by Brianne Neptin
Telling people that I am a graduate student in the Department of English generally conjures images of me at my desk late into the night with my head bent over yet another novel, furiously taking notes on its themes or writing a draft of my final paper among stacks of research articles filled with margin comments. While the late nights spent reading are certainly true (six novels are sitting on my dining table waiting for their turn), the writing is much more sporadic. The amount of writing required for each class I have taken has varied widely. I have had classes with weekly reflections and others that only had two writing assignments – a mid-term short essay and a standard final seminar paper.
While the prospect of having to find something to write about each week, even for only a page or two, could be daunting, the benefit was that I was always writing. My mind was in that creative space, that room where ideas float around and get a little glow when they align with my next writing assignment. Not all of those reflection assignments were winners, but I was still always producing something that required me to think, ask questions, and then put pen to paper. That is, until the semester ended, and I was on break. The pen was put down and the paper was left to gather virtual dust in my Google Drive.
When summer hit, I knew something had to give. I couldn’t allow myself to fall out of the habit of writing. I realized if I just sat down to write and wrote, the words I needed would eventually come. The first drafts were always rough, but that didn’t matter. As long as I kept sitting down to write, it always eventually got there. I needed to keep myself in the practice of writing so that when the fall semester started, I wasn’t back at square one.
I decided to begin a daily creative writing practice. It was important to me to stress the creative part of the creative writing practice. It could not feel like I was sitting down to do homework; I wanted this to be about expressing myself in new ways that happened to get me in the habit of writing (surprise!). It also wasn’t anything super crazy. I dedicated a few minutes each morning to writing. At first, I free-wrote. This quickly became tedious. I wanted to write towards a purpose. So, I Googled “writing prompts.” I found a webpage that listed out 100 different writing prompts for sparking creativity so I printed it out. I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut those sheets into strips, each one with a different prompt, and put them inside a vase.
There is a stack of old but barely used journals on the bottom shelf of my nightstand. One has become my new writing journal. Each morning I pull out a new prompt and just write. Whatever pops into my head becomes what I put down on paper. I am constantly surprised by how much I can write if I just relax and enjoy the process.
Now, I get to start my day with my cup of coffee being creative. My alarm and my coffee pot are set to go off 2 minutes apart so as I am cursing at the BEEP BEEP BEEP next to me, I hear the gurgle gurgle hiss from downstairs. I plod my way downstairs, throwing my hair up into a messy bun (the obvious “getting down to business” hairstyle choice for those of us with longer locks). Out comes the mug, in goes the almond milk, then the coffee and I head to the dining table. I slide my journal into its place in front of me and my pen to my right. I grab the vase on my left and reach my hand in for a writing prompt. Today, I am instructed to write a scene or a story that includes a monster or other character from a horror movie. I think for a minute and then start writing a story about eel people feeding off of humans in a tiny town along the Hudson.
These exercises take the pressure off of writing because it does not matter what I write, it was only for my eyes. They keep me in a regular writing practice and give me a new way to look at things. When I sit down on a Friday or Saturday night to write the next week’s reflection assignment, it feels more natural. My brain is always in that content production space. I know I need to produce something coherent that will be graded, but I trust my gut when something in an article sparks my interest, and I treat it like one of my writing prompts – one more opportunity to be creative, just in a different way. The words might be analytical, but the concept is creative and the idea is original because it is my own. I feel so much more like the person I am hoping this journey conjures within me.
edited by Aries Cubilla
Brianne Neptin is a Master’s student and an experiential education coordinator for the College of Arts & Sciences in URI’s Center for Career and Experiential Education. She currently holds a B.S. in Environmental Economics and Management and an M.S. in College Student Personnel from URI, as well as an M.S. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include foods and food cultures and the use of food in Victorian literature.