Vibes
I begin every writing class I teach in person with this check-in question: I am a writer from… This question is a key way for me to check the vibes of my students and a good prompt to check in with myself as well. Yesterday I asked my students to consider the vibe they wanted for their multi-genre What If projects which prompted some really interesting writing from that very first question.
We began with Lady Jordan by Denice Frohman and explored the shapes, numbers, metaphors, or patterns important to us and what meaning does it hold? In the past I have written about apples, raspberries, pentagons, hexagons, musical signatures, and Christian symbols. Yesterday I wrote about walnut trees and my students wrote about the elegance of the number 8 and how frightening/comforting squares can be. People have thoughts about shapes and numbers!
Then we wrote in response to [Traveler, your footprints] by Antonio Machado and considered these questions:
- How do you picture your life journey? It is by river or road or air?
- Is it carefully mapped or are you charting your own path?
I got a little spicy in my response because so many of my promised paths have slipped into the sea and I was not surprised by how many students see their life journey as a twisty uncharted river.
I then ask my students to consider what song of hope or stone of defiance they want to send out into the world and I took comfort in how many are still offering hope for themselves and the future. On Wednesday we will focus on our manifestos and Emily Dickinson’s simple challenge: Tell all the truth but tell it slant. We even explored the many meanings of the word manifest! If there is time we may dip into Evening by Jeremy Radin for our spark and The Language Issue by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill as we considered what we hope to find through our journey. In fact, I made time to dip into those poems by starting there and focusing one the word that could guide their manifestos and I shared my #OLW journey.
None of us have to create a manifesto (whether multi-genre or not) so we are free to play with numbers and symbols and cartography as our vibes suggest. What journey will you take with your writing this week? What are the vibes about the shape of your life? Have you started thinking about your one little word?
Note: My 2025 manifesto was 9 Strategies for a Creative Life (something I keep tweaking) and I just created A Life in Verses as a mentor text for my students (so fresh it is probably not done).
Artwork via Pixabay.
