Home from the hospital, and another Writing Sprint Workshop coming this Saturday, June 22
We are home from the hospital, and I am living in the house I grew up in for a while. There are so many things about this place that fill me up—my mother’s peony bushes. The smell of poplar trees. How loud it is here when the wind blows at night because there are so many leaves on the trees that dance with it. The creek that runs by the front of the property, that I have known and loved since I was a little girl and gave it all my prayers and wishes.
The last day before we came home Dad was using a cane and seemed very frail. He was in good spirits
and it also looked like he was going to need a lot of care and months to recuperate.
But the second he got in the house he wouldn’t sit down or go to bed. It was as if he’d spent the whole time in the hospital storing up energy. He like the energizer rabbit, running around the house in his pajamas, “using” the cane they’d told him to use by dragging it behind him, going up and down the stairs, and saying things like, “Dammit, I’ve lost my thermometer! How will I find out what the temperature is outside?”
I am amazed at how fast he is getting better. Today went for his regular walk. “It was a perfect day,” he said, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Clear, not too hot, bright blue sky.”
I wonder how much this has to do with being in the house he loves and on the land that he’s cared for for 50 years. I wonder that about houses and plants and gardens—do they miss us when we’re gone? Do they know when we’re sick? Are the trees and the buttercups he mows around because he thinks they’re beautiful sending him vibrations I can’t see through their leaves and tendrils? Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they do. I know my garden misses the woman who planted it, or it did until her ghost left the house and went outside. I love that so many different things are talking, all the time. I know that I never feel alone when I am outside.
Meanwhile, this month’s writing sprints workshop,
WHAT ARE YOU SO MAD ABOUT?
will be this coming Saturday, June 22 at 11:30 am.
In this generative hour long workshop we will be writing through and playing with our rage and what it wants to tell us.
My favorite thing about writing through rage is that once it gets named and given some space, it often turns into something funny that you wish you’d written or said a long time ago.
We will be taking a series of consecutive prompts and writing for 2-5 minutes with each one, for a total of 30-40 minutes. (I call this “Writing Sprints” and I use it as a way to dive into creative flow without thinking or planning.) Each prompt is designed to move a story along and help you create something cohesive, spontaneous, and fun, all at the same time.
By the end of the workshop you will have:
allowed parts of you to speak that may have been hidden
written steadily for 30-40 minutes
made something awesome—either a solid start to a new piece or possibly even a finished piece. (I’ve seen it happen!)
turned something you thought was unspeakable into something wise or funny
found a new way to dive into your work that takes the dread out of THE BLANK PAGE
We will write (or draw, if you’d like) together and then I will stay on the call for the rest of the hour to chat and answer questions.
If you can’t make it that day, no worries! You will have access to the replay video, so you can do the workshop on your own time.
There is a powerful alchemy that comes along with this process—it allows us to access the intuitive magic that comes alive when we are creative without thinking. Every time I do one of these writes I end up with something that has more life to it than the pieces I plan and plot through carefully. The alchemy is even stronger when I write with other people and I can’t wait to make something wonderful with you!
This workshop is free to paid subscribers. If you’d like to upgrade to paid and get some fun writing done, click the button below! I’d love to see you in the workshop.
Otherwise, you can register here:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Out of my Mind to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.