Some Topics for Writing

Rush writing is, for me, a great way to get going. I think it's a habit to cultivate daily or at least regularly. It's a good thing to do when you're suffering from writer's block. And, judging from many comments on this blog, some of you don't have much more than five minutes a day to write. And that's great. Today, I'm going to give you a list of topics you might consider for rush writing, if you're hurting for ideas. I've borrowed or adapted several of them from the book, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.

1. Sit quietly in a room and write about the light, the quality of light, the mood of the light coming through the window. 
2. Write about your relationship with light. Some people suffer during the darker winter months because of the loss of light. Others are "moles," who are just fine living in darker spaces.
3. Write lists of small memories. Some writers carry a notebook with them for just such memories. They pop into your head for a moment and are gone. 
4. One way I generate small memories is to "put" myself back into a situation--eating dinner with the family, who is sitting where at the table, who. Who says what? Who eats how? What are the family dynamics at the table? Friendly? Talkative? Quiet? Sitting in your room--or a space you shared with others.
5. Draw a map of a place where you have lived. Put in all the details that come to mind. Where the furniture was, which places "belonged" to which people? What were the "traffic" patterns in that place? How did you get from one room to another? When you think of this, do other memories come to mind? 
6. Begin by writing the words "I remember," and just write all the small memories that come to mind. Memories of long ago, memories of 30 seconds ago, childhood, adult memories. Just keep going for a few minutes until you've exhausted the list. Keep the list handy for future writing. 
7. Go for a walk. When you come back, write a list of everything you saw. Do this from memory. This is good regular practice, because you start training yourself to look around. I have to get out of the fog of my mind or I just don't see things. 
8. Choose a color, say red. The go for a walk and notice all the things you see that are red. Write this list when you get home. Any color works, of course. Pink, blue, yellow. 
9. Write in different places. If you live in a house with a laundry room, try writing in there--possibly with the washing machine or drying going. Write about the rhythms of the washing machine. Try to put that rhythm to paper. What comes to mind as you write? Or other places--a local cafe, a different room in the house, a park. Places change our ways of seeing and what we see. Write those places into your notebook.
10. Write about yourself as a "morning" person. Are you bright and cheerful in the morning, or dull and distant. We've had two granddaughters live with us in the recent past. One woke up cheerful, we called her Pooh bear. The other was just grumpy and impossible to talk to for a while. We called her Eeyore. 
11. Write about your day. Or about an hour in your day. Slow it down as you write. Try to capture the details of your time. 
12. Visualize a place you love. It could be your room, a field, a beach, an old tree. Write about your feelings of being in that place, the smells, the sounds, if you're outdoors, even the bugs. Try to write the details of this place so that someone else reading your piece can feel or visualize the place you have described. 
13. Write about "leaving" in any sense that comes to mind--leaving for school, leaving for the office, or leaving home for good. 
14. Write about a breakup in your life. 
15. Write about the first time you saw someone die. What did you see in that moment, what did you feel, what new things did you realize. 
16. Write about walking along a particular street where you live. Look for the details along the way--a broken fence, a barking dog, unkempt lawns, a beautiful flower or blossom. Try to be aware of your thoughts as you see these things, your reactions, the memories that they evoke.
17. Write a list of people you have loved.
18. Write about a grandparent.
19. Write about 

• swimming
• the stars 
• the most frightened you've ever been
• the happiest you've ever been
• green places
• peaceful places
• noisy places
• how you learned about sex
• the first time you had sex
• the closest you ever felt to God
• reading and books that have changed your life

   20. Write about a favorite teacher
   21. Grab a poetry book. write down a line and then begin your writing from there.
   22. If you were an animal, what do you imagine you'd be?

These are just random ideas, of course. The best ideas will be the ones you pull from your own experience. As you write, keep a file or notebook of things that come to mind, topics for another day when you're back to brain freeze.