Hi, and thanks for reading! Today is Monday, so we’re going to talk about poetry.
If you want to go directly to the poetry exercise, and skip all this “recipe blog” backstory, scroll to the next subhead.
I woke up this morning and instead of thinking about writing, I was thinking about acting. Maybe it’s because on Saturday, I saw my friend Giuliana, who’s an actor, or because on Sunday, my friend Tara and I saw Dear World at City Center. Maybe I just love drama! But I woke up thinking about acting, and about inhabiting characters, and it reminded me of a fiction-writing exercise I think we can adapt for poetry.
One of my aims with this newsletter is to help others give themselves permission to write, and especially to write poetry. Poetry is a lot like music. Both have a weird, false dichotomy in reputation. If you dedicate any serious time/energy to poetry or music, you are either very juvenile and amateurish (teenagers being angsty in their bedrooms) or an expert craftsperson lofted above the rest of society (academics, rock stars, academic rock stars [Brian May]).
Of course, that’s fake. You don’t need to be a dumb teen or a trained, acclaimed, educated adult to write poetry (or music!). There’s a lot of resources out there that focus on giving yourself permission to write – “Permission” gets a whole section in Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic, as a top-of-mind example. But internalizing and integrating that message is a tricky process and it takes a long time.
So that’s why we’re going to take a shortcut.
The wonderful publisher Word West Press also holds online workshops on a rotating basis; I’ve taken a couple of these and found them very effective in developing both fiction and essays, and generating new work. One class focused on the work of Wes Anderson, and on studying the little signatures in Anderson’s directorial style that can inform how we view our craft as writers. After watching Rushmore, we all wrote brief micro-fiction stories from the perspective of different characters in the movie. It was a way to immediately unlock a new point of view, and remove some of the pressure of crafting the “perfect” piece since it was in a borrowed voice.
Today we’re going to approximate that effect in poems. Obligatory soundtrack:
Exercise: Character Study
For this one, you’ll need a timer and a place to write, and also…a movie. You don’t actually need the movie on hand, but think about a movie you’ve seen ten million times, or a character you’ve always admired. If you’re stuck choosing a person to “inhabit,” looking over your past Halloween costumes is a pretty safe bet!
Once you’ve picked a character to inhabit, set a timer for two minutes. Over the course of that time, list things your character feels strongly about. They can be causes, movements, ideas, other characters from the movie, pet peeves, animals, genres of music/film, aspects of themselves. Right now, you’re just listing topics.
After a minute is up, and you’ve got a list, pick the item from the list you feel most intrigued by. It may or may not be the item you know the most about.
Set your timer for three minutes. For three minutes, write about your chosen topic, as your character. If you can write stream-of-consciousness style, great. That will give you more to go off of! Try your hardest to write for the whole three minutes. You don’t need to make an argument or grand declaration, but it’s fine if you do. If you run into trouble, try writing chronologically. For example, if you’re writing as Young Neil from Scott Pilgrim, write about how you met your friend group and learned to love video games. If you're writing as Morticia Addams, imagine your life before meeting Gomez, and then describe what initially attracted you to him. You can also just write a “day in the life,” trying to get through the character’s daily routine. As you write, you may naturally interpolate some of your other listed topics into your “monologue,” and that is fine.
After three minutes of straight writing, look at what you’ve generated.
Do any phrases stand out to you as being unique to the character?
Are there any viewpoints your character holds that are counter to your own?
Can you detect any “secrets” your character might be hiding, or can you imagine any unknown origin stories for signature traits, behaviors, or outlooks?Set your timer for five minutes. As your character, compose a poem, using language that stems from these strong feelings you’ve stirred up. You may write an ode, you may write a scathing takedown, you may write a series of cryptic haiku. The choice is yours – or, rather, your character’s!
These persona pieces can be a lot of fun, and they provide a good dose of Monday escapism. I hope you enjoyed writing as someone else. On bad-brain days, the best way to get a little writing done is to pretend to be someone else entirely.