Good afternoon writers!

I’ve been pondering what to do with ‘R’ in our series of creative writing prompts and exercises. There are a lot of R words that could take you off on a writing journey… rebellion, resurgence, rope, rabbits, recovery, rhythm, rice pudding,  robots. Ah, the dictionary is just full of them.

But I have decided to home in on just one word and its meaning – recycling. But I’m not talking about throwing jam jars into the bottle bank here (although that’s a good thing to do, right?).

I’m talking about looking back through old notebooks and workshop notes so you can marvel at all the possibilities – and recycle some of the best bits. Very old notebooks (no I don’t hoard, not really) can always be mined for new material – or you can find some of your finished written work from a few years ago, review it, and rewrite it with a new angle.

Look back on all the bits and pieces you’ve written after being prompted here – I’ve asked for lots of different styles of poetry, articles, memoir, flash fiction, short stories. See if you can find something from your stash of old work and reinvent it as new!

And just to add something extra – try to include the colour red (and think of all the ways you can describe this most vibrant of colours), and because poppies (like in the picture here) are a symbol of remembrance, see if you can’t squeeze in a mention of them in your work too!

Next week, we’ll have got to the letter ‘S’ (yes, I know you know the sequence of the alphabet!) and I will have a very specific exercise for you.

Until then, happy writing. Keep going, don’t listen to the naysayers, remember publication rejections have happened to all the great writers – the key is not to give up. But it is important for you to enjoy the process. If you’re not enjoying your writing, either you’re doing it wrong, or it is not for you and perhaps you need to take up sky diving or baking with yeast instead.

And on the subject of writing persistence – I’ve mentioned this before – I was once placed in an international competition with a short story that had been around the block at least five times. But I thought the story had worth and eventually, someone agreed with me. Remember – don’t give up!

Come back here next week and I will have a new creative writing prompt/exercise for you. As always, Wednesday 5pm Dublin time. If you’re new here (where have you been?) more about the reasoning behind this is here.