Friday, January 22, 2010

Travels of the Mind

I spent this afternoon leading a class of creative writing students. For me, that's not too out of the ordinary, though the students weren't the typical everyday ones. They were inmates at a nearby women's penitentiary.

One of the exercises we did meant imagining a place you'd like to visit. No credit card limits or lack of time -- or, as was pointed out, no restrictions on travel from having a criminal record.

We covered the globe, from Africa to Vienna, with Egypt and Mexico tossed in for balance.

It was a terrific stretch of the imagination and led everyone to employ all their senses in their writing -- hanging fruits, gritty sand underfoot, and even the sound of a bird calling coo-coo-roo.

A cheap way to travel, and one that may have even provided a brief escape for today's writers.

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