Saturday Writing Crawl

An Artist Date

A writing crawl is similar to a pub crawl where you visit a series of bars and have a drink in each one. Another similar event is a progressive dinner. In this scenario, you have each course of a meal at a different person’s house. A writing crawl doesn’t require food or beverages, just writing.

This idea originally was inspired by the amazing Sherrie Flick. You can find information about her events here.

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My rules for my writing crawl: Write at each location. I took the computer with me today but also had my notebooks and some other texts.

Stop 1: Barnes and Noble

I got caught by a train on my drive to the bookstore. There are tons of tracks in Northwest Indiana but I don’t venture out much so haven’t been delayed in a while. I was on an unstructured time schedule so this was not stressful today.

I browsed around but then found a spot in the cafe and worked on some revisions and transcribed some writing from my Canada notebook from July.

I wrote down some overheard conversation. There were a lot of people in the store today because it was Saturday.

A little one made comment about my dragon backpack.

I did make it out of the store without buying anything. [The books I want do not come out til next week!]

Stop 2: Library

I had a hold to pick up (of course) and gathered some magazines and a few books to do an exercise I modified from Alexander Chee.

He assigns his students to pull lines from random books in the library and then use those lines to write a story for class.

My Notes/Pulled Lines:

1. The magical ingredient for perfectly pillowy cinnamon roll texture is mashed potatoes. They are rich in potassium too [This makes me think of potatoes over bananas. I always think of bananas and bagels for potassium…the breakfast of swimmers.] From Victoria Magazine Oct/Nov 22

2. “Peas for pennies, greens for dollars, cornbread for gold” old Southern saying [This prompted me to look up other Southern sayings]

3. How to supreme citrus: a technique that removes rind, pith and membranes from citrus fruit so only the segmented flesh remains.

4. “Thanks to the governments deliberate poisoning of alcohol spirits people had seemingly forgotten that liquor had always been dangerous.” It is hard liquor for a reason. Poisoners Handbook pg 197 [Yes, I checked this book out!]

5. A life in meals - “A meal is never just a meal, no more than a kiss is ever just a kiss” Victoria Magazine

6. Place cards that changed guest seats with every course.

7. “If  a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour” Victoria Erickson

8. Overheard: Stay with me. We can put them on hold for you

9. Little girl hand held by her mother (or mother figure) being led around with her eyes closed. Little girl tried to move the stool and mother told her not to. “But I want to see. “

10. “Believe it or not, apples are related to roses.” Andy Hamilton

11. “Mama tell me about the trees…”

12. Iris’s favorite family ritual is eating a hamburger on her birthday. If you want to send a card, it's April 12th. 

DRIVE BY: The farmer’s market is going on downtown but there are too many people. No desire to walk down there.

Stop 3: Moon Mug Shop

I ordered a drink consisting of Espresso, blackberry, brown sugar and vanilla - hot 20 oz for me. So yummy 

There were two ladies in here visiting and I wrote down some snippets of their conversation.

I forgot that October is also a poetry writing month. I have written a poem a day in October in the past with Octpowrimo but was having trouble finding the site. I did find poetry prompts that were meant for NANOWRIMO in November but started a poem today in my notebook.

Stop 3.5:

I had the desire to stop at the Journeyman distillery and have a glass of whiskey but it was getting late and I needed to get home. I poured myself a glass of Vodka from the last visit and enjoyed it while I finished up this post! Next time, I will add a bar to the stop and see what emerges!

I wrote about an hour at each stop which I was happy with!

I would love to hear from you!

Have you turned something into a writing exercise that wasn’t originally meant for writing?

Have you been on an artist date that was more fun or inspiring than you imagined?

Where would your writing crawl take you?

Happy writing!