Write On The Button

As long as I can remember I’ve always had a drawer full of buttons somewhere. Right now down the hallway in a room where I keep my clothes and shoes if you open the top left hand drawer of an old pine chest of drawers you’ll find an elaborately decorated case full of buttons.

It’s stuffed full of the odd button here and there that are remnants of garments I‘ve either loved, lost or grown out (much to my dismay) of over the years.

I always hold onto buttons in hope. In hope that one day I will find the zeal, even the finesse to sit down like my mother did and sew things back together.

Unfortunately I have never been able to ennoble those characteristics inside myself so the collection has simply grown over the years with little purpose and with no role other than to sit in the drawer, tightly locked away in its elephant decorated case.

That’s why I was delighted when I came across away of using buttons as writing prompts. I discovered the exercise in Gillie Bolton’s book, Write Yourself: Creative Writing and Personal Development.

Here’s an excerpt from a member of a therapeutic writing group introducing ways of using buttons as writing prompts in a writing group setting. This can of course be adapted for when writing on your own.

“ The buttons scattered buttons the table between us. Willing hands fanned, preventing them rolling away. Six poets used to critiquing our poems, we were now exploring first draft writing. The large button collection, many antique were from my grandmothers and other sources.

Previous to pouring this multicoloured cascade, we had all written for six minutes with no subject, and no thought of reading out. Each had scribbled furiously whatever was there, with no attention to grammar, punctuation or even sense: writing for the sake of writing, to spill the contents of the mind onto the page.

After examining the buttons, we then choose some for ourselves and each other with no explanation and little talk. There was a childish pleasure of giving and receiving gifts.

Tearing ourselves away from the gleaming colourful heal, we each write about our own pile, initially anything about the button experience, for about ten minutes. Then I suggested that some of the buttons might represent someone or something in each of our lives past or present. We had 20 to 30 minutes for this.”

Bolton, G. (2011) Write Yourself: Creative Writing and personal Development. London. Jessica Kingsley Publishers