Category Archives: Writing Experiments

Friday Writing Experiment No. 50: Spring Is Sprung

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Daffs316

I’ve dedicated a writing experiment to the idea of spring before (No. 17: O, Just-spring!), but today is (YAY!) officially the first day of spring. It’s also World Poetry Day, and apparently yesterday was the International Day of Happiness (DOUBLE YAY! you might want to check out this clip of the programme director of the Gross National Happiness Centre in Bhutan when he spoke at Naropa recently).

So for this week’s writing experiment: write a happy poem about spring.

By the way, you’ll notice the picture of the daffodils above has some tumbling-down wire fencing separating that pretty strip of daffs from a very busy West London dual carriageway. But that strip of daffs is very pretty indeed, and thriving. Which just goes to show glasses can be half full, or quarter full even, when spring is in the air. (Unless you’re a miserable bastard, and next month is for you too the cruellest month …)

As an alternative, create your own special Day commemorating whatever special purpose, and either write about that, or write a short story or scene/chapter that is set on that day.

Whichever one you do, go pick a bunch of daffs, or buy one, and stick it in a vase on your desk while you’re writing. Or do this sitting on a park bench, enjoying spring’s promise.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 49: More Tales Of Your City

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MoreTOTC

Following on from the last time, inspired by Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books, for this week’s writing experiment: write the next chapter, a couple of pages in which your character from elsewhere will meet a native of your chosen city or the place you love. Let some sparks fly …

Again, in some way make sure something of the unique qualities of the city/place come to life, and again make sure this new character is also based in some aspect of yourself. Also think about point of view – maybe maintain the point of view of your newcomer character, who beholds this local in some particular way, but too you could switch POV; just be sure you are using POV in an interesting way. Dialogue will probably be important, but try to make it fresh and crisp (and don’t afraid to use reported speech for the boring bits – or even to miss them out).

After that, you could write a third chapter, where your two characters do something together. And then a fourth, and a fifth … See if each chapter can make some sort of move forward, and have some headlong energy. If you get stuck or find yourself drying: introduce a new character, or location within your city/place.

And so on … after fifty or seventy or maybe a hundred short chapters, maybe you’ll have a novel?

As a variation on this, Writing Experiment No. 49B: take one of your favourite novels, and create a writing experiment inspired by it. Perhaps try to make it something based in craft or technique: something in your fave’s narrative form, or its use of point of view, or its evocation of setting. But mostly consider what you love about that book, and let that inspire you.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 48: Tales Of Your City

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MrsMadrigal

I’m reading The Days Of Anna Madrigal, the most recent (and apparently final) novel in Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City series, which must rank among my favourite books.

They have probably created some of the most beloved characters in contemporary literature: bright-eyed new girl in town Mary Ann Singleton, landlady Mrs Madrigal, gay BFF Michael (and this was back before we had BFF’s), various supermodels and gynaecologists and cult leaders. At a talk I attended at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (a quarter of a century ago, I realise – eek!), someone asked Armistead how he came up with his characters: they seemed so original yet so real, so surely they must be based on real-life people. In fact, he replied, the main eight or so characters were all based on aspects of himself. It’s a diverse cast of players, and one that’s notable for painting a generous, rainbow-coloured vision of the world.

These books are particularly striking too for how they use real and fictional locations to conjure up a particular place. Russian Hill, 28 Barbary Lane, the Marina Safeway, Grace Cathedral, office cubicles, Dance Your Ass Off: San Francisco from the 1970s to the present day is brought to life. It’s quite a record of the times of a very special city.

What’s notable about this series too is that the books (the earlier ones at least) were composed serially, as columns for the San Francisco Chronicle, which perhaps accounts for the madcap plots; you can almost imagine Armistead wondering how he’s going to get out of the narrative corner he’s painting himself into. So in the next instalment he seems simply to have introduced some new character or unlikely coincidence, and through his daring and the great energy and colour of his writing he pulls it off. The pressure of writing for a weekly deadline accounts for some very good writing indeed.

The column format also accounts for the bright and punchy economy of the writing. Each chapter in the earlier books is short but very sweet, a couple of pages of sparky dialogue and lively interaction that move the story along.

For this week’s writing experiment: write a first chapter of a couple of pages inspired by Tales Of The City in which a character from elsewhere arrives in a place you love and know well. Capture the mood of this time and place through the eyes of that newcomer. Also, base that newcomer on an aspect of yourself. And for now just focus on this one character and his or her perceptions of your city (or place).

If you wish, also write with the pressure of a deadline: give yourself no more than two hours to do this.

To be continued … (we’ll revisit this exercise next week).

PS I realise I totally missed seeing Armistead Maupin in London this week. Damn! (Guess I have been busy with other things, or rather other whippet-thing.)

Friday Writing Experiment No. 47: Love Is Blind

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LoversTarot

Love makes the world go round, and it’s obvious to say that in one way or another it’s the foundation of much or even most literature: first love, adultery, lust, forbidden pleasures, star-crossed lovers. Consider how love features as a defining component of so many stories and poems.

For this week’s writing experiment, which falls on Valentine’s Day, simply write something that’s unabashedly about love. Maybe a Valentine serenade for your loved one, or a scene in which two lovers meet for the first time, or a stretch of dialogue that reacquaints long-lost lovers, or maybe a sequence of erotica in which two (or maybe more?!) characters fuck each other’s brains out.

That was it, originally, but that’s quite an open-ended brief. So if you want to make this more interesting, introduce a constraint: make/imagine one or both (or all!) of your lovers blind.

Find some inspiration among these poems listed at the Poetry Foundation. I particularly relished the bit in this feature on Queer Love Poems that mentions the ‘ancient rowdy randy perverse pagan literary tradition’ taught at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics.

Be randy, be romantic, be loving.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Friday Writing Experiment No. 46: Gossip Drops

by Andrew | 2 Comments

DoYouKnow

I’m going to return to that subject of narrators and narrating again through another focus. Something precious, something lifeblood. GOSSIP.

I’m afraid I’m a gossip. Hang on, that sort of apology suggests shame. I’m proud I’m a gossip. I remember us getting a lecture from a rather lovely but rather righteous poet at Naropa that we should not gossip for the rest of the summer writing programme. My cheeks went red. She was talking to me, right?!

I guess gossip when it gets really cruel and malicious and destructive is bad. Let’s take on board again that Buddhist idea of Right Speech:

Right speech, explained in negative terms, means avoiding four types of harmful speech: lies (words spoken with the intent of misrepresenting the truth); divisive speech (spoken with the intent of creating rifts between people); harsh speech (spoken with the intent of hurting another person’s feelings); and idle chatter (spoken with no purposeful intent at all).

We can but try. But all the same, sometimes gossip can charge up what you have to say. I was reminded of this when I read in the LRB today a review of a couple of gossipy tomes set within particular literary communities (real juice there – read that review). Literary communities are great for gossip. My good friend Bobbie Louise Hawkins has some great stories about poets and writers, such as this one, which starts off observing people’s vanities but then ends up someplace deeper and dark. Bobbie is a great believer in the power of gossip for the way in which it comes naturally and easily as a way of telling stories. It’s not just about juicy content, either. Gossip uses our natural speaking voices, and it often excites passions and gives real force to what we have to say.

For this week’s writing experiment: dredge up some gossip. Remember some story that give you a real thrill in the telling, or the listening, and get it down on paper. Make it really juicy. Write it in your own voice, in first-person.See where you go. Admire what you write. Don’t feel inhibited; tell yourself you’re never going to share this, and write it anyway.