Freshsense: Creative Writing Tips

Need to be gather up your thoughts, before you can start writing?

Hindered by having no thoughts to gather up?

This is not a hindrance at all. Look around you! There are plenty of people out there, who do have thoughts, and the thoughts are there for the gathering! All you need to do is to follow Jay Cool’s sound advice. So, here goes:

1. Walk into your local library (or your mother’s local library) and locate the books ‘For Sale’ section. If you are lucky (like Jay always is), then you will find yourself zooming in on five copies of the magazine ‘mslexia’ available for the grand total of one pound (20p a copy, if you are not the divisive type). This is a bargain (five bargains), so quit the haggling and cough up the cash.
2. Too lazy to read all five copies front to back, or back to front, or even middle to the end? Then don’t! Instead, pick out five random words from each (try closing your eyes, opening the mag at any old page (Jay did buy editions from 2014!) and pointing a finger at any old word).
3. Boring words? They can’t be. Jay has telepathic powers and will make sure that you select five of the best. Next, to state the obvious (necessary for today’s generation of literally-is-my-favourite-word youngsters), make a note of the very same five words.
4. For example, say that the five words you ended up with from the first copy of ‘mslexia’ are: sticky, delirium, chilled, pyramid and designer – then you just need to go with it! By going with it, Jay means, that you must now use each of those words in a piece of a masterpiece, be this a poem, an article, a short story, or even just a load of fresh nonsense.
5. And, because, Jay is freshsense itself, she will provide you with her own example:

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Chilled, she coats herself up – turns up the heat!

Sticky with sweat, and unable to breathe, she opens the window – lets in the outside!

Thinking to free herself, job already gone, she drives on – imagining herself to be going round and round, square by square: sunny side, shady side, sunny side, shady side, looking to find a way through all of these changes, looking to find a way into the promised land.

Dancing with delirium, she – the designer of pyramids – finds her way in, in and into that promised place, and then finds her way up and onto the pinnacle, up and onto a pinnacle sporting its peak at the top of the point of her life.

Pointedly permanent, but not at all peaked!

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6) Now, get perky – play around with your own words selection, and write your own piece of freshsense!

Copyright owned by Jay Cool, April 2019

P.S. Jay has not forgotten the other four ‘mslexia’ mags. Be patient – she’s onto them! 

Image by Simon Matzinger from Pixabay