Taking a trip can give you new ideas, new perspectives, new ways of thinking about that part of your story where you are stuck. This summer, if you’re going somewhere different use the opportunity to take one piece of work that you are feeling frustrated by AND at the same time bring a notebook to jot down ideas that come to you. Writers don’t get vacation, you know!

Write a story and make sure to use all of the following seven words somewhere in it:

GRAVE

WATER

WIRE

READINGS

ECHO

GARDEN

INVENT 

Tomorrow morning, we’re going to Derbyshire for a long weekend with old friends.  There will be lots of opportunity to make notes about a new landscape (see the photo), the interior of a building I’ve never stayed in before (a large place with many bedrooms), and about the ways we spend our time with four small children to hang out with.  The notes I make will only be short, a sentence here or there, a short piece of descrition, fragments.  Think about ways you can make notes on a new, or on an old experience.  Perhaps the notes will be helpful in a later piece of writing.