Inside my word tin

Good morning, afternoon or evening to you all!

I’m pretty excited today to share with you all my latest little side project. I think anyone with any interest in writing or words will love this just as much as I do.

Remember how in May I wrote a post called Healing through poetry? It wasn’t a particularly long or in-depth post, but I discussed how writing bad poetry had helped me during difficult times. It was a bit different from my usual posts, but you guys seemed to really enjoy it (yes, I was surprised), well this is quite similar to that. This side project wasn’t something I ever intended to share on here but I thought a few of you may enjoy it and want to create your own one, so I snapped up a few photos this morning whilst I was in my pyjamas still (its super cloudy today so moments of good lighting can not be missed) and got to work writing it out.

I want to introduce you all to my word tin…

This dominoes tin may look pretty boring, but inside it holds over 360 words.

You see, I’m not the best at poetry. I stink at it, to the point where my English teacher in school just told me not to try to hard because it wasn’t my thing.

The problem though is that I love poetry.

I had hoped that the more I read it, or listened to spoken word, the better I would become. It’s kind of like that quote that you see floating around a lot that says to become a writer you have to read a lot of books. Well I thought that the more I submerged myself in the world of poetry the better I would become just like the cheesy Facebook quote promised. Sadly this hasn’t been the case, I’m still rubbish.

But I will not be deterred by my lack of talent. I had said earlier that writing poetry had been a great release for me when I was going to some rough times and I still belive that to be the case. I wasn’t exactly getting bored with writing poetry, but I wanted something new to spice things up a little bit and it was in the deep depths of pintrest that I found inspiration for my word tin.

To make one is simple.

You find a metal tin (in my case it was an old dominoes tin). Then you go out and buy some magnetic words. I brought two duplicate packets from Hobby Craft as the pack only had one of each word and I fancied more than one word repeated in my tin. I got the packs on sale at £1.50 each so all in all the whole thing only realistically cost me £3.

Once you have your tin and magnetic words, tip them all in and you’re ready to go. Simply pick out words and try to make a poem out of them.

I feel it’s best if you put your words on the inside of the tin lid (hence why it’s so important you get magnetic words), that way you can either pick out 10 words and have fun rearranging them to create something that resembles a poem or close the lid and come back to it later without losing all your words.

Sure what you create might not be the prettiest thing going. I didn’t get any punctuation for mine so it’s quite choppy and doesn’t exactly flow ( you can get some if you want, I thought that adding punctuation would take out some of the carefreeness from it, but that’s just personal opinion). My word tin is by no means a cure for my lack of poetic talent either. But I’ve found it to be quite a relaxing activity.

I’m not sure about you, but I spend most of my spare time on my phone. Not only does this hurt my eyes after a while, but it’s not really doing anything for me. I’m simply scrolling through the likes of Instagram mindlessly because I can. My word tin is one of the few fun things I have at my disposal that doesn’t involve a screen. Not only does it aid my creativity but it also helps me spend less time on my phone (what is one of the biggest triggers for a rapid decline in my mood).

If you get different coloured words you can also try challenging yourself to diffrent things. The one above I wanted to use two mint words then two white words, doing the oposit colour pattern for the line bellow. It got me thinking a little more than just going for what every word fitted next.

If you don’t want to make your own tin then have a look on the wonderful thing that is the internet. I most certainly wasn’t the first to come up with this idea, so you many be able to find someone selling ready-made tins. There is also nothing stopping you from doing the same thing but on your fridge or a magnetic whiteboard.

All in all I’m very pleased with my word tin.

What about you guys? Have you ever came across something like this before? Have you got any tips on how to get better at poetry (if so pleaseeeeeee tell me!)?