Five (5) Word Wednesday

How A Simple Idea Turned into An Enriching Writing Circle

I have learned countless writing lessons from Kathy Fish .

One story she shared during a SmokeLong Quarterly event resonated with me so greatly that I wanted to try it for myself. It was a simple concept: a group of writers shared 5 words as a prompt. They all wrote a story weekly and gave each other feedback.

Who knew this could be so powerful?

The concept is fairly low stakes. Everyone gets the words at the same time, so the understanding is the piece shared is a draft because of the quick turnaround.

I wanted to try this in a group so I pulled some friends together and we tried it.

The directions were simple. I set up a WetInk classroom and said each week they would receive a 5 word prompt.

Each writer would write a 750 word or less piece (Story, poem, essay) and share to assignments by Thursday of that week. 

All members of the group would comment on the piece.

If there are particular questions a writer had, they asked those questions within the assignment. I reminded them these were DRAFTS and not crafted pieces so please keep that in mind when you are commenting.

Simple.

It was a smashing success and fun!

We didn’t overthink it. We experimented. We had fun.

From now on, it will be Five Word Wednesday!

Here are your five words for this week:  

hope, list, ideal, bottled emotions, stretch

I would love to hear about your experience in the comments.

Please note, that publicly sharing your story counts as published!