FAQ: What is the point of those stupid 10 Things exercises?

Some people have been clamoring for answers.  Ok, that’s a lie.  None of you clamor.  But you could.  I would totally listen.  If you were clamoring, I imagine that one of you in that restless mob of readers might ask, What the heck is the point of these 10 Things posts you do?  I’m going to pretend you asked and give you an answer.  You’ll like it too.  If you don’t, try clamoring in the comments.

A couple of years ago at my fabulous local library, I came across Lynda Barry’s beautiful book What It Is.  Part memoir, part guidebook for developing a creative practice, this book is illustrated cover-to-cover with doodles, quips, squiggles, noodles, and blots.  Anyone familiar with Barry’s work as a cartoonist will recognize several of her archetypal characters, including the giant squid and the monkey on the cover.  Barry writes about how she developed her own creative practice, getting herself to write, generating ideas for her writing and her drawing.  She is a strong proponent of writing with a pen (not surprising, perhaps, for a cartoonist), arguing that the physical act of moving the hand is part of the creative process.  She also finds that her ideas are better, and more abundant, when she allows them to come to her rather than trying to think up things.  So, she moves her pen, in doodles or squiggles or by writing the alphabet, until words and ideas come to her.  She keeps the pen moving, and when the ideas get stuck, she simply moves the pen over to a scratch pad, making continuous lines and marks until the ideas start to flow again.  

One section of the book is a sort of workbook, wherein Barry encourages her readers, step-by-step, in developing their own creative practice.  She provides some exercises and guidelines (always keep the pen moving! Use a timer.  Use two timers. Don’t stop the pen.)  The basic unit of Barry’s creative process is to take some prompt (a word, a photograph, a scene from a magazine) and by using a timer for a few minutes and never stopping the pen, to write down the first ten ideas that come to you when you contemplate that prompt.  So you see, my 10 Things exercises are shamelessly stolen from Ms. Barry.  No, not shamelessly.  Proudly.  Whenever I feel stuck, I browse that book, take out a clean sheet of paper and write down ten things.  The exercises don’t stop there, but you’ll have to go read her book to find out what to do next.  

The 10 Things exercise is about shaking loose the cobwebs, getting the ideas moving.  And we don’t have to use random prompts.  Say you’re working on a character, and you’re stuck for ideas about the character’s motivation.  Blank sheet of paper, timer, pen.  Write the first ten things that come to you as you contemplate what your character wants.  It’s ok if they’re absurd (sometimes those end up being the best ideas).  It’s ok if they’re boring.  You don’t have to use them in your story.  You’re just trying to see what floats out of the ether.  Your brain is always composting everything you see and hear and do.  You’d be surprised at the good stuff that bubbles up when you stop and listen.  This shaking-it-loose exercise can work for action or plot or any other level of story development.  OR. And this is a good OR.  Or, it can just be about you, writing down the ideas that are sticking in your brain.  Just to write them down.  Not for a story.  Not for a purpose.  Just like a sort of pen and paper pensieve, to put your ideas down and let you take a look at them. 

As Frau Gruber (neiiighhh) pointed out, it’s sometimes harder than it looks to let the ideas flow.  It takes practice.  But if you’re like me, and you have a million ideas cluttering up your brain, but you can’t always pull out a good one when you need it, this is a good method to add to your writing toolbox.

Resonant phrases from the non-journal, your Writing Wednesday Inspiration

A shiny blue necktie with olive-like embellishments, snarky-librarian eyeglasses, and a sharp pencil on a rumpled bedI’m reviewing old non-journaling journals and recycling great phrases today.  What phrases get your juices going?   

Crumbling antiseptic beauty

Bootleg tailor and Zoot Suit Riots

Frequently desperate spelling

Loitering with intent

Stark conditions, gently rendered

“I’m not against shaving, I’m against rules.” —Amanda Fucking Palmer

Some people swore the house was haunted.

The marching band refused to yield.

The angels have the blue box.

“nails that shine like justice” —Cake

“We like things straight in our culture, but I like things a little crooked.” —Emily Nagoski

“the truth is forever changing”

and

“an elephant was a ridiculous answer to any question - but particularly ridiculous answer to a question posed by the human heart” —Kate DiCamillo, The Magician’s Elephant

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

10 Things: Towel

Apropos of nothing, I just noticed that a surprising number of these 10 Things posts begin with the letter S.  

Rock with me.  Name the first 10 Things that come to mind when I stand on the table and yell TOWEL!  Post those in the comments and then read my 10 Things. Goooooooooooo!

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My 10 Things from TOWEL!

1. DON’T PANIC

2. The soft green TOWELs given to me by the folks at my last high school job, where I worked as a courier.  Still have them.  They get softer every year. 

3. The pile of flowery TOWELs my neighbor gave us when she cleaned up the family hunting cabin.  Use them for everything.

4. The PURPLE TOWEL.  This is my favorite TOWEL of all time.  It’s just so PURPLE.  I think it came from my mother-in-law and it matches nothing, but that makes it even more fabulous.

5. The Terrible TOWEL of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

6. Throw in the TOWEL, if you’re a quitter.

7. Moist TOWELettes.  These make me think of cheap barbecue joints, grandma’s purse, and urine specimens. 

8. Those blue and white, semi-disposable TOWELs.  What are they called?  Jiffy-wipes?  Anyone?

9.  The little TOWELs that hang from football players so they can wipe the sweat from their hands for improved ball handling.  (Read that one with your mind in the glitter, folks, it’s much more exciting)

10. Drying a car w/an old TOWEL after a carwash.  That is, if you don’t happen to have a soft, old, cloth diaper lying around to rub the car.  

What are your TOWEL gems?  Don’t leave me here, crying in my TOWEL wondering. 

Homework: Desire and Regret

Wait, don't go.  It's good homework.  Trust me.  

Part I: Desire

One of my favorite poems is Robert Pinsky's "The Want Bone."  I was lucky enough to hear it read by Dr. Pinsky during a lecture when I was at NMSU.   Pinsky, the former poet laureate of the United States and the creator of the Favorite Poem Project, was an odd mix of arrogant and attractive.  I didn't exactly like him, but I was totally enraptured by his voice.  A low rumble, with just a hint of gravel, and crystal-clear enunciation of every syllable.  Imagining him saying the word 'stupidity' gives me a little shiver of delight.*  

Go read "The Want Bone."  (Skip down to read the poem and the paragraph before it, then come back.  I'll wait.  I'll whistle a little tune to keep me occupied.)  Go back and read it again. Read it a few times.  Read it once out loud if no one's looking.  Notice how sensual and sexy the poem becomes.  

A gaping, sun-bleached shark jaw on the beach.  That's the image at the heart of this poem, but there is so much desire--unfulfilled desire--in the poem.  So much longing.  Desire that is not only unfulfilled, but is unable to be fulfilled.  

The bone, the jaw, the structure of the mouth that consumes; the irony of the giant predator consumed by "infinitesimal mouths."  The shark is "uncrushed, unstrung" but not unhinged.  The jaw bone is transformed in a few lines into something more sensual, more physical, more vaginal: "...In groined spirals pleated like a summer dress. / But where was the limber grin, the gash of pleasure."  If we allow ourselves to be pulled down into the glitter (gutter), the bone and the O and the gash makes the words erotic, sex unsexed.  A monument to never-to-be-fulfilled longing on the paradise of the beach. 

Hang on while I take a cold shower. 

Part II: Regret (for the Pirates, argh)

In his now infamous book about the life of a kitchen pirate, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain colorfully exposes the gritty life of a cook/chef in New York City.  There are any number of things in that book that I love (like the sourdough sponge ['feed the bitch'], the pirates, or having sex with the bride in the alley), but one bit that has stuck with me is the Ice Cream Truck.  Bourdain imagines himself facing a careening Mister Softee Truck as a metaphor for facing his own mortality and cataloguing his regrets.  Extra credit if you go read the book, or at least skim the bits about the ice cream truck, in the 270-ish page range.  

Part III: My Point (hint, I don't have one)

Nope, no point.  Just some observations.  I could go all writery on you here and tell you that contemplating the interplay between desire and regret might help you build a story or understand the motivation of your characters.  Or I could  be your pop psychologist and say that the desire/regret dynamic might help you understand yourself better, or something.  But I'm not going to do that.  The rain is too pretty and cool, the grass is too soft and lush under my toes.  Today I'm just looking at the shape of the pomegranate tree and marveling at its balance.  

*Here's a link to Pinsky reciting his poem "Samurai Song" to give you a taste of his voice. 

Character Observations

I have never considered myself a journaler.  You could look at the pile of battered notebooks on the closet shelf and argue.  There is always a notebook open on the desk, ready to accept ideas.  I jot down inspirational bits that I hear from other people, or snatches of plot or beauty.  Sometimes I draft blog posts or notes to friends when I’m away from the computer.  Mostly I jot down observations of character.  People I see doing whatever they do.  If those people stick in my head as I move through my day or week, they might end up there on the page.

Some I describe in a few sentences or fragments.

Cashier/neighbor who always calls me Mrs. Smith.  He was a drum major in the marching band when we moved here.  The band theme one year had to do with the pyramids, and his eyes are stunning with a little kohl eyeliner.

The man who sat next to me at last week’s football game filled many pages.  He was lovely, and more complicated and interesting than initial appearances suggested.  Still others pop up in the pages over and over again.  They are characters or fragments of character that I can’t shake out of my brain.  One character appears very frequently in the notebook pages even though I have never met him.  The idea of him is boiled down into a two-word phrase that appears in the margins of the notebook in a variety of contexts.  Because this is a real person, tangentially connected to me, for the sake of idea- and identity-protection, let’s call my Frequent Flyer.

I have tried several times to build a story around the Frequent Flyer.  None of them have ever quite achieved the potential for beauty and irony that I see in the character.  So I tuck him away each time, believing that eventually I will find a worthy tale.

But now, the story has come to me.

My Frequent Flyer’s life goes on.  This time I may get to play a role in the story.  The best part of this opportunity is that even if I never write a satisfying story about the Frequent Flyer, I have a chance to be a part of his life in what I hope is a positive (though very small) way.  That is worth so much more to me than a good story idea.  The irony that this is the best idea (so far) does not escape me, and it’s a plot twist I never would have imagined.  

A pile of notebooks on the desk