Bone Gardens and Cinnamon Buns
When writing practice unearths insight
Sunset was the most dangerous time to be in the bone garden, but it was also the most beautiful. The way the dying streams of light sprawled in between the mounded grasses, catching goldenrod blooms and making them glow like little beating hearts. Even as Mink picked her way carefully across the ground, she marveled at the brilliance of gold. And when the sun sank a little lower, and cut through the archway into the altar-house, and shone on the sculpted bones — oh the bones! The ecstatic beauty of the aged ivory, the patina of dust and loving fingerprints. Even after a lifetime of tending the small gods, it never failed to stop her breath in her throat, so moved was she by their beauty. And it was while in the thrall of this beauty that this evening, this sunset, she stayed just a moment too long, and she didn’t even feel the thorns of the creeping vine slip into the tender skin above her ankles, and she only had a moment of pain before they pulled her under, but even that was tempered, for she knew, as she had known other things, that her bones would gleam the brightest of all.
The week before last my writing group was finally able to coordinate schedules and get the four of us into one room, pens in hand and prompts at the ready. Everyone wrote down a prompt on a slip of paper, and then folded them up and tossed them into a bowl. “Cinnamon Buns” gave me a lightly stream-of-consciousness rant about my post-partum body; “Light House” offered a glimpse into the emotional turmoil of the main character of a ghost-filled romantic comedy I’ve jotted down ideas for. And this prompt, “the roots crawled over her bones,” opened up the world for a fantasy WIP, set in an archipelago of islands inhabited by very few people, and plants that have learned to hunt.
But while these exercises gave me insights into stories I want to write and plot bunnies to chase down the rabbit hole, what I found most valuable was actually being held accountable at a table of other writers to sit and get pen on paper. We set a timer for 15 minutes for each prompt, and for every single one, I stared at my blank page for the first few minutes. My inner editor is strong-willed (tyrannical, you might even say), and it is exceedingly difficult for me to write anything that doesn’t have some kind of form or completion arc. To just write for practice—to write imperfectly and not go back to fix it—is one of my biggest challenges. And because my “me” writing time is squeezed in between being a full-time mom to two very energetic children, an endless barrage of housework and domestic tasks, and freelance assignments, I’m usually single-mindedly focused on finishing the draft for my current dark fairy tale WIP. But I’m learning how to stretch those muscles, and for me, that practice offers the chance to just play with some words and see what happens.
Prompts can come from anywhere. My “roots” prompt came after I exclaimed, “I can’t think of anything! My brain is dead!” to my writing group. Open a book to a random page and grab the first noun you see. Or choose a body part to describe. Or begin with the first line of a favourite poem and see where it takes you. Above all, get that pen moving, and don’t stop until your timer buzzes.
If you have 15 minutes to sit down with a blank piece of paper, try one of these prompts:
“the pig couldn’t see the stars”
“come closer—help me kiss you” (after Tess Gallagher)
“feathered wings wet with dew”
“a shard of rainbow”
If you’re inclined, please comment and share your own snippets of writing practice. I would love to read them. <3