Ordinary Magic for the First Week of the New Year
Five Unusual Writing Exercises and One Everyday Incantation
Now, who wants to write not just more, but also better, in the year ahead?
That’s what this post is for—it contains a set of five structured writing exercises and one daily incantation (another sort of practice) that can, taken cumulatively, transform your writing over time. It is magic, truly—the kind of magic we make for ourselves.
All of these exercises involve several of the skills and devices I’ve written about before, including in Eleven Urgent & Possibly Helpful Things, Attention, More Attention, and Shimmers & Shards. These are practices which (much like meditation and mindfulness) require lifelong devotion. We never “arrive,” we just get closer and sturdier and more attuned to when the channel between us, the world, and the words is wide open. This is when we are “doing language” at the highest level.
Writing that is alive wakes readers up, makes them feel something. The writing I love best utterly devastates me and makes me hopeful all at once. But how does it do that?
I believe such writing happens at the exciting intersection of the what and the how (i.e., the content and the craft). Yes, we know beautiful writing is made by placing words one after the other in a specific order for a specific reason. And yes, marvelous accidents do sometimes result in words tumbling randomly onto the page in spontaneously perfect arrangements. But I don’t expect or feel entitled to that kind of accident. Instead, I see writing as a skill to be learned and practiced. That is why I am always seeking to understand and reveal when I practice and when I teach. I’ve found that the best and most productive methods of understanding and revealing the how of extraordinary writing tend to involve pairing especially stunning published work with structured writing exercises.
Therefore, this is what I have provided you here: five structured writing exercises to complete in the first week of the new year, along with the readings that inspired them: “You Begin” by Margaret Atwood, “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, “The Carrying” by Ada Limon, an excerpt from “The Love of My Life,” by Cheryl Strayed, and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. Other writers whose work I turn to repeatedly for similar inspiration include Ocean Vuong, Toni Morrison, Keise Laymon, Justin Torres, Sharon Olds, Marie Howe, Dorianne Laux, Saeed Jones, Joy Harjo, Wendell Berry, Carolyn Forche, Maggie Smith, Ross Gay, and the Janes (Hirshfield, Hamilton, and Smiley!). Plus many, many, many more. Too many to list, but not too many to bring to you, one by one, over the course of the coming days, weeks, and months, and years of Writing in the Dark together.
Also, a daily writing incantation (a writing practice yes, but it’s more than that). This one is meant, just as it says, to be done daily, ideally in the morning, for just five minutes, while the structured exercises are spelled out in order, one through five, because the skills are somewhat scaffolded, but you may also do them in whatever order you wish and at whatever pace works for you. You can also do the five exercises over and over again, because they are like buckets you fill with different words and ideas in order to see what you get. Another way to think of it: these exercises are inexhaustible hats in terms of the number of rabbits you might pull out. Ultimately, these exercises will show up for you for as long as you show up for them. They will keep revealing new aspects of the how of structure, surprise, voice, image, and more, as you work and rework them.
When working with these exercises, it works best to read the associated poem or excerpt several times before beginning to write. Ideally, print the poem or excerpt out so that you can underline images, analyze what is happening on the line level, etc. Befriend the reading as closely as you are able. But it’s also fine to just read the poem or excerpt once and do the exercise straightaway.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good!
We do our best with the time we have available, and that’s all we can ask of ourselves. It’s also how we keep your writing practice vital and connected to joy.
Finally, do not be afraid to copy the structure of the associated reading as closely as possible. In fact, the more closely you copy the structure, the better. You can always change it later (and usually you should, if you intend to really develop what you wrote as something other than as an exercise—though “just exercising” is a wonderful way to approach these assignments; we need to give ourselves more opportunity for the warm-up work of other artistic disciplines, such as musicians playing scales, painters doing sketches and color studies, and dancers doing stretches).
The main benefit of the exercises is to help experience firsthand and develop a muscle memory for precisely what these exceptionally skilled, talented, and deeply practiced writers did, and how they did it. Therefore, in each of the five numbered structured exercises you should limit yourself to approximately the same number of words (fewer is fine, but not more) as are used in the the associated reading.
As I said, later, you can develop whatever you drew from the exercise into something longer, larger, or entirely different. But, for now, try to use the length constraint as another way to cleave more closely to the example and to the devices offered in these shimmering works. This is how we tune our ears, sharpen our vision, and, literally, come to our senses.
Daily Sensory Incantation
I believe every writer should do this exercise every day. It can gradually improve your writing perhaps more than any other practice. In order for it to work, it must be done regularly and with precision (strictly). Start by setting a timer for five minutes and, for the entirety of those five minutes, record close, meticulous, external sensory observations of the outside world around you—the physical, exterior space you are in. Best to use a notebook and pen/pencil, not a computer or phone, to record the observations. Get up and move around the room or yard or field or whatever space you are in if you want to touch or smell things. Or just sit still, if you wish. You can do it differently on different days. But try not to stop writing until the timer goes off. Express the observations in fragments, not complete sentences (morning light on the carpet, cat hair on the chair, smell of coffee brewing, rain splattering on the window, baby crying, footsteps on the porch, jingle jangle of dog tags). Try to use all five major senses. Taste can be hard because it requires you to put something in your mouth and, in that way, can blur the boundary between internal and external. If that happens for you, skip taste. Smell is close enough. The very most important part of this exercise is keeping the observations external, brief, and detached. Do not analyze, interpret, or make sentences. Do not stretch into comparisons or metaphors. Be literal and external. Be strict with yourself. Read this post and the excerpted interview with the poet Marie Howe if you want to know more about why this is so important! Or read the Shimmers & Shards post from the first week of the Lyric Essay Challenge (which you may want to work your way through in 2024, if you have not already!).
Once the timer goes off, look over your fragments and find the five that are the most interesting, the most unique, the most jagged, the strangest. Imagine the paper is on fire and you can save only five fragments before it burns. Put a star by those. Now, read them out loud with the words “I am” in front of them (I am the morning light on the carpet, I am footsteps on the porch, I am rain splattering on the window, I am a baby crying).
If you are wholly in the exercise, the “I am” combinations should surprise you a little bit each time. You can also try these with “You are,” or with a combination of “I used to be,” “Now I am,” and “I am becoming.” Move them around and see what happens.
Even as this exercise slowly improves your writing, it will also reveal unexpected reflections of who you are and who you are becoming.
Exercise One: Simple, Not So Simple
Margaret Atwood’s You Begin
In this incredible poem—I love it so much—Atwood takes us through a series of close, plain-language observations of everyday things (a hand, color crayons, the moon) and makes clear, direct statements about the world in relation those things—e.g., that the world has only the colors of nine crayons. Then, she begins to undermine or subvert those bold, clear statements—e.g., that the world is fuller and more difficult to learn than she has said.
For this writing exercise, begin by describing some everyday object(s) in close, meticulous detail. Do not make a story or a metaphor yet. And don’t worry about what this piece of writing is going to be or say. Just try to describe something ordinary in a way that feels a bit strange and new, simply by choosing your concrete words carefully. If you are confused or frustrated, read the Atwood poem several more times and underline her descriptors.
Once you’ve described something(s) ordinary in a fresh, effective way that starts to interest you, try to make a larger, declaratory, but still clear and simple statement. Watch how Atwood does that as she transitions from talking about the child, the crayons, the rain, to this:
…and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn
Once you have made a simple statement or two, continue to explore/describe the everyday object(s), but now perhaps you do so more with slightly more complexity before finally returning to your previously made simple statement(s). You will end this exercise by continuing to undermine/subvert your original statement(s) to reveal something truer.
Exercise Two: Hand to World
Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day
When it comes to this iconic poem, everyone remembers the line about your one wild and precious life, but what about the grasshopper, this grasshopper, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand? Were it not for the grasshopper and the curiously close observation with which Oliver renders him, that ending would never land and we certainly wouldn’t believe her claim about knowing how to pay attention! For this exercise, start with an extremely close, detailed, nearly scientific description of a single, identifiable, external object (could be animal or a part of a person but not a whole person). Describe it in the excruciating detail. Be meticulous, be precise, use plain language. This should feel almost technical. Finally, when you cannot bear the close observation any longer, shift to interior observation (this means your thoughts, which, in Oliver's poem, starts with, I don't know what a prayer is. Finally, leap to a larger, grander, bigger call to action at the end (Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?). When you’re finished, revise this until at least the first sixty percent of the piece is strictly external. (If you would like to read more about Mary Oliver, the time I heard her read, and a wrinkle in time, I told that story in The Surprising Sound of Mary Oliver’s Voice).
Exercise Three: Home to Proclamation
Ada Limon’s The Carrying
Start with a close description of a place that means something to you or used to mean something to you. Probably this is a very familiar place—it should be at least familiar enough that you can describe it in very precise detail. Be concrete and physical and sensory and do NOT make it into a story. Be sure to include something ugly if possible. It’s very important that we not shy away from what is ugly, which is why Limon includes the freeway overpass! Do not gloss over ugliness. Look at it unflinchingly. Most importantly, stay external, external, external, and only toward the very end of your description, shift into interiority—you’re using the interior reflective voice now—and as you make this shift, be succinct so that after a line or two, you make a leap to something even bigger, some proclamation about life. In “The Carrying,” Limon does this when she says, We were all meant for something.
Exercise Four: Threshold
Cheryl Strayed’s The Love of My Life
The opening of Strayed’s famous essay, which was the genesis of her book Wild, is so breathtaking, from the first sentence—The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week—to the last: And this was like that — the end of one thing, the beginning of another: my life as a slut.
For this exercise, start with a moment—and it must be a moment that can fit neatly into a single scene, so not more than one hour in total—that represented a threshold in your (or your narrator's) life. Write that scene in close, specific detail, providing only the scantest amount of backfill necessary to help us understand the importance of the moment (in Strayed’s work, the backfill was that her mother has died a week ago, and that the bruises on her knees are from falling to the floor when she sees her mother dead, and that she is 22 years old—that’s all the backfill she gives us in a scene that’s almost 500 words long!). So, write the scene with almost no backfill, moving forward in time, one beat at a time.
At the end of the scene, find a natural process (in Strayed’s piece, the unfurling of a leaf) to compare to or exemplify the “before and after” nature of this moment you are writing about. Succinctly describe that natural process and, finally, in one clear sentence or phrase, make sure we know what this scene, or the “after,” is about (in Strayed's piece, her grief over her mother’s death, and the way it hurtled her into a life as a “slut”).
(For more threshold exercises, see I Can See A Million Miles From Here and The Moment After Which Everything Changed.)
Exercise Five: What Did I Know?
Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays
What a rare and luminous poem. I could read it a thousand more times and still learn from it. For this exercise, you will first want to consider something that happened routinely in your (or your narrator's life), probably during childhood, but not necessarily. Let it be an action that was between two or more people (in Hayden's poem, the father is building the fire for the family, even though he is doing it alone). Make sure this action you are describing is something that was generally completed in no more than about 20 minutes. It’s okay to think of more than one possible action or activity, because sometimes our first idea doesn’t work (ha, understatement of the year), which is why I like having several options. But once you decide on an action or routine happening, you will want to describe it clearly and plainly. Finally, at the end of your piece, you will make an observation about the meaning of the action as the narrator now understands it. This observation must reveal an understanding that differs profoundly from the way the narrator understood things at the time. In Hayden’s poem, the narrator reveals this as he says, What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
As you experiment with these exercises, share your experiences, questions, and observations in the comments. I am so excited to write with all of you in 2024!
My Medieval- Renaissance reptilian brain is zinging at your use of the word “ ordinary.” It referred to the fixed chants/ prayers in the Western Christian Mass that never changed while the constellation of the service spun around it. It’s the text Byrd, Bach, and Mozart grooved and riffed on, so your dead reckoning word choice powers feel extra-ordinarily spooky-perfect. To work! And happy new year, WITD.
Wow, thank you for these, Jeannine. I have never been a good daily practitioner but this year I plan to try. I did the daily incantation this morning, and Exercise One. Not sure if the idea was to end up with a piece mirroring You Begin, but I am sure that the practice was transformative. Thank you!
It is simple, really, these are gifts:
a towel warmer, a foot massager,
a gift certificate to a spa. A glass
tea kettle, a pottery mug. An
embroidered bookmark,
a necklace engraved with three roses.
Inside this house
is the love, blue
because it is winter, and beyond that
the trees are bare,
though the world still there,
alive and half dead
and the colors of every rainbow.
This is your life, which is
the sum of these gifts.
You are right to stretch their meaning,
let them smother you, let their
blue turn that of every hue: love.
Once you see these gifts
for what they really are
you will no longer have such pain.
You will know that the boys now men
you raised who gifted them, who filled
the glass kettle with your lavender
tea, who will have you choose massage
or facial at the spa, who want you to take
the time to wrap yourself in a warm towel,
you will know your work is done.
This is your life, these are your gifts.
It begins again, it has no end: love.