Category: Instructional Exercises

So many times we find that what we are writing sounds dry and dull compared to what we wish to be writing or what we admire in other’s writing.  “How can we make our work matter?” we ask ourselves, “How can we endow our writing with richer more resonate meaning?”  Or sometimes we get a rejection from an editor or those in our writing group don’t feel that our subject stirs them.  So we ask, “How can I find the heart of the matter and write from there?” I think we can accomplish what we are after by learning to honor that the real topic of personal writing is always found in the part that provides the emotional growth for both the writer and the reader. The part that holds everyone’s attention and lingers after reading is the part that portrays the author’s search for an answer to some persistent question.  It may be a deep question or one that appears superficial, but whatever the question is, its roots are long and old and have been with the writer for a long time.  It may be a question that is an early obsession of the writer’s such as, “How will I live now that my parents are divorced?” but continues to occur for years after the precipitating event. The question might be, “If I don’t feel like a good parent, can I be any good at all?” or “Why do elephants always make me laugh?” It might be, “If the city I live in is so polluted and crowded and violent, how come I haven’t given up on it?” or “Will I ever believe that I will grow old?” or “What is my calling?”

When you write, the angle you take into your writing and the details, ideas and anecdotes that occur to you come because they are the fine hairs on the question root.  Most of the time you don’t recognize that this is going on. Every once in awhile, though, when you are at loose ends with your writing and yourself, you can check in with your questions and see what happens when consciously you write from them.

Look at what the poet Rilke wrote in his famous Letters to a Young Poet:

 Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Some Enchanted Evening…

Here is a writing practice that works off of Rilke’s idea about what is important to writing.  Light a candle, put on soft music, and this enchanted evening you will meet your questions across a crowded room…

First, fill a piece of paper from top to bottom or at least half way with questions.  Write any question that comes to you.  Allow yourself to mix silly questions with esoteric questions, mundane questions with ethereal questions, questions that might have a simple answer with questions that undoubtedly have complex answers, questions you have just thought up with questions you know you think about from time to time.  It is okay if you begin repeating phrases in your questions.  Do whatever it takes to keep writing questions.  Don’t judge your questions. Just get them onto the page.  It really doesn’t matter what the questions are. That you make a list of them and mix levels of seriousness is all that matters to this exercise.  Although Rilke was certainly referring to the more profound or deep seated questions, allowing yourself this mix will free your unconscious to suggest questions that are important to your being.

For example, I have written:

What evidence do I have of life after death? Which do I like better, granola or Rice Chex? Will the rain wash away the smell of too many dogs using the neighbor’s yard? What is the hardest thing for a woman to talk about? What is the hardest thing for me to see about my life? What is the hardest thing for me to see about myself? What is the hardest thing for me to see about others? How do I know these are the hardest things for me to see?

Now try another way to get yourself to write questions.  This time write a dialog between two or more people in which no one is allowed to say anything that is not a question.  Since your characters ask the questions and you don’t have to claim them as our own, you may have an easier time coming up with unexpected questions.   Let the people interact as if they were on stage or on a street corner or around a table conversing in this “question” way.  They don’t have to directly answer each other’s question, but can free associate. Notice in the example I share below that when Harry asks Pauline if she is coming to dinner, Pauline answers with a question about wearing mink. This is my private free association between the character Harry I invented and where he might be planning on going to dinner. And the free association continued and resulted in the following question dialog:

Harry:  Are you coming to dinner with us? Pauline:  Am I feeling okay about wearing mink? Harry:  Why does fur make you comfortable? Pauline:  Why do I eat when I am not hungry? Harry:  Why do I always choose Hungarian food when I am feeling blue? Pauline:  When does paprika look like bursts from a blood vessel? Harry:  Will the act of chewing awaken my feeling of connection to something larger? Pauline:  When are good friends the most important part of living?

Put your question lists away for a short time, a few hours or a few days.  When you pick them up again, peruse them with an eye toward choosing questions that seem to you to clump together or hang around with each other. Two to four will do. I might choose the following from among my questions,  “When are good friends the most important part of living?” and  “What is the hardest thing for me to see about others?”

Next, on a new sheet of paper, write down the questions you have chosen as hanging around together. Circle each one as if you were drawing a balloon. Next draw a string down from each “question balloon” and draw a bow encircling all the strings to create a “balloon bouquet.”  Imagine you are carrying these balloons with the strings held in one fist. Remember when you were a kid and you let helium-filled balloons go inside knowing they would reach the ceiling and stay inside, aloft yet in your eyesight?  Imagine your question clusters keeping you company like those magical childhood balloons you were thrilled to “capture.”

Over the next days, when you are suddenly reminded of your balloons of questions, write down the specifics of where you are and what is happening.  Write the who, what, where, and when of the moment when you think of the questions. Your details should include images that appeal to the five senses.  You must see, taste, touch, hear and smell the world in which your question lives.

For instance, I might be out with friends or far way from them, alone in my house or at the supermarket selecting tomatoes when I realize I’m thinking about my question, “When are good friends the most important part of living?”  In writing I will describe where I am, what I see, feel, taste, touch and smell in that moment, whether it occurs on city streets, a hiking trail, or as I am cooking oatmeal.  I must write about what I am thinking when my question flashes across my mind, whether it is about measuring the steel cut oats or watching them drop into boiling water.  I have to keep going, describing the moment I am in when the question occurs to me.  Notice that I am not using the past tense here–the moment I am in rather than the moment I was in–because for this exercise to work well, I must write from the moment.

Even if you can’t write while you are hiking, when you sit down to write, you must write as if you are hiking or taking a rest in the shade of a tree on the trail.

Collect many moments for each question. You don’t have to alternate or work on one at a time. Just write from the moments that the questions actually flashed in your mind. “What is the hardest thing for me to see about others?”  I might be groping in the dark for a light switch when I think about it and have to write about that–the feel of the carpet beneath my feet, the sound of the switch going on, the way the furniture looks as soon as the bright light comes on.

After you have collected many moments, set about writing a longer piece from the notes you have kept.  To help your left brain accept that your right brain can write a cohesive piece from moments, you might entitle this writing “A Question or Two” and then assemble sketch after sketch of the moments your questions has attracted to you.  Yes! At some level, the questions have chosen you and attracted the vivid moments you are living.  They will lead you, if you stay with the details, to new insight and a satisfying ending to your piece of writing.  You will have lived the questions.

Even if this feels clumsy and disjointed as a way of writing, force yourself to give it a try.  Rilke knew what he was talking about when it came to writing. He knew where the journey, breath and spirit reside.  Let yourself practice letting the questions be in charge and writing by living them, moment by moment. Although you mustn’t actually concentrate on how the moments cohere one by one, your writing will surprise you with the way it does unify and build through image and sound.  To make transitions from moment to moment, rely on dates for headers and times or just name the places where the moments seized your attention: Two AM, Bathroom Door or Hiking in the Woods January 13, for example.

If you want to email what you write to me, I’d love to see what you have done.  I will publish some of the results in a future article in the magazine with my comments on how to develop the exercises into poems and essays.  I promise you that your results will be highly lyrical pieces of writing with great power and beauty. Following Rilke’s suggestion guarantees this.