Melanie Scott, an Australian writer who finaled twice in the Golden Hearts this year, posted something terrific to our voice class yesterday and I asked her to post it to her blog.
One of the exercises we do is to picture your 80th birthday party and
how you want it to be and what your 80 year old self would tell you to
do. Which all the fabulously talented gals in my course have duly done
and I was trying to come up with some comments but really, they all
sounded fantastic, and all our 80 year old selves are brilliant and
wise and I really want to get to go to some of those parties, so all I
could come up with was this, which is my distillation of what everyone
said and a reminder of what we have to do if we want to live to be
grand old broads at 80. And with apologies to SARK, who’s ‘How to be’ posters are fabulous and kind of inspired me.
Check it out–it’s luscious. And if you want to have some fun, try the exercise:
In a timed writing (ten minutes, pen to the page, write fast, no editing) imagine you are at your 80th birthday party. What are you wearing? Who is there? What’s going on in your life? Now, let your 80 year old self give the self you are now some advice. What will she say to you?
This is not just for writers, by the way. Readers can have fun with it, too. Our 80 year old self is the one who has a lot of answers for how to live our lives today. Have fun with it, and let me know if you did it.