Thursday 4 July 2013

Writing Maps

I was delighted recently when Jem of A Longing for the Impossible and The Sound of Splinters sent me a free copy of a Writing Map.

Writing Maps are pocket inspiration packs for writers. Jem sent me the City of Inspiration map, which can be used in any city and contains several writing prompts. each prompt is designed to make you sit down and pay more attention to your environment, whether it's a restaurant or a gallery or just a street corner and then to draw inspiration from it for your writing.


I was particularly pleased to see that the map includes a prompt to 'find a place to write by water'. Today, as every week, I walked along the Water of Leith through Colinton Dell and enjoyed all the wonderful nature in the area. I was totally delighted to see a kingfisher fly upriver, even more delighted when I was able to follow it and watch it catch a fish. I was also delighted to see that the orchid field is again full of common spotted orchids, they can be very elusive, so it's always wonderful to see them appear again. The field is very boggy so no photos this time, but you can see the orchids from two years ago here.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the City of Inspiration Map along to the creative writing class I teach at the Ripple Project and everyone there was very impressed and said they would definitely use some of the prompts!

There are several different writing maps to choose from, you can see the whole range here.

As  ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.



7 comments:

The Weaver of Grass said...

Interesting post Juliet. Today our writing group decided that we are going to run our own one day course. Quite a few of the fifteen members are published writers and we are on the look out for things we can do as good, solid exercises that we can organise before the day and which will stimulate writing. Have you any ideas we could use please?

Carol Steel said...

The Writing Maps looks great; what a good idea, easy to transport and so helpful, if one wants to just write anywhere they are.

RG said...

How very clever.

Anonymous said...

This is great. Thanks, Juliet, for mentioning the Writing Maps. Water is always such an inspiration... Your walk sounds like a writing prompt in itself... Write about things that grow beside water :)

Little Miss Titch said...

its amazing what you can use as a tool for teaching,xx

Optimistic Existentialist said...

I had never heard of Writing Maps until this post! How neat.

sage said...

Interesting idea--it has been a while since I've been here, I hope you're doing well and your fellow Scotchman wins Wimbledon tomorrow.