Hello, dear readers and writers.
You know, it’s funny: even after 25 years of leading writing workshops and retreats, I can’t really predict which prompts will evoke powerful writing. Although some are a nearly guaranteed to do this—like the ones we’ve done in the grief and healing workshops—others surprise us. The Five Word Free Write is one of those prompts. As you’ll see in my own writing below, it certainly generated something big for me.
Since my introduction to this prompt came from my dearly departed friend and mentor, Pat Schneider, it only seems right that I begin with a quote from her this week. This is from her book, Writing Alone and with Others:
Remember that an exercise is just a diving board into the "dreaming place." Start with the suggestion, but always be open to the delicate appearance of something else—something deeper. As soon as that something else appears at the edge of your consciousness, abandon the exercise, and keep writing what that inner vision offers.
Pat introduced me to her workshop method in 1991, when I was an undergraduate at Hampshire College. She invited me as her guest to a workshop one night, and that same night, she introduced me to the Five Word Free Write. Pat later told me that her prompt only included four words, so she insisted it was I who invented (reinvented?) this prompt. Either way, I have Pat to thank for this. And because it was the first prompt I ever did with Pat, it’s also the first longer prompt I do with my participants on the first night of a workshop series.
Here’s how the prompt works: I read five words out loud, one at a time, and allow 90 seconds to free write any associations, ideas, images, words or sentences that come to mind when you hear each word. After 90 seconds, I read the next word, until we’ve free written on all five. Then I say, “Lift your pens from the page, or your fingers from the keyboard, for just a moment, and when you put them back down, write anything that comes to mind.” Then we write for 15 minutes.
There’s a method to my madness here: each of the five words represent specific parts or speech, and are chosen to generate powerful associations and images. Here’s how I break them down:
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