Years ago one of my writing students wrote this line in class, “Ms. Failure paints her self-portrait, then hangs it on a wall in your world without asking permission.” He was speaking, he told us, of a time when he was “not facing the realities of the world.” His imagined self-portrait both set him straight and haunted him.

Shortly after that moment in class, I read this passage from Maya Angelou’s, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now:

One afternoon, I entered Terry’s to find myself surrounded by well wishers with wide smiles and loud congratulations. The bartender showed me the New York Post and then presented me with a huge martini. I was featured as the newspaper’s “Person of the Week.” The regulars suspended their usual world-weary demeanor, giving hearty compliments, which I accepted heartily. Eventually the toasters returned to their tables and I was left to grow gloomy in silence. . . .

Because of my student’s line about a self-portrait, when I read this passage, I let myself imagine that the photo Angelou saw was, instead of a photographer’s work, a self-portrait drawn by Fame. And Fame left her, as she says, “to grow gloomy in silence” after her compliment-making public had left.

Taking an intangible like fame or failure and making it a persona that has something to say can help you write well.

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For you to try:

Name some attributes, traits or qualities in your life: adoration, desire, the blues, knowledge, skill, anger, success, happiness, fulfillment or fear, for instance.

Then, choose one of the attributes or qualities and imagine the self-portrait that it would paint or collage, draw or photograph. Write what you are imagining:

What is in the picture?

What media is it done in and what are the colors?

What kind of a frame does it have?

What wall in what room of your house is this self-portrait hanging on?

When was it hung?

After this pre-writing:

Let the attribute, trait or quality you described talk to you while it is hanging its self-portrait on your wall. What does it have to tell you about itself and its picture and why it’s bringing the picture to your place?

This might be a monologue spoken by the trait, attribute or quality or a dialog between the two of you.

Then, for more writing:

Choose a different trait, attribute or quality and repeat the exercise by writing the answers to these questions again:

What is in the picture?

What media is it done in and what are the colors?

What kind of a frame does it have?

What wall in what room of your house is this self-portrait hanging on?

When was it hung?

And again, after this pre-writing, let the trait, attribute or quality you described talk to you while it is hanging its self-portrait on your wall.

What does it have to tell you about itself and its picture and why it is bringing the picture to your place? You’ll be writing in persona, as you create those words.

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If you like the exercise, keep going by writing about a third trait, attribute or quality in your life in this way. If you do several of these writings, you will end up with a series you might call “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall.”