Greetings, writers—
Today’s post is a bit of a farrago, a mishmash, a dog’s breakfast (without the negative connotations thereof): many small things, gleefully thrown together.
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First, please enjoy more writing advice from Muriel Spark, again via her character Mrs. Hawkins. A Far Cry from Kensington wrapped itself up surprisingly tight in the end, btw. Things you thought had nothing to do with the plot…did. Good stuff! Here is Mrs. H:
If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp. The light from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquillity of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.
The book that results from her advice turns out to be rather boring, Mrs. Hawkins notes, but on the upside, a fine old alley cat got a home and a dignified old brigadier got himself published.
Here’s a poem by Micheal Torres (author of An Incomplete List of Names) that actually came out of a writing prompt, and that offers writing prompts within itself. Why not pick one and try it out? I might do “Is there, truly, anything you would do over?” Read the full poem here.
Try a cleaning + writing exercise from a screenplay craft book: Take fifteen minutes to go through a closet or a junk drawer. Put a trash can/donation box next to you, and toss as much stuff as you can in it. Whatever you can’t give away or throw away has some meaning for you.
Write down why you can’t get rid of it, what exactly it means to you, where it came from, etc. Then consider the characters in the story, novel, or memoir you’re working on, and think about what sorts of meaningful objects they might possess, and how they might bring symbolic or emotional weight to a scene.
Read this Joy Williams piece1, and then write a scene in which someone says something that “wasn’t at all what [they] ultimately would have wanted to say.”
And finally, just for fun, three truly random thoughts: If you want to increase your chance of winning a coin toss, call the side that the coin started on. If you want to win The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest, use AI to make yourself funnier. If you like ten-dollar words, don’t hang out in a hot room.
Happy reading, happy writing—
Emily
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