Daily Writes 1: Empowerment

As I mentioned in my Writer's Inklings blog a few days ago, I'm going to start to doing writing exercises on here. Here's the first one...

Empowerment - I Am

Day one is THE beginning. Today you'll give meaning to your name. You'll put character in the name you've owned all these years. You'll give your name a beginning.

To be able to free and develop the writer inside you, you'll need to be empowered. Empowerment won't come from your family, it won't come from your friends, it won't come from writing books. Empowerment will have to come from you. And so you will start by recognising the strength of your name and setting your deepest hopes, fears and dreams free.

What you need to do:-

1) Write your name in big bold letters on top of a blank page.
2) Beginning with the first letter in your name, write down all the adjectives you can think of that begin with that letter.
3) When you cannot think of any more adjectives, move on to the next letter in your name and repeat the process.
4) Now look at your list of adjectives.
5) Read them one by one.
6) Mark the adjectives that describe who you are.
7) Now look at the words you marked.
8) On a separate piece of paper, use each of those adjectives to make a statement about yourself. For example: I am (your adjective here) because (something that demonstrates that adjective).
9) You'll be able to come up with varying statements - sometimes conflicting ones, sometimes positive, sometimes negative.
10) Don't be afraid to write and read a seemingly negative statement of yourself.
11) If you do encounter something like it, reflect on that statement.
13) By doing so, you will be facing your fear and giving yourself the opportunity to do something to change it.
14) For your positive statements, reinforce them because they started the process of your empowerment.
15) Choose two of your sentences and develop them into paragraphs.

When you're done, you will hold your name in high regard, and you will have taken that first step towards empowerment.


Ok, so here I go....

CLEO

C - creative, clever, cruel, clumsy, cagey, callous, calm, captivating, caring, charming, chaste, chatty, chauvinistic, cheeky, chic, curvy

L - laborious, lackadaisical, lacklustre, lame, large, loud, lazy, liberal, light-footed, likeable, lively, logical, lonely, lopsided, lovely

E - ebullient, eccentric, efficient, egotistical, empathic, ephemeral, erotic, evasive, evanescent, evenhanded, exacting, exciting

O - obedient, objectionable, obliging, obscene, observant, obsessive, obstinate, obtuse, odd, offensive, omnisexual, open-hearted, optimistic, orderly, ornery

"So many of the hobbies in my life involve being creative, I wouldn't enjoy them so much if I wasn't."

"According the supervised Mensa IQ test I took, I'm extremely clever."

"Someone who looks like me can only be captivating. You try not to glance when you see me coming."

"Curvy is the nicer way to describe my body shape."

"Large is a nice way, but not as nice as curvy."

"Whether as part of my inherent nature, or because of the depression, or because of the antidepressants, I definitely suffer from laziness."

"I am a liberal, not in political terms, but in the sense that I believe everyone has a right to do whatever they wish, or be however they wish."

"According to some recent revelations from friends, I'm very likeable, although I'm not entirely sure I agree."

"My right foot is bigger than the left, my right ankle is bigger, my right boob is smaller and my right eye is smaller. Hence, lopsided."

"Anyone who knows me knows that I have my eccentric moments."

"Without divulging too many details of my sex life, I can definitely say that I'm erotic."

"My sense of humour and willingness to talk about sex anywhere and with anyone contributes to me being obscene."

"If you've witnessed an organisation or spelling correction attack then you've seen only a minor part of my obsessive side."

"If one is to understand obstinate as a synonym for stubborn, then the term definitely applies to me."

Clever

"The Mensa IQ test identified my IQ as 149. Considering that different tests produce different results, the number you really need to pay attention to is the percentile, in my case the top 1% of the country. Sounds impressive doesn't it? And in a way it is. I am very intelligent, I'm very clever, I can be very logical in theory if not in practice. I do not, however, have a single teeny tiny ounce of common sense. Take, for instance, last Monday night. I have a dodgy ankle, I know full well I have a dodggy ankle, and I know that if I slip on it or twist it I'm highly likely to severely damage it again. Yet when I was waiting at the bus stop I could not stop myself walking a tightrope walk along the edge of the kerb, even though I knew (logically) that I was going to fall off and twist my ankle. Very clever. No common sense."

Likeable

"I find it difficult to approach people and talk to them, so I naturally assumed that I was just as difficult to approach and talk to. Apparently I'm wrong. A few days ago a friend filled in a quiz about her facebook friends and was asked what her first impression of me was. She said I was 'interesting and easy to strike up a conversation with'. I was astonished. I checked with some other friends and apparently they agree. Who knew?"