Craft Exercises

One of the paradoxes of writing is that the more we place limitations on ourselves, the more we have to say. The more we give ourselves arbitrary tasks, the more our unconscious is left to roam, to say things we wouldn’t have said had we not started saying something. It’s completely daunting to try to write about “the meaning of life,” but it’s far less daunting to write a long list of a character's quirky habits and gestures, far less daunting to write a short scene in which two people are shouting at each other across the room but not really saying what they want to say. Craft exercises in this class are not intended to be merely “practice,” and they are not merely “drills.” I think busy work of any kind is a waste of time. But I think writing exercises are valuable for four reasons:

for the low stakes
for the freedom to play, to experiment, to have fun, and at the same time, not feel the need to pour the "depths of one's soul" into the assignment
for the ability to master one area of emphasis, and
because exercises often give you something hard to find: access to memory, access to material, access to ideas, access to the unconscious, and finally, access to meaning.

While writing craft exercises, try very hard to smile and to forget all your troubles. Remember, losing yourself in your imagination is fun, and no one ever forced you to take a creative writing class. At the same time, you should probably feel a little despairing, because writing fiction is hard. So try to be both enthusiastic and despairing at once.

Craft exercises should be no more than two pages, double-spaced, typed. What if you want to write seven pages! What if the juices really get flowing! Fine, save that writing and use it in the draft of a story. But for the class, just bring two pages. What if it's hard to cut it down from 4 pages to 2? That's good. Economy (omitting needless words) is one of the highest values of all good writing. Cut out everything that doesn't contribute to the overall effect you're after (and then cut more.)

What if you find the exercise, itself, "constraining"? (Meaning you don't feel like doing it.) It's supposed to be constraining. Work through this constraining feeling and see what happens.

And always bring two copies of your exercise. One to turn in to me and one to share with one of your peers.