16. Grab bag
Joselow, B. B. (1999) Writing Without the Muse 60 Beginning exercises for the beginning Writer.Ashland, OR: Three Oaks Press,
I almost didn’t include this title, and then, when I had another look at it, I was reminded what a useful collection this is. It makes me think of the monthly shop. All the staples are here; all the ingredients you need to rustle up any number of tasty workshops. Quite a few of the sixty exercises appear [unacknowledged] in books published well after this collection was first published in 1995. So here is one, which you may already have thought of, but which is worth a mention.
Grab Bag
A Grab Bag of Objects. Gather an assortment of objects from around your house. Anything will do, although you may want to include some items that have some emotional resonance for you. Your selection might include a paperweight, a dustcloth, an ashtray, a shot glass, a crochet hook, a pocket knife – anything at all. When you have gathered a dozen or so things, put them m a bag. Then draw out four of them (or have someone else draw for you) No trades! What you draw is what you get. Now write a piece that incorporates these four objects as part of it. Some may have a prominent role; others may be background scenery only. The choice is yours.
17. Goodness
Kiteley, B. (2005) The 3am Epiphany Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction.Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books.
I have only recently come across this book, but suspect it might become a favourite. The exercises are generally surprising and provocative. I have begun to use some of the ideas in workshops with adults and had fun recently writing a story that is in the form of a list. It is not straightforward. One of the best responses was a list of events/ people from the writer’s life, moving back and forward in time, building a picture that told a story. After each exercise there is a reflection or additional ideas to consider which help you think about what you have written and the nature of its challenges and your solutions. Here’s an exercise:
Goodness.
Imagine a character who is kind, whose every act is based on the notion that other people need help, and who rarely thinks of himself first. This should be a person of great empathy. The character walks into a room and notices immediately the other person in the room who most wants something – a drink, the last cookie on the tray, help remembering a movie character’s name. It would be very tempting to punish this good person in your exercise. Don’t punish the character. Don’t make a big deal of this goodness either. Let readers follow this agent of kindness through a handful of encounters. Give as little background information about this character as you can without sacrificing our natural need to know something about this Good Samaritan. 500 words.
18. Eight twelve sixteen
Klein, C.B (2016) The Magic Words. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
This splendid book is written by an editor and so is different from many books written by writers. I have found it immensely practical and full of good solid advice. The exercises, on the whole, assume that you have a work in progress, so maybe it is less useful if you are thinking on planning for a writing workshop –unless everyone is in the midst of writing a novel. Even so, highly recommended. There are more questions about family, school ad social life. I hope this taster gets you started. Here’s an exercise from early on in the book:
Eight Twelve Sixteen
Freewrite for at least ten minutes regarding your memories and feelings at age eight. Then do it again for age twelve and again for age sixteen. (It will probably help to identify what grade you were in at the time)… When you finish look over your notes and think about the key emotions and dilemmas that absorbed you at each age, alongside the specific incidents and details that embodied these emotions for you. Some questions that can serve as prompts:
You. What scared you most at each of these ages? What made you angry? What did you worry about? What did you want for your birthday, and if you had a party, what was it like? If you had a free Saturday to yourself, what did you do with it? What occupied your time besides school – sports, music, hanging out? What did you want to be when you grew up, and what inspired you towards that desire?
19. I used to / but now
Koch, K. (1970) Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching children to write poetry. New York Harper & Row.
Another classic title, alongside Koch’s Rose, where did you get that red?. These ideas come from Koch’s work in New York schools and are based on simple prompts for writing that can work well both as part of collaborative and individual writing. Adults and children find the ideas liberating. They certainly offer the potential for a different way of thinking.
I used to / but now
This theme is one children love to write about: the difference between the way they are now and the way they used to be. The changes in their lives are big and dramatic and have happened fast. They are bigger every year, they’re in a different grade, they have different clothes and new interests, and so on. Adult poems on this theme are usually sad and concerned with loss of love, beauty and youth; children’s poems about the past are sometimes sad too, but more often they have a triumphant note … “I used to be littler than a sugar bag/ But now I’m bigger.” Younger children often write about radical physical transformations – “I used to be a boy/ But now I am a girl.”
The suggestion to begin every odd line with “I used to” and every even line with “But now” seemed to help everybody think about past and present in a free and easy way.
20. No punctuation
LeGuin, U. (1998) Steering the Craft: exercises and discussions on story writing for the lone navigator or the mutinous crew. Portsmouth, Or: Eighth Mountain.
This is a superb book about writing fiction that offers a combination of reflection, sample prose extracts and exercises. It ties in well with Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer (see below) in that the exercises focus on form and structure. The exercises are certainly challenging. Writing groups have generally enjoyed them; they have found the demand to write, say, without punctuation, or with a focus on the sound created by the prose liberating and intriguing.
I AM GARCIA MARQUEZ
Write a paragraph to a page (150 – 350 words) of narrative with no punctuation (and no paragraphs or other breaking devices).
Suggested subject: A group of people engaged in a hurried or hectic or confused activity, such as a revolution, or the first few minutes of a one-day sale.