Writing Maps – Guest Blog Post with Shaun Levin

The Character Writing Map: Click here

I love it when I come across new, juicy resources for writing that make getting onto the page a more enjoyable process. With our busy lives it can be so easy to run ourselves ragged and have very little time for the writing process. That’s why I was delighted to come across Shaun Levin’s Writing Maps. I purchased eight in one day simply because they are so good as visual, illustrated writing prompts for fiction and non-fiction writers.

I’ve know Shaun for a few years now and was excited when he agreed to be featured on the blog as a guest blogger talking about Writing Maps. We share a love of paper and I love how the Writing Maps emerged from his Inquiry question about ‘What next in his journey as a writer?’

Read on to hear what the fab Shaun Levin has to say about Writing Maps and how they creatively nourish and inspire our writing:

I suppose the Writing Maps are a way for me to take stock of 20 years of teaching and running workshops in all sorts of settings: colleges, universities, schools, as well as more public spaces, like art galleries, parks, cafes, department stores, a zoo, a cemetery, on a boat.

Much of the material for my teaching comes out of my own practice as a writer and very crafty techniques for combating my own resistance to actually sitting down to write! I’d say that most of my work has been written outdoors, or at least started when I was away from my desk, out of the house, in cafes and on park benches pretending I wasn’t actually “working”.

And then there’s my fascination with the combining of text and image. And my interest in psychogeography and creative mapping. I don’t remember exactly how it all became aligned, but at some point I must have thought: let’s put creative writing prompts onto maps! It was a bit of a eureka moment!

To be honest, I think the Writing Maps also started at a time when I wanted something new, to try new things. I was about to turn 50 and was questioning a lot of what I was doing, asking myself whether this was it, whether I would just keep doing the same thing for the next 50 years, publishing another book, teaching another workshop, publishing another book, etc.

I know that if you’re a writer then that’s what one does, but I was questioning that! Working with a range of different designers on the Maps has given me more confidence to explore my own very limited illustration skills and to kind of enjoy the beginner-mindness of something I’ve never done before but have always wanted to.

Drawing! Visual art has been a huge part of my work for the past 10 years – I’ve been writing about painters, researching painters, visiting artists’ studios, but never really giving myself license to explore the challenge of creating without words. So that’s all been exciting and new and who knows where it will lead!

The City Of Inspiration Writing Map: Click here

Talking about new things… In March this year (2014) I started a monthly writing contest that links to the launch of a new Writing Map each month. The first 12 winners (two from each month) will be published in a new literary magazine that’ll launch in September. It’ll be called A3 and will be on an A3 page, like the maps, and will fold down to A6 (postcard size).

Maybe it has something to do with the way we carry our phones around with us, so much of what matters to us is in this one device… so the Writing Maps and the new literary magazine will be things you can carry around with you. I guess it’s my love of paper combined with the convenience of having inspiration and beautiful things with you at all times.

Publishing other people’s work, which I’ve been doing for over ten years, has always been about sharing exciting work that I’ve come across. Like, look at this amazing bit of writing I’ve just read! So the new journal will be very much about that. Often the most powerful writing comes out in the shortest time. It always energises me when you give people in a workshop a really simple prompt and in 5 or 10 minutes they create this moving and surprising work.

I want the Writing Maps to inspire that kind of writing! I’d love them to be the thing you carry with you wherever you go. I want the Writing Maps to inspire people to write stories or explore in deeper ways the stories they’re working on.

The whole idea behind Writing Maps is that the world out there is full of inspiration, that basically the world is one big creative writing (or drawing, or painting) prompt, and the Maps are made up of suggestions to channel that into stories, to make stuff out of what’s already there! Writing Maps are for anyone who is interested in writing and who is open to trying out new approaches to creating stories.

I think writers are always looking for new ideas for stories, or an interesting way to tell the next story, so hopefully the creative writing prompts Writing Maps will open up new possibilities for writing adventures.

About Shaun

Shaun Levin is the author of five books, amongst them: Seven Sweet Things, Snapshots of The Boy and A Year of Two Summers.

His fictional work on the poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg has recently been translated into French and will be appearing in September 2014. His short stories and essays appear in over 50 anthologies and journals, and he was the founding editor of the literary and arts magazine, Chroma.

He launched Writing Maps in 2012, and is about to launch a new literary journal, A3.