A windfall apple is an apple that has fallen from a tree. When we gather windfalls, we help ourselves to apples that happen to have fallen.
In this exercise, we help ourselves to words that have arrived by chance, and use these to inspire our own creative endeavours.
How to use our ‘windfall words’ exercise
Here is a short extract from Lewis Carroll’s children’s story Alice in Wonderland.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?’
Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
In Carroll’s story, the appearance of the white rabbit signifies the start of a dream in which all sorts of weird and wonderfull things happen.
We’ll use Alice in Wonderland to generate our collection of windfall words. Can you write a short description of a daydream you might have had as a young child which uses as many of these words as possible?
Your windfall words are…
Rabbit – Jam Tart – Dormouse – Bottle – Telescope – Queen – Turtle – Watch – Waistcoat
Is your daydream similar to Lewis Carroll’s story – or is it very different?
Write in the Head 