Creativity

1) Tell a story to children. Watch their eyes. Try to thrill them. Try to scare them. Try to reel them in. (Imaginary children are fine, too, if they are as bright and impatient with falsity and curious as real ones. They can sit still for longer.)

2) Read aloud only the last word of each line in the page of a book. Now use those words to write a scene. (Here are the ones from, at random, p.159 in Orlando by Virginia Woolf: she alternately was wonder to fell tumbling in that Captain ashore stretched her ankles the which with from opening during for man from fell a)

3) You know how if you try to meditate your mind won’t shut up? Make your focus a little blurry and write from that stream-of-consciousness voice in your head. From the you that dreams places and people you’ve never seen with absolute (sometimes terrifying) authority.

4) Take a cue from E. M. Forester and imagine yourself at a table with all of your favorite writers through history. This is your freewriting group. Let their voices fill you and ferret out your own.

5) Read a poem aloud. Backwards–from the last word to the first. Swim in the language. Now write your own backward poem. Really. I dare you. You’ll be amazed at what happens if you try any one of these exercises. Dormant worlds lie uptapped within you. I know. I remember. Seas as gorgeous and terrible as anything on earth. Render them on your page. What are you waiting for?