Today, I borrowed a SPARK from Paula Bourque who blogs at LitCoachLady and whose latest book, SPARK!, focuses on quickwrites in the elementary classroom. If you’re stuck for a writing idea, be sure to visit Paula’s blog where she is sharing a different prompt every day in March.
Here’s today’s prompt:
A simple quick write SPARK to encourage greater mindfulness is to stop and jot what you are experiencing in a given moment. Tap into your senses and notice where your mind takes you. This meditative quick write can be quite relaxing in a natural space or stimulating in a more chaotic space.
I only have this pink pen to write with on this brown paper. My writer’s notebook never made it upstairs. I am trying to transition anyway–from the Precise pens I’ve always written with to these colorful Ink Joys, from the unlined eggshell Cachet spirals–lined up on a shelf across the room–over ten years of notebooks–to these unlined lay-flat Kraft paper notebooks.
But every time I write in my “new” notebook, I feel the fatness of the Ink Joy press uncomfortably into the indentation across my middle finger. I can’t seem to hold the pen loose enough. My hand becomes stiff as I write. I feel the drag of ink across the brown paper. This is slow paper, fine for methodically writing lists or taking notes, but my words can’t glide fast enough to capture the sparks of thinking in a writer’s notebook. I miss the smoother tooth of my old notebook, the slender shape of the Precise pen that sails across the page.
I try to remember why I wanted a change in the first place. Notebook envy. Pretty pen envy. Trying to break the compulsive thinking that told me only this notebook and this pen could be a writer’s notebook. But now I am wondering why meddle with what works?
the dirigible plum 
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