I have been summering. Which means allllll the swimming—in the outdoor pool, the river, the sea.

AND I have crossed the halfway mark of my most recent Quest: 100 places, 300 pages. So this month, I’m sharing some learnings, in case they prompt any adventures for you.

Any questions, or Questy things I can help with, just hit reply and I’ll be more than happy to help!

1)     Yes, I’m practicing writing skills: observing and describing a place, and from different viewpoints. But there’s also a more fundamental life skill at play: noticing.

2)     ‘Noticing’ connects to a particular kind of presence, and this Quest is a practical way of engaging with it every week.

3)     One of my Quest words— I picked 3 right back at the start—is ‘unhurried’. For a speedy, action taker like myself, this has been such a fun way to settle in, slow down, and take in the smaller details of my surroundings.

4)     If this is all starting to sound pretty zen and meditative, it’s worth noting that I did one of my recent Quests sat in front of two betting shops, in a busy city centre. Not your ‘stare at a candle flame’ meditative vibe! It was fascinating to stop and pay attention in a new way; I’ve walked past this location, unseeing, many times. (The second of my 3 Quests words is ‘eye-opening’.)

5)     It’s fun. Still. After 50 weeks. I make sure of that. Which brings me to my final Quest word: ‘light’. I design my Quests to be super doable, never a drudge. We’re talking 30 mins a week, fitted flexibly into my weekend—either close to home or part of a selected adventure. It’s all good. Unhurried, eye opening, and light. YEP!

6)    I still love how this Quest is working for me, AND I get to decide if there are any Quest rules that I want to change. I think of them as ‘rules of the game’ rather than ‘school type rules’. A rule I set at the start is that I would focus on the setting, the physical environment, but not the people in the picture. I wanted to do this to counterbalance my tendency to zoom in on people’s faces and blur out everything else. I kept this commitment, and now I’m ready to tweak it….

7)     For the next 50, I will bring some humans into the frame, as I see fit, and as they relate to the environment. The environment is still the main character! This will be fun to play with— grounded development.

8)     I have a heightened appreciation of setting in novels. Take this wonderful opening paragraph from Alison Espach’s The Wedding People:

‘The hotel looks exactly as Phoebe hoped. It sits on the edge of the cliff like an old and stately dog, patiently waiting for her arrival. She can’t see the ocean behind it, but she knows it’s there, the same way she could pull into her driveway and feel her husband in his office typing his manuscript.’

Marvellous.

9)     It remains super fascinating to see how my descriptions of the place change when I switch POV (point of view) for the final page. It’s particularly interesting to see how high emotion colours even the most regular of places. For example, an ALDI supermarket carpark seen through the eyes of someone waiting…for the person… she’s going to break up with. I noticed so many more sounds through this nervy lens.

10)    I continue to love this quote from the poet, Billy Collins:

‘I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can’t afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.’ 

For someone (me) who is not a poet, and who often needs to stay on task and on schedule, it is delightful to afford myself the time every week to explore… just because! 30 mins. A small pocket of time, that adds up in a shockingly meaningful way…..

That’s a Quest!

If you fancy creating your own Quest, I recommend putting some time and care into the design.

Why are you choosing it?

What do you want your experience to be?

This is why I work through an intentional process with my Questful clients: from choosing a title, to setting the ‘rules of the game’, to selecting a clear endpoint, to picking the Quest words that will act as an experiential compass.

As you now know, for this recent Quest I chose: unhurried, eye opening and light.

For one of my current clients it’s: challenging, surprising and satisfying.

Here’s a fun A-Z of words if you fancy a little prompt…There are tons more!

Need some help, getting Questful? You can find me here….

That’s a wrap, until next time…

 May your August be Questy and zesty.

 ‘If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself.’ – Ray Bradbury

PS: Thanks for reading my Questful World letter. If you know someone who might enjoy this, please feel free to forward it to them. They can hit subscribe and join us.