instructions for the houseguest

+ other summer writing prompts//work in process 55.

Jul 12, 2025

You should know in advance that it's like no place you've ever been. You may think you know what to expect, but toss all that out the window. This is not a cottage packed in beside other cottages on a shore road with garbage cans in the driveways and neighbors grilling hamburgers on BBQs 200 feet away talking too loudly about the Blue Jays game. You are on an island. The nearest neighbors are 500 yards away through the pines and probably related to you. There are no stores on the lake except the ones that sell, in no particular order of importance:

worms

ice cream, at least 6 varieties

marshmallows

hot dog buns

Mac+ Cheese

vegetable oil

pickle relish

You do not need to pay in cash. No one does. Your can just put it on our bill. You do not lock doors at the cottage because there’s no theft. There is no TV reception, either. There is no TV. Don’t count on internet either because probably the wifi password has been changed or forgotten; definitely the service is spotty. Shoes are superfluous, but when you first get here your bare feet will be tender compared to ours. Everyone will skip across rocks without cares in the dark while you trail tentatively behind. Random (to you) people will drop by unannounced throughout the day and often stay for dinner. Hanging out with friends from older generations is called visiting. Large family dinners on the porch are commonplace. Please help set the table.

Every Wednesday in July, I teach a writing workshop on Juniper Island, across the channel from our cottage. Last week, we went over the basics of creating a writing practice: The writing we do in our notebooks is for ourselves; we can write about anything we feel like. It doesn’t have to be “good” or ‘for” anything. It’s for itself. All we have to do is keep going and see where it takes us.

This week’s topic was form and consciousness, which is basically a fancy way of asking, what shape does a story make and who’s talking? It helps to picture a story like a building—what is its structure?— or look to nature for inspiration.

Some narratives are straight lines like arrows, marching forward chronologically. First this, then that. Some are circles, like Navajo hogans, that begin and end in the same place. Others have curlicues like rollercoaster loops— flashbacks. Some look like mountains, rising to a steep climax, and some are rivers, meandering downstream through eddies and oxbows.

It’s fun to play with form. You can try turning traditional narratives into letters, lists, diary entries, or poems; an instruction manual, a glossary, or step-by-step directions.

The (unedited) piece I wrote above came out of this prompt: Describe a place you know and love to a first-time visitor. We happen to have one at the cottage this week, and it’s so fun to experience the lake through a newcomer’s eyes.

In my own books, I try to match the form or structure to the book’s meaning and content. This is an intuitive process that takes patience and experimentation. Listening to the story to hear where it sticks and drags, knowing this almost certainly means it hasn’t yet found its true form.

So Running Home—a story of coming home, back to yourself—is a circle (in running terms, picture a loop); it ends at the beginning. Set in part on rivers, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World intentionally moves like a river, but its form is modeled after a book of Zen koans. The Cottage novel is built like a box: unfolding in a span of four weeks and four sections, like the four walls of the cottage itself.

Next we talked about POV. The first person “I” is most immediate and intimate, while second person (“you”) addresses the reader and draws her in; there’s a universality to “you” that feels inclusive, generous. The third person (she) offers distance between the writer and the subject, the reader and the subject. I often unintentionally switch to third-person in my notebooks when I’m writing about an especially emotional event or one I’m trying to make sense of or secrets I can’t say out loud.

To practice different POVs, try this prompt (inspired by Virginia Woolf’s iconic island novel, To the Lighthouse): Describe—but not in the first person—a summer gathering either from inside the room looking out or outside looking in. When I did this yesterday I found myself making up a scene from The Cottage about a dinner party in 1898. I found out a lot about two of my main characters in just 10 minutes!

Islands are peculiar, magical places. Even when they’re only five minutes by boat from the mainland, their watery surrounds create a sense of separation and otherness, protection and isolation. Space and resources are limited so you learn to be economical and accepting on islands, to make do with what you have.

In her beloved classic, The Summer Book, Finnish author Tove Jansson writes, “An island can be a dreadful place for someone from the outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure, and self-sufficient place.”

This line inspired our final writing promp of the day: Describe your obstinate, sure, and self-sufficient summer place.

Mine is at a nicked table on the verandah, pushed up against the railing, with a view of the lake, flat and still on a morning just like this. In a t-shirt and tangled morning hair, opening my computer to follow my mind back into the story. In my old wooden boat or lying on my stomach on the front dock, ear pressed to the boards, listening to water slosh through the crib, murmuring ideas, whispering secrets.

Islands are wonderful places to write because, like stories, they’re self-contained, each one a world of its own, a knowable form with visible edges and a shape all their own.

Just be sure you know what you’re getting into!

Morning swims are customary at the cottage. If you’re looking for the soap, it’s in an old English Breakfast Tea tin on the cement dock. The island has no roads. Everyone goes everywhere by boat. If you haven’t noticed, there’s no bridge either. You may find yourself bored. Welcome! This is partially the point of islands—to slow down. Probably you will find yourself unusually hungry. This is because of the false sense of scarcity the island creates. Don’t worry, there is enough food and you will not die of scurvy even if it seems like there’s not enough fresh fruit. You are not dying here. You are living.

i hope these island prompts inspire some of your own!

katie

Do you need hep recommiting to your writing, bringing form or structure to your ideas, or developing regular habits to help you feel centered and energized? Join us Sept 5-8 at Mountain Flow Camp outside of Telluride, CO. Together we’ll explore simple, pleasurable daily practices to bring more inspiration, momentum, and ease into your life. Mornings on the trails, afternoons of writing, reading, yoga, wood-fired hot tubs, forest bathing, resting, and replenishing. Hosted at High Camp, a stunning, off-the-grid alpine lodge at 11,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains where remoteness is the real luxury. $2600 per person, all-inclusive. Register now with a friend and you’ll both receive $100 off. Mountain Flow Camp only happens once a year—& it’s the best weekend of the year!—don’t miss your chance for 2025!