Three Things
Look around you. Listen. Feel.
Choose three things you can see, three things you can hear and/or three things you can feel at this very moment. Near, far, concrete or abstract. Use your senses and your emotions to guide and inspire you. Choose one (or more) of the ‘lists’ of three to write about.
For example…
Three things I can see: peace lily. Emma Bridgewater mug. Cat asleep on the floor.
Three things I can hear: buzz of the fan on the landing. TV in the next room. Cars on the main road outside the window.
Three things I can feel: breeze from the fan coming into the room. Ache in my thighs from yesterday’s run. Hunger.
Of course, the above is writing in itself. If you’ve managed to write any three things, or even three sets of three, you have of course got words on a page. You have something to use as a prompt for a further, longer piece of writing or something you can use as a marker in time.
As for me, today I choose to write about the cat. Adjectives, associations, a poem, a history or origin, an adventure perhaps. Fiction or real-life. My own cat, Teddy (who is actually one of three in our house), has a nick out of his left ear. I don’t know why - but I could pretend I know why. Was he caught in something, disturbed in a midnight-raid outside? Was it a daring escape? Is he the Peter Rabbit of the feline world? It’s amazing what you can imagine and what you can write about from the things around you. Instead, I could write about yesterday’s run (which of course overlaps with things such as ‘the last time I…’ and other memories, or could again be entirely fictional).
Whether you take your observations further or not at this point, you might want to find ‘Three Things’ again tomorrow or another time. Same time, same place, same things. Same time, same place, different things perhaps. Mix and match: The following day, I saw the lily and the cat was asleep in the same place but I had a different mug. Is there meaning in that? Perhaps I should write about mugs. Perhaps it gives me an idea for a character.
-SJ.