This summer, in advance of the road trips I went on, I made lists of focus words to help me with my writing. Two of the places I had been to before: Mueller State Park in Colorado and Abiquiu in New Mexico. Since they were familiar to me, I was able to generate a short list of things that I think about when I consider each location.
I started with Colorado, since I was going there first, and came up with:
Pine
Mountain
Cloud
Mountain
Cloud
Sky
Earth
Rain
Meadow
The list of words gave me something to start from rather than waiting to see if anything struck me, and it worked really well. Each morning I was able to sit and think about the words, while equally thinking about my surroundings and whatever I was experiencing in the moment.
Similarly, I used the words to help concentrate my photography a little, since again I had photographed that part of Colorado pretty extensively in previous years. I didn’t want to make the same pictures all over again – although who knows, maybe I still did that. In my head, I had a direction and goal and that was a nice feeling!
I waited until I was leaving Colorado to make a list about New Mexico, since I wanted to keep my head in the same space as my body rather than letting it wander further down the road. My words for Abiquiu were:
Sand / Soil
Rock
Rattlesnake
Sage
Heat
Water / Mesa
River
Sky
I’m going to start sharing the poems I wrote on my Medium, so if you’re able to read me over there I hope to see you!
So, fellow writers and visual artists: what do you do? Have you tried working from a word list?
The Poetry Patio 