Storying Experience
Bringing our own thoughts and feelings to attention
A Note on the Practice
Artists collect selectively. They collect what they love. In 2025, we're exploring how to choose our influences, instead of letting the world choose for us. Ten minutes. Two pages.Ten Minute Artist is your guide to building a practice that's both smaller and bigger than you might expect: small enough to do every day, big enough to change how you see the world.
"Writing is simply a way of 'Storying' our experience, of bringing our thoughts and feelings to our own attention."
- Megan C. Hayes, The Joy of Writing Things Down
Another day blurs into all the others.
You wake up, pour coffee, check emails, draw a bit, walk the dog, make dinner. Or maybe it's the opposite - your day is a whirlwind of deadlines, conflicts, and overwhelming choices.
You're just going through motions or being swept along.
It could feel like your experience doesn’t even matter. If you feel like that there is a cure:
Write down one meaningful moment from your day - Mathew Dicks calls this a "Storyworthy moment" - imagine having a story for every day of your life, your only regret will be not starting earlier.
The way your kid tricked you to play with her, the funny conversation overheard, the kind or unkind word from a client - these are the building blocks of your unique creative narrative.
Memory is fleeting, and these moments can easily slip away, as if they never happend.
By choosing and writing them down you're saying: this is part of my story, this matters. And over time, these collected moments become a map of your creative journey, and never mind that, a map of your life’s journey.
Give yourself another five minutes at the end of the day to capture a story worthy moment, or incorporate it into your 10 minutes practice, but don’t miss an opportunity to turn your experience into your story.
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
Story your experience
Record one moment that caught your attention today. Describe or draw what you saw, heard, or felt. What made this moment worth noticing?
Find a way to incorporate this into your daily practice.
More notes on the practice:
All the prompts are repeatable, and customisable, use them as they are or adjust for inspiration and save them up for future use.
The main tool we use for our practice is an artist book that we will sit with for 10 minutes daily. ( but any sketchbook or journal works too)
You can connect to the community of Ten Minute Artists in the chat
Ironically, when we first started this Artist Book, you told us to write down our default prompts, and this was one of mine.