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by Dawn Babb Prochovnic
One of the things I appreciate most about Storystorm is that it nudges me to write a little something (even if it’s just a whisper of an idea) each and every day. Today’s post provides an opportunity to sustain this creative routine all year long.
When my kids were bitsy, our household amassed a daunting collection of party favors and piñata toys. Somewhere along the line, I started incorporating that clutter into my creative writing practice.
Maybe you have your own copious collection of clutter? Stuff displayed on your desktop or bookshelf? Treasures tucked into your handbag or backpack? If yes, take a moment to locate an object—any object—and put it in front of you. If you don’t have anything easily within reach, use the image below as a stand-in:
Take a long, close look at your object, and begin writing down any words that come to mind in the following categories:
- Nouns:
- Adjectives:
- Verbs:
- Miscellaneous words that you don’t want to bother categorizing:
Now go a little deeper…
- What memories does this object evoke for you? (Write this down.)
- What connections does this object elicit for you? (Write this down.)
- What assortment of seemingly random thoughts are coming to mind for you? (Write this down.)
Now let’s get the creative juices really flowing. Set a timer for a three-minute freewrite that incorporates…
- The object itself, or
- One or more of the nouns, adjectives, verbs, miscellaneous words, memories, connections, or assortment of seemingly random thoughts that you’ve written above, OR
- Anything else that’s clamoring to get onto the page.
GO!!!
Write for three solid minutes. Don’t self-edit. Don’t judge. And don’t feel any obligation to apply the structural guidelines I’ve suggested above. Just let your imagination run wild and see what pops out.
DING!!!
Time’s up. Stop writing. Seriously, STOP writing at the three-minute mark. Even if you’re in the middle of a word, or a sentence, or a thought. Stop. Wiggle your fingers. Shake out your wrists. Relax your shoulders. Read and ponder what just poured out of you and onto the page.
Where might the words or ideas fit into a story you are working on? A character you are developing? An idea you are exploring? A story problem you are trying to solve? What new story ideas come to mind? What are you clamoring to keep writing about? Add some notes to capture your musings. Whoo-hoo! You have words on the page. Your creative brain is awake. You’ve already accomplished a little something, and the writing day is still young!
I’ve used variations of this activity for my own writing projects and for book events, school/library author visits, and creative writing workshops. Some examples:
- For early literacy events featuring WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY?, I display a small treasure chest and a container of toys with signage that says, “Ask How This Jar of Toys Can Be a Literacy Tool.”
- For school/library author visits I share how a little glass bird that sits on my desk, a gift from my Gram, found its way into early drafts of LUCY’S BLOOMS. As the story blossomed, the bird eventually got cut from the text, but the love and warmth I felt when looking at this object helped me tap into the love and warmth I wanted to convey between my characters, Lucy and Gram.
- I bring a bag of treasures with me when I teach writing workshops, pulling an object from the bag as I lead the group in a warm-up exercise similar to what I’ve described in this post. Time allowing, after the exercise, participants break into small groups to share what they’ve written; this helps illustrate that we all have different memories and experiences to draw from, and even if the prompt (or prop) is the same, our writing reflects these differences. For longer workshops, I distribute a unique object to each participant, and repeat the exercise. Young writers enjoy discovering they can keep my clutter er, their object after the workshop ends.
- For more in-depth writing programs, I display a selection of objects on a table, and invite participants to select one or more to use at their desks to help them generate a new story idea or get unstuck on some aspect of their work-in-progress. I provide different object-related prompts depending upon the content of the workshop, for example, “Write about the day your character found (or lost) this object,” or “Describe how this object fits into the setting of your story.”
- Illustrators (and non-illustrators) can substitute timed drawing/sketching in place of writing. I’ve found it to be especially liberating for young writers to be given “permission” to draw/sketch instead of writing words during the three-minute “freewrite.”
- If you’re running short on time in the morning, you can still select an object to keep in the back of your mind throughout the day, then sit down and write about the object in the afternoon or evening.
- If this particular activity is a good fit for you, you might also appreciate Object Writing, a technique developed by song-writing guru Pat Pattison (discussed in his book Writing Better Lyrics) that focuses on deeply describing an object using all of your senses.
I hope today’s post helps you collect heaps of new ideas!
Dawn Babb Prochovnic is giving away THREE prizes:
- A copy of LUCY’S BLOOMS (US);
- A copy of WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY? or WHERE DOES A COWGIRL GO POTTY? (winner’s choice, US); and
- A 30-minute Ask-Me-Anything Zoom Session (for an individual, critique group, or classroom).
Three separate winners will be randomly selected.
You’re eligible to win if you’re a registered Storystorm 2024 participant and you have commented only once on today’s blog post.
Prizes will be distributed at the conclusion of Storystorm.
Dawn Babb Prochovnic has devoted her life’s work to initiatives that support literacy and the literary arts including early literacy enrichment programs; creative writing workshops; author visits/virtual visits to schools, libraries and bookstores; programming for professional development conferences/e-conferences; and robust enrichment materials on her educational blog. Dawn received the 2023 Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s young readers and was named an Oregon Library Supporter of the Year in 2015 for her work advocating for strong school libraries. Her publication credits include 19 picture books and a contribution to the award-winning anthology, OREGON READS ALOUD. Dawn enjoys collaborating with music professionals to create original songs and videos for her books.
Find Dawn online at DawnProchovnic.com, YouTube @dprochovnic, Instagram: @dawnprochovnic, and BlueSky @dawnprochovnic.bsky.social.
When my high-school-aged son was a toddler, I recall a day when he was in a particularly silly mood, running through the house with a diaper on his bottom, a bandana on his head, and a pirate’s patch over one eye. He looked at me with an ornery twinkle in his uncovered eye, and asked, in his best, pirate-y gruff toddler voice, “Where Does a Pirate Go Potty?” I knew immediately this was the title for a book, and I started drafting a manuscript soon after.
Over the next couple of years, the manuscript went through many critiques and many revisions, but the core story about the universal childhood experience of, “I gotta go. Now!” told from the perspective of a pirate on a quest to find just the right spot to leave his…uh, treasure…remained consistent throughout.
In 2006/2007 I submitted the story for professional critiques and participated in opportunities to read the story aloud at various SCBWI events. The story was a crowd-pleaser, and several editors expressed interest and invited me to follow up with a submission. In 2007, one of those editors took the manuscript to her editorial meeting, and then to acquisitions. She was extremely enthusiastic about the story, and I felt confident a contract offer was on the horizon. But that was not to be.
I was thrown by the emotional roller coaster of being so close to making my first sale, then having it fall apart, but I refused to give up on the story. I continued submitting it and bringing it to conferences for awhile, but eventually my focus shifted to new stories and new submissions. After signing contracts for my STORY TIME WITH SIGNS AND RHYMES series, my attention shifted to editing and launching those books. Even so, every now and then, I’d re-read my Pirate Potty manuscript, and tinker around with it some. I never stopped loving it.
Fast forward to 2015. I was invited to write a story for Oregon Reads Aloud, a keepsake collection of read-aloud stories for children, published in celebration of SMART’s (Start Making a Reader Today) 25th anniversary (Graphic Arts Books, 2016). I was grateful for the opportunity. I gladly contributed a story for the project and actively participated in the promotional events for the book.
In October of 2016, I drove 3 ½ hours from Portland to Seattle to spend a couple of hours signing copies of Oregon Reads Aloud in the Graphic Arts Books booth during the Pacific NW Book Association conference. During my time in the booth, I got to know some of the folks at Graphic Arts and familiarized myself with their regionally-focused list. I remember thinking, “These are such nice people. I’d love to work with them on other books. I wish I had a manuscript with a regional theme that I could submit to them.”
Over the course of the next year, I continued wishing that I had a book that was a good fit for Graphic Arts. Not surprisingly, wishing did not make it so. One day, as I re-read and reflected on my beloved Pirate Potty story, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could westernize this story?” That moment was a turning point.
I got all of the “feels” that you get when you have a good idea, and I started making notes. I challenged myself to replace the pirate character with a different character, and the idea of a cowboy soon came to mind. I tried plugging “Cowboy” elements into the story in place of “Pirate” elements, but I was not keen on the changes that came out of that exercise. I think there were a few different reasons the cowboy changes weren’t working, but the biggest issue was that during this phase of re-vision, I was essentially trying to insert a cowboy into the pirate’s story. The roots of my story were based on that memorable moment when my son posed the silly question, “Where Does a Pirate Go Potty?,” and I “saw” a very specific Pirate character in my mind every time I sat with the story. I couldn’t simply replace that character with a cowboy.
At one point, I pulled out my old files from back when the Pirate Potty story “almost sold,” and I re-read what the editor wrote to me. She had said, “…Everyone in our group just loved it and thought it’d be a slam dunk, but Sales thought that a pirate potty book would only appeal to boys, thus cutting our readership in half. I totally disagree with them…but without their support, we just can’t move forward…”
I, too, disagreed with the assessment that only boys would be interested in a Pirate Potty book, but this time as I re-read those words, a new question emerged: What about a cowgirl? I found myself immediately transported to a time when my college-aged daughter was in grade school, and her wardrobe included a bright pink pair of cowgirl boots. I paged through old photos and found the one I was looking for: A photo of my daughter dressed-up for her western-themed grade school carnival. I finally had the kernel of a new character in my mind’s eye. This character was unique and separate from the Pirate character that I couldn’t let go of, and she had her own story to tell.
WHERE DOES A COWGIRL GO POTTY? spilled onto the page with urgency.
And all of a sudden (and about a dozen years later) I had two potty stories I loved, one with a decidedly western theme. I identified several publishers that might be a good fit for Cowgirl, and I developed a submission plan. Graphic Arts Books was at the top of the list.
I submitted WHERE DOES A COWGIRL GO POTTY? to Graphic Arts Books in 2017, and I’m happy to share that it’s scheduled to hit bookshelves in the fall of 2019…along with WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY? Yarrr! They loved that story, too.
One key revision, and two new books. Yee-Ha!
Dawn Babb Prochovnic is the author of multiple picture books including Where Does a Cowgirl Go Potty? and Where Does a Pirate Go Potty? (forthcoming, 2019) and a frequent presenter at schools, libraries, and educational conferences. Dawn loves to travel and has visited thousands of potties across the Pacific Northwest and around the world. She is the founder of SmallTalk Learning based in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at dawnprochovnic.com.
Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 