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Thursday, February 10, 2011

Writing Prompt: Get In Touch With Nature

By Marilyn Friedman

Join us at the Nature Walk class on March 6th! You'll get some exercise and inspiration to write your best work in the beautiful surroundings of Temescal. Here are the fantastic classes that we have left for February. Call 323-333-2954 to sign up before they are full!


February One Day Classes With Spaces Available:

Multi Week Classes:Writing Retreats:
  • Writing Pad Ojai Retreat (Mar. 25 - 27 at a gorgeous ecosanctuary with award-winning author Thaisa Frank, NPR's Alex Cohen, and Writing Pad's Marilyn Friedman)

Writing Prompt: Make a list of 5 natural places you have visited. Include places that you have been camping and hiking. Pick one and add a specific detail that you remember about that trip (e.g. the beef jerky that you ate while backpacking that almost pulled out your molars, the tent kept collapsing on your head). Write for 10 minutes and post the results in this blog!

Comment on this blog. Write about a memorable excursion into nature. Post your 10 minute write in the comments, and you could win a free class!

1 comment:

Writing Pad said...

I thought that this Mary Oliver poem might inspire some of your writing. She is one of the nature poets that we will be sampling at the Nature Walk!

The Swan
By Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?