Down the Years
The writing practice I'm using to engage with my creativity
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For just over a month now, I’ve been writing first thing in the morning when I wake up. I made myself a book to use by gutting an old hardback cover (entitled DOWN THE YEARS) and filling it with signatures made from cartridge and sugar paper. I left a few of the original book pages in at the beginning and end.
Down the Years sketchbook
Down the Years sketchbook
I’d like to share some of the ways that I’ve ended up using this book to write, and how they’re helping me to engage. The book has become a bit of an everything space, and there are three main ways that I’ve been using it.
The first is the most obvious – as a journal. I’ll see which parts of my previous day come to mind when I begin to write. I’m not trying to make an accurate account of each day, and I miss lots of things out. Lots of days I won’t write like this at all, but sometimes there are moments that feel important for me to record.
XP2 35mm film photo by Rowan Briggs Smith
Secondly, I use the book to write notes on a short text or video that I’ve read/watched. I originally began writing in the green book as a commitment to follow Suleika Jaouad’s prompts in The Book of Alchemy (a book made up of 100 days of extracts from other writers and artists, followed by a journalling prompt by Suleika in response to the extract). I enjoyed the concept of reading a short passage before writing, in that it might provide a new lens through which to think when it came to beginning the page each day. I found some of the prompts really resonated with me, and some of them not so much. At this point, I decided I might better help myself by finding short videos on artists, writers, ideas, etc. to watch before I write, or short texts – a few pages from a book, or an article on Substack. I’ll link a few of my go to sources for videos at the end of the post.
Finally, the use of the book that I find most helpful, but that I don’t think I’d be able to do without the other two: I use the book to begin putting down thoughts on the page to do with creative writing. There are four main ‘prompts’ that I use to do this/to act as a starting point for when I’m not sure what to write.