Category Archives: Writing Experiments

Friday Writing Experiment No. 5: Borrowing From The Bard

by Andrew | Leave a comment

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I saw the fabulous production of Twelfth Night at the Globe on Sunday, and as ever when watching Shakespeare I am awed into submission by the range and the depth of everything on show in the work: the language, the storytelling, the characters. And the words! The OED tells us that Shakespeare was the first recorded user of 1,035 words (bandit, critic, dewdrop, ode, puke, swagger …), and he also coined many phrases that have passed into common usage (fool’s paradise, love letter, into thin air, elbow room, green-eyed monster …). And many books have in turn taken their titles from Shakespeare’s work (Infinite Jest, The Dogs of War, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Pale Fire, The Sound and the Fury, Brave New World …). What a legacy.

And let’s not forget too that Shakespeare was a borrower himself. My programme for Twelfth Night tells me how the play owes a debt to Plautus, the Roman writer of comedy, as well as collections of tales such as Riche His Farewell To Militarie Profession (1581) by ‘old-soldier-turned-writer Barnaby Riche’. And of course he adapted plots (the histories, MacBeth) and even lifted descriptions from Holinshed’s Chronicles.

This week, I’m going to suggest that you lean heavily into this wealth of wordsmithery, and take a quotation from one of Shakespeare’s plays or poems, and write off it in some way or other.

I did this once, for example, using as an epigraph a line from Queen Gertrude in Hamlet – ‘Ay me, what act/ That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?’ – to create a short story about the secret life of a freelance indexer. I think I had the indexer in mind as a character to start with, but in doing a bit of research into indexing I stumbled across this quotation and began to wonder about the hidden life that roared and thundered beneath a tame exterior. The word thunder was a particular gift for helping this character come to life.

You might use your prompt as an epigraph too, or maybe a title or a first or last line, or maybe it’ll appear in dialogue or in some other explicit or subtle way, or somehow as a framing device. Your chosen form could be a short story or a poem, or whatever strikes your fancy.

This also reminds me of a class that Dr Reed Bye sometimes teaches at Naropa called Writing With Shakespeare, where students read plays while continuing an ongoing project that picks up ‘on infinite clues, character facets, and dramatic-linguistic stimuli’ within Shakespeare’s work. Perhaps this could even be something larger?

Friday Writing Experiment No. 4: A Date With An Artist

by Andrew | 3 Comments

Today I had the great pleasure of spending the afternoon with my good and special friend the magical, starry writer Bhanu Kapil. We drank tea, ate plum muffins, took a ferry across the Thames with a lanky Alsatian, gossiped, walked in the rain, and read tarot cards as I drank chai and she drank energy tea. (I also cleaned house before her arrival. That special a friend.)

We also did some serious writerly stuff: read poetry; talked about teaching; shared our notebooks; discussed approaches to structure and form; set targets (mine from Bhanu included a list of gratitudes); the general upbeat coaching, coaxing, and bullying you can do with those you know and those who know you (and those who know those you both know). Except it never felt serious. It was playful, fun, rejuvenating.

(Also, we sat at a table numbered 108, which is a magic number. It’s the number of beads in a seat of Hindu prayer beads, it has all sorts of association with the number of 3 – it inspired, e.g., the number of sections in Eat Pray Love: look at all the multiples of 3 that it’s divisible by. Accidental magics.)

But this is supposed to be a Friday Writing Experiment (and I have twenty minutes left of Friday).

This week, put a twist on the warm and wonderful Julia Cameron’s idea of the Artist Date (and see video below). Julia asks us to take ourselves on a ‘once-weekly, festive, solo expedition’ to fire up the imagination and rediscover our sense of play; how about taking such an expedition with a good friend? Maybe they write too, or practise other forms of art, or maybe they’re just inspiring. Call them, or email them, and arrange to take yourselves to some place that’s new to at least one of you: a garden, a new coffeeshop, a neighbourhood a short train journey away. Or maybe this is your chance to try a videocall on Skype for the first time? You could also visit a gallery, or attend a literary event, but make sure you make time for each other too; go somewhere that you can talk and look at each other without needing to be polite to things on sales racks or in exhibition cases. The only other requirements are a notebook and pen.

Then do some/all of the following:

* Document the meeting.

* Read aloud some of your recent work.

* Discuss some of the accomplishments and challenges in your recent writing.

* Gossip. (Gossip is at the heart of all the best stories. Gossip gives voice. Gossip is good.)

* Make an offering (we left a petal and a berry on a statue of Ganesh, but you can leave any old rock under a tree, if you wish – just pick both rock and tree purposefully).

* Later on, or there and then if you have time, take two random images/words/sounds from your time together and create a story or poem that unites these items.

* Give each other writing experiments, but only do them there and there if it feels fun; otherwise do them that evening before you go to bed.

* Commit acts of creative divination.

* Look for the tilts in the landscape. Seek out the points of entry and departure. Be alert for the unexpected, and accidental magics.

* Bring/buy each other an inexpensive gift that is in some way meaningful to your meeting and/or each other’s practice.

* Take photographs.

* Bring an umbrella.

At the very least, write something inspired by this meeting, even if it’s just a journal entry, or an email describing the day to another friend. But a story or a poem could be even nicer.

Most of all: be sustained. Creative health relies on such friendships. As my date said in correspondence later:

Gossip recalibrates, talking about writing reminds one of one’s fate. Being with a friend rejuvenates.

 

Basic Tool: Artist Date from Julia Cameron on Vimeo.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 3: Variations on the Form of ‘I Remember’

by Andrew | 3 Comments

We all love ‘I Remember’ exercises. Based on the beguiling book-length memoir-poem by Joe Brainard, and popularised by teachers such as Jack Collom and Kenneth Koch, these pieces of writing simply start each line with the words ‘I remember’ then evoke some memory. Some lines selected from Joe:

I remember jumping into piles of leaves and the dust, or whatever it is, that rises.
I remember raking leaves but I don’t remember burning leaves. I don’t remember what we ‘did’ with them.
I remember ‘Indian Summer’. And for years not knowing what it meant, except that I figured it had something to do with Indians.
I remember exactly how I visualised the Pilgrims and the Indians having the first Thanksgiving dinner together. (Very jolly!)
I remember Jack Frost. Pumpkin pie. Gourds. And very blue skies.
I remember Halloween.
I remember using getting dressed up as a hobo or a ghost. One year I was a skeleton.
I remember one house that always gave you a dime and several houses that gave you five-cent candy bars.
I remember after Halloween my brother and me spreading all out loot out and doing some trading.
I remember always at the bottom of the bag lots of dirty pieces of candy corn.
I remember the smell (not very good) of burning pumpkin meat inside jack-o’-lanterns.
I remember orange and black jellybeans at Halloween. And pastel-colored ones for Easter.
I remember ‘hard’ Christmas candy. Especially the ones with flower designs. I remember not liking the ones with jelly in the middle very much.

Another extract is available from his publisher here.

I Remembers rank among my favourite forms of writing, because:

1. the writing tends to be natural and easy, unforced and uncluttered – writing from the heart, writing from the gut.

2. the writing tends to be concrete, vivid, specific, e.g., the house that gave you a dime, and elsewhere in Brainard’s poem very light faded blue jeans, ice cubes in the aquarium, giving Aunt Ruby stationery or scarves for special occasions.

3. the writing usually shows rather than tells: the contents of Brainard’s version – references to movie stars and songs, the clothes, food, hardship and simple pleasures – conjure up a whole time and place, for example.

4. they are economical – each line or section stops when it has to stop, and then on to the next …

5. I love lists (if you couldn’t tell).

6. the form is regarded as both poem and/or prose and/or either/neither, and I love writing that plays with or maybe ignores categories, and simply enjoys being good writing.

7. the process of free association often takes us to places we never expected – what arises arises. In the extract above I love how we linger in specific memories of Halloween and then zip quickly via Easter to Christmas, where we will linger a page or two before moving on again – and returning elsewhere. There are many such threads and patterns through the book.

8. the writing is uncensored, authentic. For example, I note in the example above the reference to the Pilgrims and Indians celebrating a jolly Thanksgiving. Now: I don’t think it’s stretching things very far to say that that recollection is of a romanticised association! And we could of course parse that, and discuss what it means, e.g., in terms of decolonising the historical record. But the actual writing here is simply being honest – it’s about recalling a perception, a time and place – and it is being true to that. (Even if it’s not true to the historical record, and we hope there will have been scope for future reconstruction!) Elsewhere in the poem we get gender- and race-based descriptions that are products of that time, and there is an awful lot of sexually graphic and extremely fruity content. It means I’m always careful about selecting extracts for classes! But again: this has a truth.

9. the simplest things are often the best

10. I LOVE JOE BRAINARD! I mean, he painted pansies and whippets – what more could I want?

11. and repeating myself – the writing is natural and easy, unforced and uncluttered

There is of course a risk that this sort of writing unearths deep, sad memories. Maybe that’s not a risk. Maybe we need to confront those memories from time to time? But maybe, unless that is its purpose, we also need to set limits around that sort of writing (or have a therapist to hand). I often suggest that writers focus on, e.g., happy memories. The tone in the writing often ends up being quite soft and nostalgic, anyway.

So: this week, write an ‘I Remember’. But also introduce some twists, or focuses. For example:

* Remember your schooldays, a holiday, Christmas, a wedding, a love affair

* Remember your first times

* Remember your blessings (count them, even)

* Remember your failures (but maybe limit them … and only if you next:)

* Remember your successes (unlimited, and remembered after your failures – let’s end on a high, please)

* Draw (and write) your own graphic I Remember in comic strip format.

* And maybe do ‘I remember’ for characters in your fictions? This can involve a slight shift in the writing, and perhaps a bit more thought than some of the more natural, I-centred versions, but it can also be a good way to graft some of your fictional content on to your natural, easy, remembering voice

* I don’t remember (good for surfacing secrets and lies and subtexts and regrets and all that other good story stuff)

* And invent your own rememberings too! (Give us some prompts and ideas too, if you like.)

You can probably write forever this way. You might want to set some limits (time; focuses). Or you might not.

Enjoy! These pieces really are some of the most fun in writing. And also the most rewarding, working on voice and tone, and digging into the mysterious caverns of intention. Let things arise.

 

Further viewing and reading

All credit to Joe Brainard and his I Remember, now in its own very handsome UK edition from Notting Hill Editions.

The Joe Brainard website

The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard from the Library of America

I Remember Joe Brainard

A wonderful series of films from Loewe, via Loewe celebrates the fanzines and pansies of queer artist Joe Brainard (Wallpaper, 25 January 2021):
* Joe’s brother John Brainard in conversation with lifelong friend Ron Padgett – childhood, early influences
* Paul Auster and Jim Jarmusch discuss Joe Brainard’s writings – especially the brilliance of I Remember
* Curator Constance Lewallen and poet Anne Waldman, who first published I Remember as a series of books, discuss Joe Brainard’s art – creative process, New York in the 1960s, his role as a gay artist. Anne Waldman first published I Remember as a series of books – thank you, Anne, the world is forever in your debt!

And this is the trailer for I Remember, a short documentary on Joe Brainard.

Make Your Own Brainard – an interactive celebration of Joe Brainard’s collages

Andrew H. Miller, B-Sides: Joe Brainard’s I Remember – a lovely critical overview

Cori Hutchinson, Joe Brainard’s ‘Hot Bodies’

The I Remember form that has been adapted by other writers. Georges Perec’s I Remember, published in the UK by Belgravia Books, serves as an interesting point of comparison. After reading that book I discovered that Perec added a Oulipan constraint of including only things that other people could remember too. This adds a certain emphasis on public rather than personal history that makes his version at times feel more like a list of bald facts, which perhaps explains why I felt less connected to it emotionally. Its tone feels more detached (and at times even a bit name-droppy). Forty years after it was written, I was also unfamiliar with many of those specific names and events too. I was unfamiliar with some of Brainard’s references as well, but somehow they get swept up in the warmth and wit of his tone, or are explained in context, so I never stumbled or drifted.

Also note Zeina Abirached’s graphic memoir I Remember Beirut.

Updates, 2020 and 2021: Here are others I’ve subsequently written (also see some more by others in the comments): I Remember the Library, I Remember York, I Remember Bobbie Louise Hawkins. I’ve also added further links, including those for books by Perec and Abirached, and altered the opening quotation to give a fuller illustration of the workings of Joe’s text. If you know of other examples, please add in a comment below.

Credits: The image of Joe Brainard’s mixed-media collage Blossom (1977) at the top of this page comes from http://www.joebrainard.org.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 2: Poison Pen Portrait

by Andrew | Leave a comment

Iago, Fagin, Cruella de Vil, Gollum. The hideous creations of Evelyn Waugh, the moneyed monstrosities of F. Scott Fitzgerald (‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy’). The White Witch, Tom Ripley, Emma Bovary (I know, I know – but I can’t bear the woman myself, yet she remains the central figure in one of my favourite novels).

Consider the great villains and unpleasant characters of literature. We are not told these characters are villainous or unpleasant, but we develop our sense of them through close observation of external details: their manners, their gestures, their actions, their desires (that Dalmatian-skin coat), in addition to dialogue and description. And these characters can become so beguiling, so compelling, that we might also come to like them.

In no more than one page, create a vignette that uses the third person and externally observed details (i.e., showing rather than telling) to introduce some vile yet compelling character.

Friday Writing Experiment No. 1: A Novel In 1,500 Words

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Read ‘Growing Pains’ by Caryl Phillips.

Note how it mixes showing and telling, creating vivid little scenes that reveal so much through their details and their actions and gestures and also leading us through them with some confident narration, indirect speech and occasional direct speech. Also note how it is made up of ten self-contained sections of roughly equal length, spaced out through time at (mostly) equal intervals. Observe how these sections are stitched together to create a larger narrative: storytelling. There’s a whole novel’s worth of narrative content here.

Your challenge: create a story of your own in 1,500 words, consisting of ten sections of about 150 words each.

Guidelines: Show + tell = tell us a story; concrete and specific images; no transitions and none of that linear quality that can get tedious (And then … And then … And then). Think of snapshots through time. And most of all, don’t be boring.

Some variations: You can go a little longer (Phillips’s story is in fact about 1,750 words), but not too much – the purpose of the exercise is economy. You might have a different magic number of sections (e.g., twelve sections for twelve months). You could shuffle the order of the sections around (print them out, a page a section, and jumble up the pages), and see where you arrive. You might want to play around with sections whose lengths vary more. And why not mix in other genres? E.g., sections made solely of poetry, a photograph, a newspaper headline, or some item of found material.

You could also expand this into a novel. If you are writing a novel, in fact, you could try this out with the fabric of your novel in order to give yourself some fresh perspectives; this can be a great exercise in revision as it enables you to wrap your arms around the whole story (most arms can just about manage 1,500 words at a time). See what arises, see what you flush out.

Deadline: Midnight on Sunday (or midnight that follows 48 hours after you read this).

Once you are finished, share your writing with a writing partner or beta reader – ideally one who’s also done the same exercise.

And if you know of short stories that follow a similar episodic format, let me know – it’s always useful to have models as departure points.