the dreamsmith.

JUNE POETRY PROMPTS ··· a collection of poetry prompts bathed in the long gold of solstice light, where love grows as fruit on the branch and the heat makes liars of us all.

1. I found your name pressed between the pages of june 2. kissed by the sun but thinking of you 3. you were the underline in every chapter I reread 4. we were prose pretending to be permanence 5. a love like wild thyme & cigarette ash 6. I was the orchard. you only wanted the wine 7. I spilled a bottle of rosé and blamed the stars 8. our love—sun-warmed, barefoot, and wildly unafraid 9. I dressed up for the sunset like it was a lover 10. I made sweet tea and forgave myself again 11. we met in the fantasy section—how fitting 12. you annotated my life with quiet affection 13. some days, I date the sky. some days, I marry the moon 14. joy arrived in sonnets and strawberries 15. I became a bouquet in your hands 16. the cicadas went silent when you touched me 17. June wrote your name in sweat down my spine 18. you made me believe in soft landings 19. I became the person I used to write about  20. the sun came back and so did I  21. I found pieces of us in every golden hour 22. you made summer feel like forever 23. I am my own protagonist . . . and today, I got the love arc 24. june was all lavender 25. you and the strawberry moon 26. we almost had forever. we settled for june 27. my love language is long walks through bookstores 28. film photos from that summer 29. aperol spritz ; the summer air ; you and me 30. the last light of june caught on my collarbone, and it lingered

Cormorant fishing in Yangshuo near Guilin, Guangxi, China. Christian Vaisse

the idea of setting systems rather than goals comes from james clear’s atomic habits. here’s a quote that sums it up: 

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”

the basic idea is that the purpose of setting goals is to win the game, and the purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. as he says, “you do not rise to the level of your goals. you fall to the level of your systems.” 

how this applies: you cannot finish all of your projects on passion alone. you cannot finish it by saying ‘i’m going to finish it’. the most helpful strategies in finishing your wip are the systems you put in place. 

examples of systems: 

attaching writing to a time of day (i reserve time for it first thing in the morning. some people write at night. it’s up to your preference!)

committing to an average (i can’t write every day. i write frequently. committing myself to an average of 500 words a day means that some days i write 1000 words and the next day i write 0 words and that’s okay)

implementing the 2 day rule (don’t let more than 2 days in a row pass without writing at least something, be it worldbuilding ideas or outlining or writing actual prose)

acknowledging daydreaming as productive (it is!! it is!!! those hours you spend looking out the window thinking about your wip still counts as productive)

the above is not a list of commands. they are all suggestions of various systems that work. 

the real reason i’ve found a system-oriented approach to be more helpful is that i LOVE writing. i love it and i want to continue loving it. systems help take away the anxiety of attaching my value as a writer to finishing a project. writing doesn’t have to add stress and a sense of failure into your life. none of us need that. 

finishing a project does not make you worthy. the act of writing makes you worthy. 

(anon is referring to this post - edited to add i also posted about this later here to elaborate on how i personally tackle the “knowledge” point)

oh man ok thats bc it’s not actually called that, it’s just the quick way i refer to it. the theory is from this article called “how i went from writing 2k a day to 10k a day” by rachel aaron, & it is possibly the best writing advice i have ever read even tho i have not yet written 10k in a day myself*. it posits that in orders to boost ur general productivity u need 3 things: enough time/energy to write (& working at the right time of day), enthusiasm about what ur writing, & knowledge about where the story/scene is going

so when u have all 3 of these, you’re really gonna be vibing, but if you’re missing one or more, you’re gonna start getting stuck. usually when one complains of “writer’s block” (which i don’t actually believe in), it comes down to one of these things not working as it should, and if you work the problem from that angle the “block” will usually just disappear

the article explains the three points & how to get better at each one REALLY well, better than i would, and it’s pretty short so it’s always worth a read (or reread, anyone that’s followed me for awhile might’ve heard me sing these praises before). the points she makes about the “knowledge” part of this equation i think are particularly good - she has a method of pre-blocking scenes with dialogue and action beats that i sort of adapted for myself and it makes my first drafts come out WAY quicker and smoother. it’s rly good shit i think everyone who likes to write should read it

*ok so technically i did write 10k in 24h one time in like 2009 but it was because the first draft of my my big bang was due and they were all sleep-deprived filler words that weren’t meant to be real prose, just saying what was gonna happen so i wouldn’t get kicked. that doesn’t count!! my actual record is like 6400 or 6500 which i did the day i finished the rough draft of synchronicity - once i got that close to the end nothing in the world was gonna stop me. i’m gonna hit 10k someday tho i just know it