How to use nature as a writing prompt
Hi Witchy Writer,
One of my tried-and-true ways to get my writing inspiration going is to sit in nature and describe the world around me. What birds do I hear? What kinds of trees are around? What flowers are blooming? Sitting with nature to prompt my writing always helps me connect to my feelings and uncover topics I couldn’t have thought of otherwise.
In today’s Witchy Writers’ Podcast episode, I share exactly how I use nature as a writing prompt, so you can see if the same practice helps your writing life. I’d love to hear what you think. You can email me at hello@enchantedwriting.com.
Emma
P.S. Join the Dark Moon Free 5-Day Writing Challenge to experience the quietude and self-reflection of the dark moon with five witchy writing prompts. The challenge starts on Saturday September 9, 2023.
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Transcript
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Witchy Writers Podcast, where you will learn about witchy tools, mindset tips, and creative practices to empower your writing life.
I am Emma Veritas.
I'm a writer, writing coach, and creative witch.
And today I'm talking to you about what is empowering my witchy writing life right now, and I'm sharing a witchy tool you can use to develop an ongoing writing practice.
And before we get into that, I have a really fun announcement for all of you today, and that is, starting this September 14th, I am opening the doors to my brand new membership called Pen and Hearth.
Pen and Hearth helps witchy writers like you develop a daily writing practice so you can feel inspired in your writing life.
This group is for you if you want to spark more inspiration for your writing and build confidence in your authentic voice.
It's for you if you would love to experience community and connection in your writing life.
And it's for you if you are a witchy person, or maybe you're just witch curious, and you'd like to experience more magic in your life.
The heart of what we do in Pen and Hearth is I post daily, really fun witchy writing prompts for you to write to and respond to.
And if you want to, you can share your writing in the group.
And one thing I love about this community is how kind it is.
So if you feel nervous about joining a writing group because you are worried people are going to be really critical of your writing, they're going to be mean to you about your writing.
I know that writing groups, some writing groups can be really, really critical.
The purpose of what we're doing is not to edit your writing.
It's really not about having other people critique what you wrote.
We actually don't do that at all.
Instead, when you share what you wrote from a writing prompt in our group, what people do is they respond to you with something they liked about your writing.
They'll highlight a sentence that they really resonated with, or they'll tell you what they got out of your writing.
And so in that way, you can have a real boost of confidence in your voice, in your authentic voice.
And I think that's a really special thing about what we're doing.
If you are a person who really wants to be edited, you really want your writing to be critiqued.
You can definitely find writing groups like that, but Pen and Hearth is all about helping you just boost your inspiration and feel some confidence that what you have to say has meaning for other people that you can write something for 10 minutes, not even edit it.
And people will find something that they like about it.
It is a really cool group.
So I encourage you to join us.
Um, you can find out more about it by joining my newsletter at enchantedwriting.com.
If you join my newsletter, that means you will be the first to know when the doors open on Thursday, September 14th.
So what is empowering my witchy writing life right now?
Um, so something that is really empowering me in my writing life right now is actually a writing project that I'm working on called a year of nature and magic at home.
This is a Substack blog that you can find at emmaveritas.substack.com.
And what I'm doing is I'm writing one post a month where I am reflecting on the nature of the season.
And I'm also doing some personal reflection for whatever is coming up for me when I am connecting to the nature and magic of what is happening here at my home, um, where I live in the Pacific Northwest.
This is a new home for me.
I've done a couple big moves in my life.
So I grew up in new England, north of Boston, and I moved from there to California when I was in my thirties and really to help me integrate that move, I actually started a blog, um, called a year of plants where every week I wrote about the native plants of California and I had to go out into nature, take pictures of the plants, find these native plants, research them, understand what was going on.
And by writing about the nature, I was really able to kind of recover from my homesickness and integrate the fact that I lived in California now in California was so different from new England, like totally different.
And now that I live in the Pacific Northwest, I've lived here for a couple of years.
I'm finding it to be a really beautiful practice to return to writing about the nature here.
I don't go out and adventure as much as I used to.
When I lived in California, we have a really beautiful big yard.
It's filled with nature.
And at that blog, a year of nature and magic at home is my chance to sit and reflect on what is here.
And it's helping me integrate like this land that I live on into my life in a really interesting and beautiful way.
And I love nature writing.
I've read a couple of really beautiful nature books recently.
One was rooted by Leander Lynn hopped.
Another one is mirrors in the earth by Asia Sewell.
Reading those books reminded me about how nature writing is a craft.
I used to do a lot of nature writing, um, when I started blogging about eight years ago, but I never really had that mindset of thinking this is a craft.
Like nature reflective essays is something I am doing on purpose.
Right.
And lately, when I think about a year of nature and magic at home, I really want to embrace the fact that this is a craft that I am engaging with.
And it's really beautiful because there are so many beautiful, um, nature writers, right?
There is a lineage of nature writers.
And I like to think of myself as at least a little bit as being a part of that lineage.
So that's a mindset that's really empowering my witchy writing life right now is both engaging in nature, reflective essays, and also claiming and owning it as my craft as a writer.
Okay.
So to go along with that nature theme today, I want to tell you about how to use nature as a writing prompt.
So a couple of essays ago, I was talking to you about what it means when you have a writing project versus a writing practice.
And we talked about how, um, when you have a writing practice and ongoing writing practice, one really fun way to introduce variety into that is to use writing prompts.
Yesterday, I told you about how to use Oracle cards as a writing prompt.
And today we're looking at nature.
So I use nature as a writing prompt in my nature, reflective essays.
It always works for me.
Like I don't plan ahead of time, what I'm going to write.
I don't know the topic.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know what I'm going to say.
Instead.
What I do is I go outside somewhere right now that's in my yard.
But when I lived in California, I was in the suburbs and Silicon Valley.
So I used to go to parks and I would just kind of put myself in front of a piece of nature, maybe a tree.
There was a tree outside my bedroom window or, you know, anywhere where there might be a flower, a blade of grass, you know, a bird, like any kind of nature.
And I would sit there.
And what I do is I start my writing by writing what I see happening in the world around me.
So I will sit and start talking about, OK, there is a pine tree.
And right now that pine trees needles are dry.
You know, it hasn't been raining.
I might write about that a little bit.
I'll talk about the color of the sky.
I'll talk about the grass also brown right now because it hasn't been raining.
And I might switch to the garden and I'm looking out the window and my husband has this new little lemon tree he's been growing.
I might start writing about the lemon tree.
And at some point in my writing, talking about just what I see, what I notice, I'll usually get drawn in to something I see.
Right.
So if I'm looking at that lemon tree, I might get drawn in and I might start telling the story of, you know, my husband wanting to grow fruit trees and what that means for him and what that means for us and what that means for this land.
And I might get drawn in and just write and write and write and just see what happens.
For me, with my blog, I start writing like that.
I get drawn into something.
And usually what ends up happening is I write myself into a topic for my blog post.
And then from there, I'll start the writing project of writing a blog post.
So my writing practice is to use nature as a writing prompt.
Usually everything I write there, I wouldn't post it stuff that has no agenda.
It doesn't have to become anything.
Usually that part gets set aside.
And then I usually, when I start my blog post, I just start from scratch, but I'm in the energy and in the mode of what I want to be writing for my blog post.
And so that is how you can use nature as a writing prompt.
You certainly don't need to use it for a blog post.
You don't need to have an agenda with it.
You can just have your writing practice be sitting for 10 minutes on a regular basis and writing what you see around you.
Here's what's happening.
Here's what I see.
Here's what I notice.
Here's what I'm drawn into, right?
And so you can just explore and play with your writing like that.
Um, like we've been talking about over this short episode series so that you can clear the channels of your inspiration, play a little bit with your writing, maybe write about something you never thought you would write about have words come out.
You never thought you would say, and in that way, it can stretch you as a writer.
Cause you end up going to different and new places with your words.
Nature is a really fun way to do that.
Cause you never know where you're going to get drawn to when you're sitting outside, especially if you can be somewhere like a park or somewhere where there's kind of a lot going on.
It's really fun to just write about all the different little things that are happening and to see what happens with your writing.
Okay.
So I encourage you to try that, um, as a writing practice.
And if you would like to have even more support with getting your writing practice started, I invite you to join my free writing challenge called the dark moon five day writing challenge, which is happening from September 9th to September 13th, where every day for five days, I'm going to post a witchy writing prompt for you to be able to write to that prompt.
And if you're feeling extra brave, you can share what you wrote in the group and experience that kind feedback from other writers.
You can join this writing challenge by going to enchantedwriting.com forward slash dark moon.
And until next time, may your writing life be enchanted.