Write for your own pleasure
There’s a cultural assumption that writers ought to write for readers, particularly readers unknown to them personally, and writing without the goal of publication is somehow inadequate or wishy-washy or just “therapy.” At Imaginative Storm, we do not agree with this! Just as you can play the piano or guitar for your own pleasure, you can write for your own pleasure. Hear your words the way you’d hear the notes you play. Even if they go no further, they have enriched your life and nourished your spirit.
Use writing to explore your thoughts, your emotions, your desires. To bring clarity to your sense of the world and your place in it. To craft something that gives you satisfaction in what your hands and heart and mind can make.
So, this week—inspired by the photo by James Navé of flowers and rebar on a Manila night—we bring you three pieces that live close to the heart.
Amber St Germain wrote this poem in 10 minutes in our Saturday writing group:
How to let go of foreboding loss?
The man-made cityscape seems to keep expanding,
Taking over,
Encroaching on nature buried under concrete.
The sprawling LA skyline for days
The sun hidden by smog
Alien industrial blooms awaiting pollination
Blocking out the sky.
Underground worlds in Vegas
Trading day for night,
Real for fake.
How do i find my way back
Through this maze of illusion
Back to something solid and safe,
Pure and simple
To what lies within
Untouched, Unspoken.
Hawaii calls to me in the dreamtime
I hear dolphins laughing
And smell Plumeria blossom fragrance
Rising from the Lei placed around my neck
To welcome me home.
I want to go there to recover my vitality,
For rejuvenation.
Mother it's been a long journey
Since I last touched your shores.
I need you to cleanse me
With your sea air and salty water.
I need you to ground me
To your rich black lava soil
Fetile, awaiting pollination.
Teach me how to thrive
Instead of just surviving
As i navigate these disparities
And try to build the scaffolding to reach you
To come home.
Melissa Malm wrote this poem while waiting in an airport:
What lies within, who can say?
encroaching night melts
into moon song
translucent light
a lovers' caress on bare flesh
a baby’s deep slumber sigh.
don’t hold back,
don’t hold back,
dive
headlong into the sweet
scented air
infused with riotous perfumes
a Hawaiian rhapsody.
float weightless
through the golden shadows
weave in and around
sharp tall grasses
blades of steel
fairy traps set to catch
unspoken words, regrets, disparities,
it’s not too late.
And Andrew Allen Smith wrote this lovely meditation undulating between introspection and imagination:
It seems like a scene out of a dystopian novel, blackened cracked rebar reaching for the sky, unsure of what lies beneath and within, slowly being overtaken by what was before and what should be again. It is a balance that only some can understand as the hardened pickup sticks slowly degrade in the onslaught of the industrial blooms of native life. The wind shatters the air with chord-filled song as it passes through the pure steel gridlines left to crumble in the wake of a lost idea. With the disparities of modern and encroaching floral mayhem, a casual onlooker can only wonder who will win. The result is never truly in question as the unending power of light and life will go on. With or without us, the world will live, and as life is surviving, you can only wonder how long it will take for there to be nothing but the power of nature that will eventually overcome us all.
As I watch the sun pass overhead and look down upon the scattered lines and smooth shapes of the shadows beneath, I can only feel at peace with everything going on around me. Whether it be a picture, or an actual scene does not matter, for my heart is bound to both, and the only question I have is whether I belong with the scattered modern metal or lost in the forever foliage. Either way, we will find a certain solace in the moments, and I will be there.
Click here to order Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow by Allegra Huston and James Navé, founders of the Imaginative Storm method, or buy it from your favorite online retailer. It’s also available on Kindle and all other e-book platforms.
Our self-paced online video course “Write What You Don’t Know: Imaginative Storm Writer Training” is now available on Teachable. Take advantage of the introductory price!
Follow @imaginativestorm on Instagram for a daily writing prompt, or download May’s list of prompts here. You might also like to explore the extensive archive of visual and audio writing prompts on our YouTube channel. Then, publish what you write on the Imaginative Storm Circle platform! We’d love to read it.