“Write five images every day, for seven days, using as many of the senses as possible.”— Adair Lara
From Adair’s book, Naked, Drunk, and Writing:
“Writing is turning your thoughts, abstractions, generalizations, and opinions back into the experiences you got them from.”
Adair’s example:
“Not ‘women my age become invisible,’ but ‘they handed drinks around and forgot me, again.’”
Using imagery involves the details about what happened.
Show what happened so that readers can see the scene, hear the sounds, feel the sensations, taste the elements, and smell the aroma.
Adair advises, “. . . every time you write a sentence, ask yourself, How can I show this? Try to get image and detail into every sentence. ”
Tidbits from Chapter Six, Using Images and Details:
“We want experience, not information. ‘Joan was distressed’ is information. ‘Joan looked away’ is an image. The reader notices Joan looking away, and has the pleasure of concluding for herself that Joan is distressed.”
Today’s writing prompt is the same one Adair assigned to her students on that hot August night in the octagonal room that served as her writing classroom, the room in the sunny yellow Victorian, where we had to walk up a gazillion stairs to reach the front door. I so want to add, . . . and where we were greeted by her tail-wagging, smiling pooch, but that would be too much, wouldn’t it?
Writing prompt: Write five images for seven days using as many of the senses as possible. Set aside to simmer.
Stir the imagination when re-reading your list, looking for images that call to you, that want to be sniffed out, that won’t fade away, images that linger.
Use that imagery to write whatever comes up for you.
For more creative and juicy writing ideas, pick up a copy of Adair Lara’s book, Naked, Drunk, and Writing, with over seven pages of “Suggestions for Writing” as Adair calls these writing prompts.
Writing Prompt #276 and my freewrite in that post were inspired from Adair’s assignment first encountered on that hot August night in the octagonal room . . .
