Honouring Your Own Experiences

Writing Challenge: Create Your Own Desert Island Castaway Playlist

Photo by Daniel Öberg on Unsplash

Here in the UK, there is a long-running interview series on BBC radio called Desert Island Discs. And by long-running, I mean really long-running. Since 1942, in fact, which demonstrates the appeal of the format.

Each episode features a single guest – a so-called castaway – who is asked to choose eight pieces of music that they couldn’t life without, if they were stranded on an imaginary desert island. The programme discusses their life and the reason for their choices. These pieces of music are often reminders of a particular time or person in their lives.

As this set-up works so well, it’s an obvious choice to adapt as an engaging writing exercise, and one that links to the most recent free Writing Talk post, called I’m Ken and I’m A Writer From A Working Class Background – So Live With It!

Part of that ‘I’m Ken’ post was about celebrating, re-examining, and finding truths in our own backgrounds and experiences, as fuel for our writing. No matter how ordinary our lives seem, the undeniable truth is they shimmer with their own uniqueness and importance.  

On Desert Island Discs, the best examples of where music choices and memories resonate, are often not those times that make up the curriculum vitae of a life, but the smaller, quieter moments ‘adjacent’ to big life events that are deeply personal and heartfelt.

Let me give you an example. The British group The Sundays wrote a song back in the 90s called Monochrome, which centres on the Apollo moon landing in 1969. When you listen to the lyrics and the tone of the song, you understand it’s not really about the facts of that momentous event. It’s about the experience of a child being awake among adults in the early hours of the morning, sensing awe and wonder in their elders, but being too young to quite grasp the reality. Here’s a link to the song, which is worth a listen (the lyrics are available on the Youtube page):

You’ll find the writing exercise beyond the paywall below. If you’re a free subscriber and would like to join in the fun, I’d love to have you as a paid subscriber, which gives you access to weekly writing ideas, insights into craft and, in the near future, other bonuses features.