Won't you join me in a fun writing exercise (or two)?
Word games + writing prompts = nerdy fun
Hi! I’m back from a January sabbatical in Portugal which was spent writing in the mornings and immersing myself in the majestic hills, striking tiles, superlative views, and sumptuous food and wines of Lisboa in the afternoons and evenings.
And I did something I’ve never done before in my life: I wrote every single day. Some days it was only 300 words, other days it was thousands. But I gave myself permission to be bad and uninspired and sloppy and that allowed me to actually get it done. I’ve talked here about how in the past, I wouldn’t pursue creative writing (outside of the writing that I get paid to do at my day job) unless I felt “inspired,” and certain I could produce high quality work, which resulted in me eschewing the most important ingredient to productivity, an ingredient that eclipses talent by a factor of ten million: Consistency!
If you want to get shit done, you have to be consistent. I’ve known this logically for most of my life but chronically untreated ADHD, only-partially treated OCD, and perfectionism have prevented me from fully absorbing it and acting accordingly. Until now.
This is all to say, I’ve been feeling a lot more energy around writing, and I’ve been taking it less seriously, meaning I’m allowing it to be FUN again. In particular, I’ve been going cuckoo for writing prompts which remind me of my halcyon days in undergrad writing workshops where I thrived on the ever-changing novelty of different assignments each week to get my writerly synapses firing.
At the ripe age of almost 40, I no longer have professors to give me assignments so I decided to devise some writing prompts of my own, inspired by my current obsession du jour, word games!
Firstly, the wordle has entranced me so much that I use it as a kind of Punxsutawney Phil to divine the tone of my day. If it comes easily, I expect an easier day. If the wordle is a hurdle, well, I brace for trouble ahead. As an homage to the simple joy of this free word puzzle, I decided to start writing short poems using the day’s wordle as the first word.
Here’s yesterday’s, inspired by the wordle, which was FRAME.
If you’d like to join me in this writing exercise, share your own short wordle-inspired poems with the hashtag #wordlepoems.
But the poem prompt isn’t enough for me. I’m insatiable. So I’ve come up with a flash fiction writing exercise too.
My mom gifted me a NYT Games subscription for Christmas and I’ve become enthralled with their iconic spelling bee game, in which you have to find as many words in a random 7 letter sequence as possible. Every word must use the center letter and in each day’s puzzle, there is a least one pangram—a word that utilizes all 7 letters.
The puzzle above was yesterday’s and the pangram was “unjamming.” So, last night, I decided to use the day’s pangram as the first word in a piece of flash fiction. And I’ve concocted the following hashtag for the exercise: #flashinthepangram. (Quite chuffed with my pun there.)
What follows is my pangram-inspired flash fiction from yesterday, a cautionary tale about new-age grifters (it’s been on my mind), tentatively titled, “Gaia’s Kingdom.”
Gaia’s Kingdom
“Unjamming’ is a curious way to describe the ambient sound bath,” I say to the guided meditation instructor at our Sedona eco-resort, looking down as my naked toes sink into the pebbled earth just behind the adobe snack bar and pool pavilion. The low moan of a single extended note on a didgeridoo is emanating from a bluetooth speaker five feet away and I’m regretting agreeing to join Shaman Shalaya for this activity when she approached me in the hotel lobby.
“How’d you come up with that name, ‘unjamming’?,” I ask Shalaya, a lululemon-ed redhead in her early 20’s whose spiritual credentials are murky at best, and whose real name, were I to do even a cursory level of research, would surely be revealed to be Kirsten or Matyson or something.
“Oh, I didn’t come up with it,” she says with a faux-modest giggle, “But I can tell you that its meaning is twofold: First, it means that the sound bath is the opposite of, like, a traditional jam sesh in that it’s one prolonged noise with no deviation—and second, it, like, unjams your chakras and karmic pathways and stuff so the abundance of the universe can make its home in your cells, ya know?”
“Oh, definitely, I totally get that,” I lie, sweat beading on my brow. “But, wait, you didn’t tell me who came up with the name,” I ask again, “if not you, who?”
“Oh, that’s simple, silly: God came up with it.”
“God?”
“Oh, excuse me, God-dess,” she corrects herself.
The midday sun behind Shalaya nearly blinds me as I squint up at her blankly. The rays strobe with such brilliance they obscure her lithe body form, leaving only a shadowy impression of a spandex-ed shape as I try to make sense of her answer.
“Gaia whispered it into my consciousness in a dream,” she continues un-prompted, “so I can’t really take credit for the name.”
“So you’re merely a conduit, or prophetess, spreading the word of ‘Gaia?’ Do I have that right?,” I ask, wanting to appear open-minded and not at all like the cynic that I am.
Shalaya’s face lights up: “OMG, exactly! I surrender to the messages she exhales as I slumber and then I bring those messages to life, here, in the physical realm of her kingdom.”
“Um, OK,” I say, wanting to not seem like a square but secretly thinking this lady is a real wackadoo and it’s no wonder I’m the only person who signed up for this midday desert meditation and sound bath in high summer.
“Now,” says Shalaya, “Goya told me she wants you to close your eyes and—”
“Don’t you mean Gaia?,” I say.
“Right, of course, Gaia. That’s what I said. Now, Gaia wants you to focus on the sound bath. Let the healing reverberations envelop your spirit as you close your eyes and count to 90.”
“90 seems like kind of a high number.”
“That’s how long it takes to tune into the healing, cosmic frequency, OK?”
I think to myself: What’s the harm in giving it a go? I’m always so rigid and buttoned up; maybe some unconventional self-care is just what I need. I close my eyes. Sinking my bare feet into the hot earth and stretching my head towards the sweeping tapestry of desert sky, the muted wail of the didgeridoo underscores my slow count, “1, 2, 3, 4 . . .”
When I reach the number 30, the gnawing hum of the sound bath begins to dissipate and fade away and all that’s left are the amplified tones of the alien environment—a rustle of brush, the swoop of wind through a cactus needle, the distant whoosh of a car on a road miles away. I can hear everything so clearly. My body’s tingling. Is this the cosmic frequency she was talking about?
As my count continues past 60, my senses awaken even more to the landscape, the didgeridoo noise is gone completely, eclipsed by the teeming symphony of desert life. My skin greedily absorbs the intense scorch of the air as I sigh with pleasure. My mind is so clear and calm. Is this transcendence?
When I reach the count of 90, I’m reluctant to end the reeling ecstasy of oneness with Gaia’s kingdom. “Wow, the sound bath worked,” I begin to say to Shalaya as I blink open my eyes, “I didn’t think I could know a peace so profound and complete.”
There’s no response.
Searching for Shalaya in the sun-kissed tableau of red and rock, I can no longer locate her form. The Bluetooth speaker is gone, the didgeridoo a distant memory. Was it all a mirage?
Looking down at my feet where I’d set down my purse, I realize it’s disappeared too, evaporated into the ether, along with all my cash and credit cards. The soaring crescendo of nature’s sounds, so loud just moments ago, falls silent, and now there’s only quiet.
___
Want to join the #flashinthepangram challenge? The only criteria I’m setting for the exercise is a piece of fiction that’s under 1,000 words and uses a particular day’s pangram as the first word. I won’t be able to do it every day but I’m going to try to do it on the regular. And I’d love to see your contributions! Tweet me your stories @amyfeds or tag me on instagram @amyfedermanauthor.
Finally, if you’re sick of writing, or thinking, or simply don’t have the bandwidth for anything more than the daily work of staying alive: I see you and that is completely valid! I have been there many times.
For my burnt-out babes, I offer you this fun AI story generator that I discovered via Ben Collins on twitter: https://narrative-device.herokuapp.com/createstory. Simply type in two prompts and our robot overlords will WILL WRITE A STORY FOR YOU. I’d be terrified if I wasn’t having so much fun with it.
I gave it the prompts “wellness influencers”(again, they’ve been on my mind), and “the unknowable void,” and damned if this plucky AI didn’t write a freakin’ masterpiece!
Until next time—take it easy,
Amy