the creative notebook: someone else’s words

There's an old tradition of stealing a single line of another author's words to start your own writing practice-and today we borrow from Nikita Gill and her advice from Hestia.

Feb 14, 2026

There’s an old writer’s practice in journaling where you take a line from a book or poem and you use it as the start of your own writing. You steal someone else’s words (Austin Kleon of “Steal Like an Artist” would be proud) to get you started on your own.

Personally, I like to take a passage or poem that I’ve been returning to over and over again. Maybe it’s the first line of the poem but maybe it’s somewhere else in there, something that sparks a little light in your interior.

The poem I’ve been returning to over and over again is one by Nikita Gill, and it’s a letter from Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth and home.

You see, I went to a solstice party in December, and we were instructed to each bring a poem to read around the fire. I brought this one, after being told about Hestia at the Barcelona Journaling Festival in a session with Jon Sayers, where he introduced us to journaling in the method of Carl Jung. Jon’s workshop continues to shock and delight me, and it showed up again in finding this poem by Gill:

Advice from Hestia to Girls

You are not made of paper.
If you were, you would have
Turned to ash long ago.

You are more, Bone, and muscle,
And beginnings and endings–
Evoke that when the world tries
To convince you that you are small.

You are not stone. Your heart is warm,
But seek no homes in other people’s chests,
Seek no truths there while your own heart,
Each throb, reminds you of your true home.

You are not made of paper.
Paper is easy to use and crush,
And you were not made for that.
You were made flame first.

And fire is born knowing
its elemental nature.
It knows the mystic force in shining alone

-Nikita Gill

the twinkle lights seem to be multiplying….

Your visual prompt: Start by collecting colors and images that you relate to, or that feel encouraging and empowering to you. Maybe it’s the colors of flames, or maybe there are beautiful flowers or…. Whatever feels encouraging and embodying. With those bits, make a border of ephemera around your two page spread.

Your written prompt: Within that border you have just created, write your own letter of advice. Start with a line from the poem above- maybe you take the first line, “You are not made of paper.” Or maybe it is any other line within the poem–start where you want! Let that first stolen line of a poem be the start of your own poem of advice, encouraging and strengthening you and reminding you of who you are at your core. And whenever stealing, remember: always take note of the original author- give credit now, if for no other reason than you can remember who inspired you when you look back! but mostly because one should always, always credit.