Slice of Life: Honeysuckle

The word challenge is a appropriate on so many levels for this Slice of Life Challenge! How do I make the time to write everyday? How to read all the terrific posts being shared? How do I come up with an idea of what to write about Every. Single. Day.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas. It’s that they don’t always cooperate, or I don’t have the time I need to develop them. So what to do on those days?

A few months ago, I received an intriguing postcard advertising Rip the Page! Adventures in Creative Writing (Roost Books, 2010) by Karen Benke. The jacket copy goes on to say that the book “Includes wordplay, open-ended writing experiments, encouragement from writers and poets, and enough blank pages to let your words roam…” I ordered it immediately.

To say that this book is full of inspiration is an understatement. I could open up to any random page and have a topic to write about in under a minute. Today’s slice is courtesy “Favorite Words,” a page with sixty random words. Benke describes this as “a list of some of my favorite words to snack on.” I chose the word “honeysuckle,” which unleashed this:

This is the magic…

A word.

Honeysuckle,

d

  r

    i

      p

        p

          i

           n

              g

with sweetness,

conjures a memory

of summer afternoons,

walking through meadows

lined with masses of

yellow and orange blossoms.

Vying with bumblebees

and hummingbirds

darting

     in

and

     out,

        hovering

in mid air,

to steal

the nectar stored inside.

Liquid sunshine.

© Catherine Flynn, 2015

By Aftabbanoori (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The potential of this book for classroom use is endless. I can’t wait to see what my students come up with based on their favorite words!

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each day during the month of March and on Tuesdays throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.