Day 9 - Ready, Steady, Write

What does the teapot fear?……

What does the teapot fear?

 One of the hazards of being a writer is that you quickly find yourself imbuing everything with meaning. Ever walked past a lost glove and found yourself mourning the loss of its partner? Or pulled a leaf from a branch and then worried that you might have hurt it? That’s being a writer, my friend. Writers bring the world to life with their imaginations and, in turn, they help readers to see things in a new light. One of the ways they do this is to write about objects and animals as if they're people. 

 Remember our character exercise? The one where we interviewed our imaginary characters to find out what their deepest desires and secrets were? When we write about animals or objects as if they’re people, we can do the same thing.

 Try this. 

 Look around you and choose an ordinary household object to write about. It can literally be anything: a candle, the bedroom curtains, the rubber on your desk. Next, ask it the same kind of questions you would ask a character. Then, when you’ve collected some ideas, you could write a poem about the object. Or you could tell a story about it.

 Here’s one of mine:

Daffodil

 Daffodil is going out.

Brazen in her determination

to flout the February fashion

for dull browns and greys,

she emerges in a honey haze -

a surge of strumpet yellow.

Tall, proud and slender,

she is turning heads,

dressed to the nines in her summer dress

even though there’s a chill in the air,

even though, they say,

she will catch her death.

Our Daffodil has layers and hidden depths.

Devil-may-care, she flaunts herself,

shrugging off their warnings like

a winter coat,

tossing January’s echo

like a dried paper scarf around her neck.

She’ll deal with the frosty looks tomorrow.

But, for now, she’s going dancing and

nothing will stop her.

You could use these questions to think about your object:

What does your object dream about at night?

What is your object’s greatest fear?

Who is your object’s best friend?

What is your object’s biggest secret?

 Where would your object like to go? 

What’s your object’s favourite thing to do?