Since we’ve been talking about being stuck lately, and given the events of the last week (month, year, decade), I haven’t been able to write much either, I wanted to share a quick exercise that I used to do with my writer’s group when I didn’t know what to write.
When I first started actively seeking to be published (early 2000s), I had a writer’s group that met weekly. We used to start every single session with an exercise called “Poetry of Three Things.” Three of us would randomly select a word, and then we’d say all those words aloud and the entire group would write a poem (most of them free verse) with those three words included. Then, we’d all read our poems aloud. Those are some of the sweetest memories I have of writing.
On my old computer, I have over a thousand different “poems” written like this, because anytime I would get stuck, this is what I would do. Three words at random (I used to call down the halls of my dorm and ask people for a random word, and just write). At the time, I was reading a lot of David Whyte and Joy Harjo, so I can see the influences (plus Hopkins and Eliot, who of course, aren’t producing new work anymore). But ultimately, I just loved playing around with the language.
Later on in our time together, our writer’s group started doing “Shorts of Three Things” as well, where we wrote short fiction with the three random things, and then read them out. To this day, “Poetry of Three Things” is on my Stuck List.
This morning, I went looking for the random (I will admit, it’s much better when other people pick two and I’m forced to write with what I’m given). I got lilac, fold, and massage. (Lilac, I will admit, was a nostalgia thing. But the other two were random.)
I’m not going to include the poem here, because it’s pretty somber (a lot of it was processing what’s happened in the last week), but I wanted to talk a bit about the exercise because I’m starting to see an uptick in stuckness (both on our social channels and in coaching).
I am going to encourage you to write something, right now. It could be a line in the manuscript. It could be a jotted-down stanza of poetry. It could be a short few lines at the beginning of a story you’re not working on. It could be a letter to a family member or friend.
But write something.
<3 Becca <3
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