Nature Writing In Isolation: Exercises and Tips
Thank you so much to everyone who came along to my writing nature workshop at Stay at Home Fest on the Easter weekend! And thank you to the lovely Carolyn and other organisers who made it possible.
Below, I’ve listed some of the exercises that we did so that you can access them in your own time. These exercises can be done from home in isolation (whether that’s due to Covid-19 or because isolation is longer-term for you due to disability/chronic illness/mental health). You don’t need any outdoor space or to go outside. All you need is yourself and something to write on. You can do this exercise in a spare 20/30 minutes or spend longer on it if you have it!
Pick an object that has a connection to what you conceive of as nature. If you can, try to pick something that you can see and touch right now (though if you prefer to pick something you can hold in your mind’s eye that is fine too). If you have some outdoor space, you could think about your favourite or least favourite plant. Or maybe you have an indoor plant or a pet nearby. If you’re feeling stuck, think about the ways in which nature surrounds us all the time; you are probably wearing something made of cotton, wool or some other natural fibre. You could pick a vegetable from your fridge or a spice from your spice drawer. Don’t worry about it too much! It’s about having fun and widening our conception of what ‘nature’ is.
Then give yourself 1-2 minutes to answer the following questions. If you can, try to move on quite quickly - you can always come back to any questions that interest you later! You can be as literal or as creative as you like with these answers (e.g. it smells like burnt wood or it smells like a Monday morning). It doesn’t matter if you write in full sentences or just words or images.
What does your object smell like?
What does your object look like?
What does your object taste like? (If it’s not something you can/would usually taste use your imagination!)
What does it feel like?
What does it sound like?
Now we are going to flip the perspective and ask what these questions would look like from the perspective of our object/plant/animal.
What does your chosen object see? What is their world and what does it look like to them? (For example, a tree might see from a very high viewpoint or a wooden table might see the comings and goings of the household.)
What would it feel? What does touch feel like for it? What kind of sensations does it experience?
What does it hear?
What does it smell? Again, think creatively - it might not have a nose but consider what odours surround it, its position in the world, literally or metaphorically.
What does it taste? How does it taste? How does the world taste for it?
Lastly, we are going to consider a couple of different questions of our object/plant/animal.
Again, give yourselves 1-2 minutes to answer these (they will still be waiting for you whenever you want to come back to them!).
Where does it come from?
If it was asking one question of you, what would that question be?
Now that you have some answers written down, pick two answers that you like/feel drawn to (it can just be a word or a phrase). Put these together and see what you have. Then flip them and see what you have. You can either now use these as a prompt to go a little deeper and start working on a poem or a prose piece.
If you want to do something a little more directed, make a haiku out of each answer. Haikus are traditionally three lines long with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second and five in the third - don’t worry too much if you don’t get the syllables quite exact! Once you have your two haikus put them together into a six line poem, then try them the other way round. You can leave them as they are or use them as the starting point for a longer piece.
Hopefully, this exercise has inspired you to think about how to engage in nature writing in a nurturing way from the comfort of your own home. You can do it again with a different object another time or come back to what you wrote before. For me, ‘nature’ is not something that exists as a separate, discrete entity and I find this exercise really helps me in troubling the binary of nature/human that is often found in canonical nature writing. I would love to know know your thoughts in the comments!