Sharing Your Outside Writing

Writing outdoors can be a powerful way to inspire your writing and can create “natural” opportunities to share your work with others! Whether you are writing outside in October for Write Out or just find yourself writing outside with students or friends, here are a few ideas for sharing to get you started:

Share in-person

In a Circle

If you are together, sit in a circle to verbally share your writing – or an excerpt from your writing. Our suggestion is that you encourage listening but not responding until everyone has had an opportunity to share. Note that passing and not sharing should always be an option.

Text Rendering

If you have a lot of writing and/or people, and/or want to take a more poetic approach, do a text rendering. In a text rendering process, ask all writers to first silently choose a sentence, a phrase and then a word from their writing. Then, go around the circle, encouraging everyone to shared their sentences first, with no response … Go around the circle a second time, this time everyone has a chance to share their phrase … go around a third time, each person can share their word. Then reflect on the shared experience – it can be really powerful!

Share at a distance

Use a hashtag

Sharing on social media is a fun way to share something with your family and friends. And if you add a hashtag, you will sharing with a larger audience too. For example, use #writeout to share with folks who are also writing outside.

In a virtual circle

Even if you aren’t in person, you can set up a shared call or an online video conference to create a virtual “circle.” You can also start a momentary text message chain; in this case, encourage the sharing of a line or phrase instead of a full set of writing.

Remix a collaboration

Another way to share is to remix a collaboration “on the fly” by having each writer share one line or element of their work to add to a greater whole. You can use a shared document or slides to have everyone contribute one thing and then view and/or read the whole new thing together.

Create a virtual gallery

Setting up a virtual “gallery” of writing is another which could support browsing, feedback and/or response; this is especially useful if the writing includes more than just text but also images, video, sound. This can happen in person or online using a shared collaborative space like Jamboard, Padlet, Storymaps, etc. Have everyone share what they want from their writing in their own space, and then others can give feedback and response using comments, virtual post-its etc. We suggest encouraging appreciative feedback only.

Use QR codes

QR codes can also be created that lead a person to a place where your writing (text or multimedia) is shared. Even if the writing is shared in-person, an associated QR code could lead to an online place where that same writing and/or an expanded composition – such as an audio or video version – is shared virtually.

Share during Write Out!

While we encourage you to share your writing outside anytime because it is fun and inspiring, there is also a special time of year where many others will be doing the same exact thing – each October during Write Out!

Write Out is a free two-week celebration of writing, making, and sharing inspired by the great outdoors, and was created through a partnership of the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. It is a public invitation, organized every October, to get out and create that is supported with a series of online activities, made especially for educators, students, and families, to explore national parks and other public spaces.

The goal of Write Out is to connect and learn with each other through place-based writing and sharing using the common hashtag #writeout. So please share all of you make and create with us! We look forward to connecting with you there.