Pocket Notebooks · Find a prompt · Read Fresh Pages · Meet the writer
01 / The collection
Notice something.
A conversation. A small movement. Something you’ve walked past a hundred times. There’s a page waiting in it.
Pick a page · Three ten-minute exercises
Choose an exercise
Ten minutes · One page
A notebook · A pen · Somewhere to wander
A walk without a photograph.
I’m very good at taking photographs I never look at again.
This is an experiment in bringing something else home.
The invitation
Take a short walk and collect five details you would normally pass without noticing.
Your street will do. So will a park, a station concourse or the journey to buy milk. If walking isn’t an option today, settle somewhere with a view of a little activity.
On your page
Write where you are and when.
Nothing elaborate. “Outside the bakery, Tuesday morning” is plenty.Give yourself five things to find.
• Something you can hear but can’t see.
• A sign that someone has been here before you.
• Something slightly out of place.
• A small movement.
• A detail you’d struggle to photograph.Stop to make your notes.
A few words for each will do. Draw something if you fancy it. Nobody is marking the drawings.Choose one detail and give it three sentences.
Describe it carefully enough that someone else could picture it. Try to resist explaining why it’s interesting. Let the detail do the work.
Then head home. You’ve collected your material.
What might turn up
An illustrative notebook page
Outside the bakery. 8:20.
Hear, can’t see: a spoon being knocked against a cup. Repeatedly. Someone wants every last bit.
Someone was here: chair cushion turned over after the rain.
Out of place: one very polished shoe beside the recycling bin.
Movement: sparrow approaching a crumb in instalments.
Hard to photograph: warm bread briefly winning against the smell of traffic.
Three sentences from that last note:
Each time the bakery door opened, warm bread reached the pavement. Then a bus went past and took it away. I stayed for the next opening.
Your page may contain something better. It may contain a disappointing pigeon. Either is a start.
Before you close the notebook
Finish this sentence:
“I wouldn’t have noticed ______ if I hadn’t stopped.”
That’s your souvenir.
Take it further
Choose one of your details and use it as the opening of a story. You don’t need to know what happens next.
I collect observations and occasionally turn them into essays at Writer Interrupted.
Ten minutes · One page
A notebook · A pen · A line of dialogue
The overheard sentence.
“I told him it wouldn’t fit in the lift.”
Well. Now I have questions.
The invitation
Take an ordinary sentence and see what happens when you give it a different life.
Use something you’ve heard in passing, a line you remember, or the sentence above. You don’t need to record anyone or collect private details. An invented sentence works just as well.
On your page
Write one line of dialogue.
No explanation. Leave out names and identifying details.Invent three situations it could belong to.
One everyday. One awkward. One thoroughly improbable.Choose the one that interests you.
Give the speaker something they want and something they’re avoiding saying.Write six lines of conversation.
Let the other person ask an inconvenient question. Try leaving the explanation out for as long as possible.Read it aloud.
Cross out anything neither person would actually say.
What might turn up
An invented example
“I told him it wouldn’t fit in the lift.”
“Did you measure it?”
“I know what a horse looks like.”
“And where is it now?”
“Reception.”
“Please tell me you mean the painting.”
It doesn’t need to become a story. Six lines that make you curious are a perfectly good result.
Before you close the notebook
Underline the line that made the scene change direction. What did it reveal that you hadn’t planned?
Take it further
Write the same exchange again, with one person trying to leave. Notice what happens to the conversation.
You can also sample my fiction at Writer Interrupted.
Ten minutes · One page
A notebook · A pen · One everyday object
An ordinary object, closely observed.
The mug has been on the desk for years. I could probably find it in the dark. Whether I could describe it is another question.
The invitation
Choose something familiar and look at it as though you’ve never seen it before. A key, shoe, pencil or cup will do. Keep it within reach.
On your page
Give the object a whole minute.
Turn it over. Look at the edges, underneath, and the places your hand usually covers.Collect five precise details.
Shape, colour, weight, texture, a sound it makes. Replace “nice” or “old” with something a reader could recognise.Find a sign of use.
A scratch, faded patch or worn edge. Describe what you can see before deciding how it got there.Write three sentences without naming the object.
Give someone enough detail to work it out.Add one memory it brings back.
Keep the observation and the memory separate. Both are useful; they do different jobs.
What a page might look like
An illustrative notebook page
The blue glaze stops short of the base, leaving a rough ring that catches on my sleeve. There’s a crescent of brown inside the handle. A hairline crack runs towards a chip shaped like a tiny country.
Memory: bought on a wet afternoon when we went in to escape the rain.
“A battered blue mug” was quicker. Now there’s something I can picture.
Before you close the notebook
Circle the detail you only found because you looked again.
Take it further
Describe the same object from the point of view of someone who dislikes its owner. See which details they choose.
More observations at Writer Interrupted ↗
Keep a page turning
Something else to try?
Find your next ten-minute experiment.
Crossings-out welcome.
Send only what you’re happy to share. I’ll ask before publishing anything. Remove names and anything confidential.
Enjoy the way my mind wanders?
There’s more at Writer Interrupted: essays, stories and longer work, beginning with a few pieces you can try for free.
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