Winter Counts Creative Writing Exercise

In this creative writing exercise from Alan Ziegler's The Writing Workshop Note Book, a Sioux Indian record-keeping practice called "Winter Counts" becomes an innovative creative writing exercise.

Winter Counts Creative Writing Exercise

Tribes of the Sioux Nation (among other Plains Indians) maintained historical calendars composed of winter counts. Tribe historians would depict a significant event for each year on a buffalo or deer skin. The story behind each pictograph would be passed along verbally, and several annotated winter counts survive.

Here are a few examples from The Big Missouri Winter Count, which runs from 1796 to 1926:

1808: Indians expressed gratitude to Providence in profuse manner by putting many red flags on hills, rocks, and other conspicuous places.

1824: The winter was so severe that the Sioux camped near a fine field of corn raised by a whiteman. He gave them corn to eat.

1834: The winter the stars fell.

1905: The wife of Leader Charge gave birth to quadruplets.

1918: Many young men joined the Army to fight in World War I.

Barry Holstun Lopez intersperses winter counts throughout the title story of his collection Winter Counts, including:

1809:Blue feathers found on the ground from unknown birds.

1847: One man alone defended the Hat in a fight with the Crow.

1875: White Hair, he was killed in a river by an Omaha man.

For this exercise, divide your age into five segments (if you are 25, it would be birth–5, 5–10, 10–15, 15–20, 20–25). Write a "winter count" for each segment: an image, a momentous event, or something seemingly insignificant that has risen to the surface. Keep them short (no more than a few sentences each).

Flesh out any that intrigue you, and put the others in storage.

Maintain a contemporary winter count, with at least several entries a week.