TRY THESE AT HOME:
TWO WRITING EXERCISES

Your Multiple Selves (Excerpted from Write Your Heart Out)
Step out of your skin and see new possibilities.

Sometimes in the midst of writing, I discover that I’m in a rut, speaking from the same old voice about the same old concerns. When this happens, I remind my writer self that there are other selves living inside me. Isn’t it time to let them have their say? In Creative Nonfiction, Philip Gerard suggests that one way to discover new material is to write down five or ten identities which describe you (father, son, Catholic, etc.) and then explore what each of these identities cares about, worries about, or thinks about. My list, which is longer than the one Gerard suggests, looks something like this: aunt, daughter, niece, wife, sister, friend, gardener, hospice volunteer, back-up gospel singer, military brat, teacher, hiker, weight lifter, cat lover, cook. Each of these identities has a slightly different take on things, and can teach me, the sometimes bored or boring writer, something new.

If you want to expand the scope of your writing, try making a list of all the identities that describe you. Include your past identities. For instance, I am no longer, strictly speaking, a granddaughter, since my grandparents are dead. And I am no longer a military wife, though at one time I was; I was also a proofreader, a second-grade teacher, a door-to-door Avon salesperson, a community theater actress, and a church organist. However, since these identities are still part of my experience, if only in memory, writing from the vantage point of these identities illuminates present-day experience, brings past events forward, and prompts me to explore subjects and passions which lie just beneath the surface.

Once you’ve listed the various identities that define you, write from the point of view of one or more of these identities. What does the father-in-you think about the upcoming presidential election? How does the sculptor-in-you want to vote? Maybe each will pull a different lever in the voting booth; maybe they’ll argue with each other. Try writing a conversation between two of your alternate selves. Coax your wild, pot-smoking teenager past to write a letter to your buttoned-down accountant present. Or write a poem to the old woman you will become.

Some of the identities which define us are those we’ve assumed only in dreams or imagination. It can be argued that our lives are as much a product of what we choose not to do as what we actually do. The lives we don’t live inform the lives we live, and sometimes even haunt them. So rather than always writing about your lived life, consider writing about your unlived lives. If your name were Betty Ann rather than Isabella, how would you move differently through your days? Who might you have married had you taken that bus to Colorado rather than flying to Phoenix? What didn’t you do today? Which woman didn’t you kiss, which child didn’t you put to bed, which job didn’t you go to? Robert Bly’s poem “Clothespins” begins:

I’d like to have spent my life making
Clothespins. Nothing would be harmed.

Can you imagine spending your life in some different pursuit? If so, write about it. Step out of your skin and see new possibilities.

FIND MORE WRITING EXERCISES LIKE THESE IN Write Your Heart Out and Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively

Your Treasure Map
(adapted from Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively)

Draw a map of a place in your memory (or a place that exists only in your imagination. Almost any place, if mined deeply enough, can yield up writing treasures. Several years ago during an unusually dry spell in my writing life, I drew a map of my grandparents’ farm the way I remembered it from childhood--in particular, my twelfth summer, which was a particularly memorable one. I drew the twin barns, the chicken coop and outhouse, the trail to the creek, the apple tree, the lopsided garage, and the small building off the garage my grandmother called her “loom room.” I drew a break-away version of the house itself, revealing each room, window, door, bed, table, and chair I could recall. Then, as if marking sites of buried treasure, I placed “x’s” at every location I associated with a particular person or event. The milking barn: my grandfather in rubber boots, whistling. The trail to the creek: my little brother, shivering and hysterical after having fallen through the ice. The double-seater outhouse: Great Aunt Bessie crouched beside me, telling ghost tales. I was astounded at the stories that rose from the map, begging to be told.

As you draw your map, mark entrances and exits, furniture and props, flora and fauna. Place “x’s” where certain characters might show up or where particular events might take place. Remember the mystery writers’ advice on setting? Look for a place where things can go wrong, and position your character there. The place might be physically threatening--an icy creek, a steep cliff, a deserted road. Or it might be a setting that invites psychological danger--the principal’s office, the monthly weigh-in at the diet center, your mother-in-law’s kitchen. Dangerous places suggest trouble. And trouble is one of the keys to compelling stories.

By the time I finished drawing my treasure map, I had the beginnings of several poems and a dozen essays. The map you draw may yield up similar riches, and the more you work with the material, the more possibilities you will discover, just waiting to be unearthed.

Consult Word Painting or Write Your Heart Out for more exercises like this.