a step back, seeing what works, what to let go of and then editing, revising, submitting during the waning moon), while doing my moon activities. This could be a thing. A method. My writing life as experiment, like Marion Milner.
4
[sentence starter from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk p. 79] The deer was small…its legs were splayed as it skittered in the headlights of my car. Other deer walked alongside it, small and bigger, protecting it, not leaving it alone as it tried to get out of the road but didn’t know which way to run. It looked so scared as I drove as slow as I could, waiting. It was late. I wanted to stop the car, get out and scoop the deer up, hand it to its mother, but instead I drove slowly hoping the noise of my engine would encourage it to run to the side with its family.
5
The geraniums (if that’s what they are) are bothering me. There are so many of them. Everywhere. They appeared after the garden turned crisp brown in the weeks of drought and heat last summer. Do they nourish the bare earth? Are they intruders taking over? Either way, I don’t want them all in my garden. I don’t know what to do with them. Even though their tiny leaves are shiny green to the paler, duller green of the clumping pink geraniums, I notice the leaves are the same shape. Five segments. Like this writing. Serrated. Like this writing.
These paragraphs are cut and pasted from my daily five things exercise this week.
Writing prompt
Write your own five things essay or if that is too many, in journalling group this week, we made lists of three things:
Summarise your day in three sentences. Then write:
- 3 good things
- 3 smells
- 3 tastes
- 3 sounds
- 3 things you saw
- 3 feelings
- 3 things you noticed
- 3 things you remember
- 3 things you are thankful for.
If you want to take your writing further. Pick three of the things from your list and freewrite about each of them in turn or a combination.
Reading Suggestions
I’ve called these reading suggestions, but actually, I listened to both of them - one was an audio book and the other a podcast, which also has a book.
Twelve Moons: A Year Under a Shared Sky by Caro Giles - a beautifully written memoir about mothering close to nature.
The Fearless Writer Podcast by Beth Kempton - inspiration for getting down to writing.
I’ve ordered a pile of books about creative writing from my library. The books I usually recommend seem to be a bit old now! So I wanted to update my thinking. If there are any books about writing or creativity that you’ve found inspiring or useful, please to let me know.
I’m looking forward to getting started with the next five-week block of The Writer’s Notebook next week. Here’s a link to book a place, if you’ve been meaning to but haven’t got round to it yet!!
Until next time…
Mel