Hi writers! Here’s a list of new experiences for you to embark on and journal about this month. Have fun!
- Do something you are skeptical about. Go to a tarot card reader or psychic to have your fortune told. Try praying or meditating, essential oils, crystals, a gong sound bath. Try to keep an open mind.
- Learn how some ordinary, everyday thing that you take for granted works. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know podcast, visit your local library, or just pull up a Wikipedia article. Could you explain to someone in a paragraph or less how a microwave works? An air conditioner? A hair dryer? A garage door opener? The combustion engine in your car? Solar panels on your roof?
- Learn how something big works (or how people think it might work). We’re talking ocean currents, volcanoes, tsunamis, glaciers, earthquakes, the big bang theory, string theory, relativity, quantum physics, time travel, epidemics, evolution. Become a 30-minute expert on an intimidating topic.
- Contact an old friend. This could be as simple as a Facebook message. Or maybe you need to do some real detective work. Maybe the circumstances call for an honest-to-goodness letter, postcard, or telephone call. Maybe you show up on the person’s doorstep. Maybe the person has disappeared. Maybe you chicken out. Maybe you think this prompt is really stupid. Write about it.
- Think of a social or political organization that is at odds with your own personal beliefs. I shy away from the word “hate,” but let’s just say you should have strong feelings about this group. Learn everything you can about them, their history, what they do, what their current role in society is. Does anything you learn surprise you? Write.
- Do some physical labor. Clean your basement, organize your closet, get on your hands and knees and scrub your baseboards. Volunteer to help build a house, dig a garden, pull weeds. Make sure you break a sweat. Then … write about it.
- Learn to fix something. That broken hinge or leaky faucet, that button that keeps falling off. Write a how-to guide for someone engaging in the same project.
- Change your appearance. This could be as simple as a new color of lipstick or nail polish, a different shirt-tie combination. Buy a statement necklace. Buy a fedora. Feeling crazy? Get a tattoo. Chop off your hair, streak it pink, or push it into a fauxhawk. Let your three-year-old pick out your outfit. Write about how the change makes you feel and how others react to it.
- Sleep outside. Catalog all of the sounds you hear.
- Memorize the lyrics of a song or the words of a poem or famous speech.
- Go to a bar you’ve never been to before and order a drink you’ve never had. Sit alone and write about it until your glass is empty. Optional: turn the page and order another.
- Give things the dignity of their names. Find yourself a good resource (if all else fails, Google is there for you), choose a category of things, and go ahead and identify the things in that category by name. Discover the name of every type of tree on your street, every flower in your neighbor’s garden, every bird native to your state. Learn the names of the fabrics the clothes in your closet are made out of, the representative architectural styles in your town, the names of streets, rivers, lakes, types of clouds, learn the names of the constellations in the summer sky, learn all of the fancy name for ways to slice carrots.
- Read a small-town newspaper from somewhere you have never been.
- Watch a subtitled foreign film in a language you are unfamiliar with. What does the language sound like? How did it affect your experience of the film?
- Spend some time exploring a street, block, or neighborhood in your town that you have never been to or have not been to in a long time.
- Do something childish, with or without a child. Go roller-skating. Jump on a trampoline or pogo stick. Play Marco Polo or hide and seek. Roll down a grassy hill. Throw water balloons. Swing on a swing. Hang upside down from monkey bars. Do a cartwheel (stretch first!), handstand, or somersault. Go barefoot. Eat a popsicle. Catch lightning bugs. Bask in reminiscences of your childhood. Then … write about it.
- Visit a very small museum that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic. Really spend time with the exhibits. Write.
- Go to a fancy grocery store with a great produce section and identify a fruit you have never tried before. Buy it. Learn how to prepare it. Enjoy.
- Do the same thing with a vegetable, herb, or spice.
- Go to a restaurant you’ve never been to and (deadly food allergies aside) order whatever the waiter recommends.
- Ask three very different people for their favorite song, album, or musical artist. Sample the recommendations on YouTube or make them into Pandora stations and listen to the stations as you go about your day. What does the music tell you about the people? What does your reaction to it tell you about yourself?
- Go to a resale shop, estate sale, Goodwill, Salvation Army, a garage sale, or a yard sale. Find something completely weird that speaks to you, buy it, bring it home, and write its history.
- Watch a documentary on something you know nothing about.
- Go on a blind date with knowledge. Go to the nonfiction section of your library or local bookstore, grab a random book from a random shelf, and take your new friend to a coffee shop. Read for the duration of one caffeinated beverage. Keep an open mind. Write.
- Visit with someone elderly. Really listen to what he or she has to say.
- Visit with a young child. Really listen to what he or she has to say.
- Write a letter to a teacher or mentor of yours whom you have lost touch with. Explain what the person meant to you and how you still carry with you what he or she taught you. Send the letter or keep it. Make it your journal entry.
- Go shopping for a new scent. Perfume or cologne. Or, if the budget doesn’t allow, a new air freshener, scented candle, lotion, shower gel, fabric softener. Write about your top three choices and what made you choose the one you chose. Did anything you smell trigger a memory for you?
- Learn to prepare an extremely simple dish: no-bake cookies, a simple homemade salad dressing. Try for something with only a handful of ingredients, that you could make again without looking up the recipe.
- Learn to prepare an extremely complicated dish. Something you love that you have always been too intimidated to try. A flaky pastry or delicate mousse, a real mole sauce. Take your time with it. Write while the dough chills, while the soufflé bakes, while the meat marinades. Write with the windows open because your are trying to get the smell of burnt soufflé out of your kitchen. Write about how it was a major success. Write about how it was an abject failure.
- Solve a puzzle. Any kind. An honest-to-goodness-rainy-day-jigsaw puzzle, a crossword, word search, Sudoku, anagrams. Cheat if you must, but finish it.