The Writing Jam
My favorite creative process and a few poem-things
It’s not edible. If you were hoping for a recipe… sorry.
Over the last eight-plus years, the writing jam has become my favorite way to call the gods of creativity back to me (and my creative friends) when life, work, AI, writer’s block, and everything else get in the way.
I owe this simple but powerful concept to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones (highly recommend), where she lays out the format.
Just summarizing here, the writing jam goes something like this:
Get some people together (two or more—in the same room, or virtually).
Gather some writing prompts (or don’t).
Set a timer for 2 or 5 or 10 or 15 minutes, and write on one prompt without stopping until the timer goes off.
Read aloud what you wrote to your writing buddies. No feedback, positive or negative. No critiquing. Just read and be witnessed. Listen and witness.
Rinse and repeat (as many times as you can fit in your writing jam session).
Keep things in your notebook, never to be seen again… or share when something interesting comes through in a flash of inspiration.
Sound scary? It is, until it isn’t. The beautiful thing about not having any feedback is that you quickly get into a flow of writing, sharing, and listening, without the normal pressure we (often) feel to produce something good, powerful, meaningful, or interesting before sharing it with others.
The whole point of the writing jam is that it does not matter what you write. The whole point is to put pen to paper and end up with some words where before there was a blank page. The results can be nonsensical, ridiculous, silly, ugly, beautiful and, once in a while, surprisingly profound.
Below I’m sharing a random selection of… poems? Streams of consciousness? Word salads? …that have emerged from a few writing jams over the last few months. I’ll also share the prompts
I hope it may inspire you to start a jam of your own (or to reach out about joining one of mine, which I have been meaning to open up to the public for a while now… maybe if you nag me about it I’ll finally feel motivated!).
Between Stillness & Dance
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple. Dance. One of the doors into stillness. Between these poles, A life, a mind A heart that beats, no matter how hard I try to stay quiet blood rushes in my ears and the illusion is broken Today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow I spin my way into that magic space between breaths And no matter how many, many distractions reach for me down the hallway of my searching Another beat, another drop of rain in the jungle returns me to me
The prompt: Take inspiration from a poem (use a single line to start, or the overall voice) and start writing your own thing. In this case, the poem was “Today” by Mary Oliver.
Wholeness
Are you not both the home, and the beast who guards it
Do you not roam along the perimeter of your consciousness
Even as you seek sanctuary at its heart?
Do you not snarl at any shadow who might dare to cross your threshold,
Even as you call out into the cold to invite them in?
These bricks, laid with so much care,
Keep you safe and warm
Even as you lift your leg to mark them: mine
This freshly-wrought roof
Keeps you dry and warm
Even as you bark in the storm
Come now, did you think it was so simple
As either or?
The lady in the tower,
Or the hound at the door?
The witching hour of this world
Calls us to wholeness
If you are not tearing down
Your foundations, even as you
Raise your walls…
Are you even building?
Same prompt as above. Different poem, which I can't find now...Southwest – East – Ice – White – Heat
Ice so cold it burns white hot on your skin, turn East to the rising sun and begin —
begin where? Anywhere but here. Turn your back to Southwest, the fire burns too hot, the sunset is too bright, the past is too bright.
Better turn towards new beginnings, ice melts to cool, crisp, fresh on your bare feet as the sun grows stronger in heat… Bare feet? Why not—this journey is an incomplete thought, half-imagined, half-expressed, and incomplete feet cannot feel cold ice or hot heat.
They can only wander through the ether into true deep, onward, infinite—no retreat. The ice was always melting. The sun was always rising, and always will be. There is no time to arrive because you are always beginning, always beginning.
Go East. The dawn beckons.
The prompt: Grab a card (or several) from my friend August Tarantino’s Intuitive Writing Deck. Use those words and symbols. Don’t overthink it. Or write whatever you want. It’s your party.
The 5 Senses
The phone said to the laptop, why are you always so open?
The laptop looked at the coconut in his hand, smiled, and said nothing. he picked up his guitar and started to strum a little ditty—something about how his backpack was heavy and his sleeves were tight around his arms, but he kept coming back to the air in his nose and the sand in his toes, and all was well.
The phone smiled an uncertain smile, unsure if he had understood anything at all. Uncomfortable, he took a sip of his chai and drilled deep within his own soul with the power tools of breath and concentration:
What did he find? A hint of cardamom. The smell of rain. And the caress of paper on his hand.
The prompt: Take a few deep breaths, tuning into your felt sense of the present moment. Then notice: 5 things you can see around you, 4 sensations you can feel, 3 sounds you can hear, 2 smells you can smell, and 1 taste you can taste.
ie. Phone - laptop - coconut - guitar - backpack. Sleeve on arm - glasses on nose - pain in hip - air in nose. Power tools - breath - hand on paper. Humidity - chai spice. Cardamom.
Then use as many of those words or phrases as you can as you write (any format is fine - story, poetry, stream of consciousness, etc).
We (and I include myself in this) worry far too much about the “value” of our creations, and it gets in the way of our creating.
But creativity isn’t the means to an end; it is the whole game.
I think we could all play a bit more.
