Unbox Your Words 3a Nov 2024
Watching TV like an alien... and your workshop discount code
Hello, dear subscribers!
I’ve recorded an audio version of this month’s post, in case you’d like to listen instead of/as well as reading. Here’s a short clip - scroll down a few paragraphs to find the full audio, it’s just past the teeny paywall to tempt those of you who haven’t upgraded your subscriptions yet! I know, I’m a tease. Sorry.
I realised as I was thinking about this month’s post that I don’t know where you are as you are reading or listening to this. I don’t know where you live, what’s going on in your life, what’s happening around you. I don’t know what’s important to you, the things you care deeply about, what moves you, what makes you laugh, makes you angry, makes you despair. And I don’t know what your relationship to writing is, whether it is something very new to you and you’re feeling your way into shaping your words. Or perhaps you’ve been writing for years and you’re interested in trying something different, shaking up your words, let them loosen. I don’t know what you are writing or want to write, how you are writing or want to write, what you’d like from me and from these Unbox Your Words posts. There is much that I can’t know about you, which makes it quite the challenge for me to try and offer something here that I hope will speak to most of you, that you might find useful.
What I do know is that for me, writing is part of my survival toolkit. I write both to figure out what I am thinking about what I see, read, hear around me, and also to imagine how what I see, read, hear around me might be different. We are creatures of “story”, whether that be in the shape of poems, essays, TV shows, films, chatting to someone in our local pub, cafe etc…, talking to ourselves. So what I can try and offer you here, if any of this speaks to you, is permission to do this writing thing in your very own unique way that helps you, firstly, get things off your chest - a vital part of why I write - and, secondly, tell the “stories” you want/need to tell in the way that is closest to your heart, your particular worldview, your own vision, whether you then choose to send your writings out into the world or keep them for yourself.
We are both, you and I, feeling our way through this thing. This is only my third month of Unbox Your Words, and this is part of why I welcome your comments, thoughts, suggestions, as I try and create the writing provocations/prompts/exercises that might be helpful across different genres, word shapes, works-in-progress or brand new pieces. It’s a tall order and I know that a post won’t speak to all of you, but I hope you’ll hang around here for a while and see how it evolves! I very much appreciate you supporting me financially, too, so thank you for being here. To show my gratitude, you’ll find the 20% discount code for the first of my Unbox Your Words zoom workshops - a “Permission” workshop on Jan 13th - at the bottom of this post.
Ok, I did also promise to try and keep these posts from being ultra-long, so shall we get on with this month’s writing task? Last month we were looking into the idea of magical realism - realism with a twist, whatever “real” might mean to each of us. This month we’re taking that in a different direction that is going to involve switching on the TV…