Weekly Writing Prompt No. 51
Exploring the Outer Loop part 1.
Hello everyone and welcome to the weekly writing prompt. Before we get into the art of writing itself, I’d just like to remind you of my upcoming Digital Wisdom Workshop. It takes place between 9.30 am and 12.30 pm at Portesham Village Hall in Dorset on 24th February. You can find out more and book your place through my website by clicking the button below.
Over the last few months, well since early 2022 really, I’ve been mulling over the ability of words to heal both people and planet. I’ve come to the conclusion they are the most powerful tool we have, indeed they are probably the only tool available.
I wonder what springs to mind for you when I talk about the ability of words to heal? Perhaps you imagine a cadre of self-help books lining a bookshelf, or the speeches written for and delivered by politicians, civic leaders, and others at crucial moments in history! And there may be films, songs, poetry or books that have touched you in ways you wouldn’t have thought possible.
Whilst all these can have profound impacts on our lives and ways of being, I believe the most powerful words we will ever hear or read are those we say or write to, or for, ourselves and it is this I want to focus on in today’s writing prompt. The aim of prompts like these is to help you support, care and look after yourself by opening up to what you may already know, but don’t necessarily have the words to express.
I know from my own journey into my words that they gift me insights that always move me forward, even if they are not necessarily something I would have asked for. Sometimes, they show me aspects of myself I’m not comfortable with, and occasionally they can be gruelling to work through. Ultimately though, these insights have helped me make sense of an increasingly divided world, and my role in both creating that divide and its healing.
Please share your writing if you wish, perhaps using the prompt as a jumping-off place for a new short story, piece of flash fiction or poem. As usual, you can approach them practically with yourself in mind, or from the perspective of a character - human, animal or mineral. And remember, you never know where today’s prompt may take you in the future!
So have fun, enjoy the process and write heaps.
The hero’s journey is at the core of many stories we read where our central character or characters are set a task they must complete. After many adventures, mishaps, and misunderstandings they eventually complete the task, whilst also learning something of value about themselves, others, and the world around them. At the end of the story, they are fundamentally changed in some way.
The three stages of the hero’s journey and my terminology for them are:
Departure – The outer loop
Initiation – The inner loop
Return - Connection
Part one is the outer loop, this is the story we tell to ourselves and others. We may frame it differently, depending on who is listening, but the basic framework is the same. We believe it helps us understand who we are, why we are the way we are and why life has unfolded for us as it has.
This outward-focused story may often illustrate what we accept and like about ourselves, as well as how we want the wider world to view and think about us.
Our first task will always be the uncovering of that story.
The Prompt
Before we start on a journey through the outer loop it can be helpful to consider the stories other’s tell, that draw us in. The books, films, plays, songs and poetry that appeal or to which we turn time and again, often gift us with insight into what we subconsciously feel is dominant, or may be lacking in our own life story.
Today, I encourage you to consider your current favourite works of fiction, whether written, filmed or spoken. Do you notice any themes or common threads? Are there any recurring archetypes or plot devices? How about characters, places, events and circumstances?
The reason it needs to be current is because we all change over time, the person we were last year is not the same as the person we are today.
Whilst it’s nice for me to see how other people think in the comments below, this may be too personal to share, so feel free to comment personally or add it to your personal journal if you prefer.
Alternatively, you could even use a prompt like this to flesh out a character you’re working on instead.
My effort will be added to the comments later.
As a coach, mentor and counsellor I work with a wide variety of people on very different journeys. Some, hope to write a best seller, others want to be healthier and happier. Each has a unique way of undertaking their personal hero’s journey. If you would like to start your transformative journey you could begin by working with me. To find out more head over to my website by clicking the button below.
The Weekly Newsletter
Something to read ..
The Hero’s Journey by Tony Hoagland,
originally published in the New Yorker on 12/10/12.
I remember the first time I looked at the spotless marble floor
of a giant hotel lobby
and understood that someone had waxed and polished it all night
and that someone else had pushed his cart of cleaning supplies
down the long air-conditioned corridors
of the Steinberg Building across the street
and emptied all two hundred and forty-three wastebaskets
stopping now and then to scrape up chewing gum
with a special flat-bladed tool
he keeps in his back pocket.
It tempered my enthusiasm for “The Collected Sonnets of Hugh
Pembley-Witherton”
and for Kurt von Heinzelman’s “Epic of the Seekers for the Grail,” ……
….. you can read the whole poem on The New Yorker website.
With love, light, and laughter
Linda
x
Films: Picnic at Hanging Rock. I'm drawn to the mystery and otherworldliness of the film, the sense that we can never be sure what 'is' and what 'isn't'.
Books: Mr Golightly's Holiday by Salley Vickers; in fact anything by Salley Vickers. This book is representative of the many I enjoy which encourage us to consider the integrity of Shakespeare's phrase from Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Poetry: WB Yeats poem Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, especially the line "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
If I take just these three as indicative of the whole of what draws my attention, then it's clear I am drawn to the unseen, the unknown and the obscure. I suppose this begs the question, is my psyche equally obscure? A point to ponder through the rest of today.
If the outer loop is the departure, the where I started from, the what the world has already seen of me...it is the hard-worker, the completer-finisher, the didn't-know-she-was-a-people-pleaser. It is the goody-two-shoes (should I have had three? or maybe lost one along the way?) The departure point was all those years of education and earning a living and nurturing other lives and not so much my own.
If the outer loop is the departure, the where I started from, it is the broken heart, the grieving, the leaving of so much behind. It is all the things the world, and certain people, thought I was. And maybe me too. And maybe a little bit true.
If the outer loop is where I started, I cannot see it now, not from here. I have left so much behind - backward glances often, but so far not a single regret. All of it diminishing.
Now I am spiralling inwards, becoming who I was meant to be (as someone so well described decades ago - I wonder how she's doing now). I am unravelling and retwining.
Now I am spiralling outwards into a world I don't yet know, don't preconceive or prejudge.
I am beyond departing, beyond beginning, I am on my way.