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  Favorite Writing Exercises

  This is one of my favorite exercises, and it's adapted from Room To Write, by Bonni Goldberg.  Take a piece of lined paper.  Free-associate a list of words down the left-hand margin, writing one on each line.  (It helps if you start with an interesting word, but you can also grab words you overhear on the bus, for example.)  Now, write a piece--a poem or a snippet of prose) on the rest of the paper, using the first margin word somewhere in the first line of the piece, then using the second margin word somewhere in the second line of the piece, and so on.

  This exercise works well for me for a few reasons.  First, it tricks me into writing *something* because it looks like a puzzle, rather than a prompt.  You get to line #7 and think, "Okay, I've been writing a school scene--how am I going to work the word 'pineapple' in here?"  Second, it gets me free-associating, both when generating the list and when weaving in the margin words.  Often we need to trust our subconscious minds to find a way into a story, or a way out of it, and this exercise helps me turn off the more rational part of my brain for a while.  And finally, it helps suppress my perfectionist impulses for a while: there's no pressure to write anything "good," because it's just a random, highly-constrained exercise.  Somehow, turning off that pressure usually lets me create something rich and interesting.

  In addition to Room To Write, I've found excellent exercises--both for myself, and for teaching--in Now Write! (by Sherry Ellis) and perennial favorite What If? (by Painter/Bernays).  I'd love to hear about other resources, as well.
  

  Posted 19 Jun 08 in the narrative ark

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  What are you reading?

  I just picked up Julie Orringer's collection, How To Breathe Underwater, and it was amazing.  Usually, a few stories in a collection are noticeably stronger than others and carry the book, but this is a very, very strong collection.  I was amazed by her story "Pilgrims," when I read it years ago, so I don't know why I waited so long to get this, but I'm glad I did.

  I've also been re-reading The Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor, because I always forget how wacky and amazing her work is.  At the end I feel like I got punched in the gut and didn't see it coming--but in a good way.  Her stories remind me to keep a little bit of the bizarre in my own work--but to make sure it feels organic and inevitable.

  And I'm currently reading Evening Is the Whole Day, a debut novel by Preeta Samarasan.  (Disclaimer: She was in my graduate program, but honestly, I'd be recommending this book even if I'd never met her.)  I hope someday I can write a book like this: warm and huge-hearted, somehow simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, a family story that doesn't feel small.  And the prose is--for lack of a better word--acrobatic.  It makes me want to write long, looping sentences.

  Posted 19 Jun 08 in the narrative ark