Writing Time Capsules

Last April when a friend and I were on our writing retreat we each used a prompt to write a story, then sealed our stories in envelopes. We put them away as time capsules and were not to open them until our 2009 writing retreat.

After we'd done it we both thought it was a bad idea. Even though we were both in the middle of other projects at the time, we wanted access to our stories. Too bad for us we'd already made a deal. It was really hard for me because I was the one that had to keep them both and could have opened them at any time. There were a few times that it was hard to restrain myself, but I made it.

In the long run it turned out alright. We opened them recently and read our stories. I think we both saw room for improvement, but still liked the ideas enough to want to keep them for a future project. I think it's a good idea to put things away for a while, but now I'd rather wait until it's finished - at least the first draft. When the story's just getting started I'd rather have the option to work on it if I want to.

This year we learned from last year's mistake. We didn't make time capsules with stories inside. Instead we are gathering 10 pictures to use as writing prompts and putting those away as our time capsules. Hopefully we'll forget what the pictures are and be surprised next year when we open them for some of our writing exercises. Great idea Sheri, Thanks.

I don't have mine yet, but I'll get the time capsule put together this week. We used to put together a larger collection of pictures and actually try to be artistic by taking the pictures ourselves. But sometimes the results were scary - especially when we used an ‘abstract’ category for some of the shots. Now it's anything goes. We cut them out of magazines, print them off the internet, or sometimes even take them ourselves. The only rule is that they have to be good pictures, which we define as pictures from which we think we could find the root of a story.

We'll see how the new plan works out next year, but I've got high hopes for this method.