Category Archives: Writing Experiments

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.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 45: Thrice-Told Tales

by Andrew | Leave a comment

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Let’s revisit the idea of the narrator, explored in a post I made last week.

For this week’s writing experiment: treat the same event in three different styles of narration, each a page long. You could vary any of the following in whatever combination: point of view; tense; format; narrating stance; psychic distance.

E.g., you might want to use a conventional first-person narrator, relating events in past tense some time after their fact, and then contrast that with the first-person narration in the format of a journal or letter, which relates events again in past tense but close to their happening and with the certain edge that brings, or maybe some first-person present-tense narration. Or a limited third-person, maybe using different characters. Or an omniscient aka involved narrator, who can shift between all the characters. Or an objective narrator, who does not much more than observe exterior realities. You could even try second-person narration.

As you’re writing, and afterwards, think about the trade-offs. You can’t have it all in any choice in writing, but you can find an approach that gives your writing an edge, something that makes the ingredients of your story even more interesting in the telling.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 44: Once Upon A Time

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FairyTales

I just posted a craft essay that in fact started out as a preamble to this writing experiment but then grew too long. In it, I discuss the importance of a narrator in fiction, and how the narrator can sometimes be neglected. I mention ‘Once upon a time’, which emphasises the idea of a narrator more than perhaps any other thing; these words invite some of the strongest narrating we can imagine. Plus: they make writing easy. They make stories accessible.

For this week’s writing experiment: write a story or a poem or an opening chapter of a novel that begins ‘Once upon a time’.

It does not have to be a fairy tale. And you might want to tack this start on to an existing idea you’re a bit stuck with to see how you might launch yourself afresh with this sort of narratorial projection (though, of course, start your story over again – the whole point is to tap into that instinctive storytelling beginning).

And if this is a bit too open-ended, also start off by writing a last line too. It could even be ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’

(Which reminds me of a lune of my own composition that I was very proud of:

Once upon a
time we all lived very
happily ever after

See: the simplest things are often the most satisfying.)

Friday Writing Experiment No. 43: Dawnsong

by Andrew | 1 Comment

Dawn

I’ve never really been a morning person, but having a dog as a companion is gradually turning me into one (even though – touch wood – he seems to be sleeping through the night now). We get up and let him out, and when I step outside I experience that thing that has been somewhat alien to me of late of light entering the dark. The winter is not so cold these weeks, and on a day like today the air is crisp. A bird sings, somewhere in the hush behind me a solitary car whooshes by, I sense an anticipation in the suburban streets. Everything awaits.

I’m taken back over a decade to the January we moved to Colorado, when I was still sleeping on Greenwich Mean Time. Those first days, the time difference meant we woke very early. We drank American coffee, and saw the sun come up, and in due course the drifts of snow were sparkling in those suburban streets. The same hush and waiting. The world was fresh and new. Soon, the kids from a neighbouring Japanese family were making snow angels.

(These are winter dawns, of course. Summer dawns are probably too early for me, though I have in the past relished staying up and seeing the sun rise. I remember us leaving a bar in Oslo one midsummer at 2 a.m., and it was still light – a squinty light, but light.)

The aubade is a poetic form that either greets or laments the dawn. It can be traced to the troubadours of medieval France, who sang of lovers – often secret lovers – who were to be separated by day’s break.

For this week’s writing experiment: one morning, set your alarm half an hour earlier, and get up and write your own aubade. It can take a poetic form (sonnet, villanelle, a series of haiku), or it can use some open form; perhaps, in fact, if you usually write open forms it might be good to try something more structured for a change, and vice versa. If poetry does not come easily to you today, write a letter to someone, maybe your secret lover, or your pretend secret lover. Or even write a letter to the dawn.

Though it will make for stronger writing if you can bring to life some of the world you observe around you, it will also be good to harness these details to some purpose in the writing: some sense of a leavetaking in the passing of time, some sense of what or who the new day is taking or bringing.

Here’s an article on aubades in the Guardian that contains a lot of links to examples, and here and here are other links from the Poetry Foundation, including a tab to a very detailed poem guide to ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne that is worth reading, though don’t let this sort of reading clutter your instinctive early-morning writing time. (However, do bookmark and revisit the Poetry Foundation at some point, if you have the slightest inkling, as it offers a TON of resources on all manner of things.)

Importantly: after you wake, don’t delay your writing. This writing experiment is about process and times for writing, as much as about the work you generate. Write in bed, perhaps, though that might not be easy if your secret or not so secret lover is asleep in bed beside you (though maybe that could inspire you). Otherwise, get up and go straight to your desk or your writing armchair, and write yourself out of your sleep state. Maybe prepare a flask of tea or coffee, so you don’t interrupt yourself by making something to drink. Or maybe you should wait, and let your thirst and hunger feed you.

Then write from the dawn, in the dawn. Let your writing wake you.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 42: Resolve Nothing

by Andrew | 8 Comments

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Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

Thus concludes the poem ‘New Year’s Day’ by Kim Addonizio, a poem I feel is most apt for this time when status updates and news feeds grow cluttered with new year’s resolutions and cheerleading affirmations. I’m not really a fan … It all gets a bit too pushy and NaNoWriMo for me. Why make a fuss about a specific point in time? Why not instead make something meaningful that works for every day of your life?

A couple of days ago, I stumbled across an article called ‘Forget Setting Goals’. I thought it was another of those cheesy Interweb click-through things, but it offered useful insights in distinguishing between getting things done through setting goals and getting things done through establishing systems and regular practice. We can have both, of course, but the systems are what get the job done, and perhaps that’s where we need to apply ourselves most heartily.

It also made me think about the somewhat grasping character of the very goal-oriented culture we reside in, and how that often gets in the way of the authentic experiences that are probably what life’s really all about at its best: everyday practices, everyday joys, surprises, serendipities, moments of being.

This week we got our first dog. He’s rapidly become one of our everyday joys (even though his favourite chew toys are our socks, with our feet in them). We are well-prepared and well-researched and even neurotic dog owners/guardians/companions, but all that research and planning and neurosis cannot ready you for that moment of being when you bring the sleeping puppy home in your arms. Or for that moment when you are picking up dog shit from a wet back yard. A week ago, I’d never picked up dog shit. Up until a week ago, I was neurotic about picking up dog shit. Up until a week ago I’d been put off having a dog by the very idea of picking up dog shit. I wondered how other people did it, and what possessed them to swing little (big) bags of it merrily as they strolled through the park with their Chihuahuas (Great Danes).

But now, I know something of picking up dog shit. You just get on with it. You just do it. It’s a system, a practice, a moment of being (or maybe a moment of doing …). It doesn’t need a goal. It just needs to be done.

I’m not sure if all this connects or makes sense, but picking up dog shit has meant more to me than any resolution this new year. Kim Addonizio’s poem might be a more lyrical embodiment of this sentiment. She resolves nothing. She just resides in that moment. This is now officially one of my favourite poems.

For this week’s writing experiment: write a poem in the style of ’New Year’s Day’ in which you allow yourself to resolve nothing but simply observe what is around you, making something potent of it all. You might want to give yourself a field trip this weekend in order to give yourself a finite five minutes to write about. You might want to use all the sense experiences in your poem. You should probably be concrete and specific in your use of image and language.

Have a good weekend, and be joyful in whatever shit you pick up too. And meanwhile enjoy Charlie’s moment of being in the garden in the picture above. It’s quite something to behold a tiny little beast’s first experience of the outdoors. He’s a skinny little thing who doesn’t have much meat or fur on him, so he does not like the cold.

But this morning he didn’t run indoors at toilet time. He sat himself down, and he pulled himself upright, curling his tail and most regal in his whippety stance, and he sniffed the air, and he listened to the robin, and he stared into the winter sunlight through his big blue eyes. He soaked it all up, lifting his little face to the blessing of the world.

He needed no resolution for that. He just had to be.

Dogs let themselves be, and maybe we can learn something from that.