Prose By 8 Strangers

I don’t remember the last time I went skinny-dipping. I don’t remember the last time I ate a pickle. I definitely remember the last time I was touched. I absolutely remember the last time I died. You were there, holding my hand, promising me anything, everything — a bike ride on your handlebars on that endless August day, your breath on my neck as you whispered. Take me to that place where we belong. Lying flat out, connected to the each, under a blanket of stars, in silence that reminds me that I am not alone, even if I most often think I am.

— Prose By 8 Strangers.

It isn’t easy for me to get going. I’ve always been one who kicks and screams her way into action… waiting till the absolute last minute to spit out something that resembles anything.

Last Tuesday, I attended a journal writing workshop and I think it literally lit the pilot light in my creative process. For so long I’ve felt as though I’ve been afraid of my own words; keeping myself silent until forced to act. I’ve resembled a mute until provoked with a requirement for my sound…

The above is the product of a writing exercise from the workshop: we each had a piece of paper, wrote down a sentence, and passed it to the right. We only had ten seconds to write a thought, an idea or a sentence on the new sheet in front of us, then we passed the papers again. We repeated until we received our papers again. The brief window to contribute to someone elses story, often not even enough time to get the gist of the story that arrived in front of us, yielded an extraordinary jumble of semi-connected ideas.

I found that, when my eye caught a word on the page, I went on my first instinct and wrote down the first thing that came to mind. It was interesting, after the exercise was all over, to read through our papers and discuss the experiences we each had in coming up with what we crafted in the moment.

Filled with fleeting thoughts and incomplete ideas, the products were beautifully crafted prose; prose that only eight people who are relative strangers to each other could co-create.