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.