Introductions

I thought perhaps our first post next Sunday could be our "Introductions" as Lindsay mentioned, and, these can come in any format people are interested in, really. But, as I was looking for a first Writing Exercise to post, I came across this one: Take it or leave it! As mentioned before, anyone interested in the Writing Exercises can do them, or even try them and not end up posting that attempt but post something else, or just decide entirely to do their own thing ... that's the joy of writing!

One Plus One Equals a Mercedes-Benz

I always tell my students, especially the sixth-graers, the ones who are becoming very worldly-wise: Turn off your logical brain that says 1 + 1 = 2. Open up your mind to the possibility that 1 + 1 can equal 48, a Mercedes-Benz, an apple pie, a blue horse. Don't tell your autobiography with facts, such as "I am in sixth grade. I am a boy. I live in Owatonna. I have a mother and father." Tell me who you really are: "I am the frost on the window, the cry of a young wolf, the thin blade of grass."

Forget yourself. Disappear into everything you look at - a street, a glass of water, a cornfield. Everything you feel, become totally that feeling, burn all of yourself with it. Don't worry - your ego will quickly become nervous and stop such ecstasy. But if you can catch that feeling or smell or sight the moment you are one with it, you probably will have a great poem.

Then we fall back on the earth again. Only the writing stays with the great vision. That's why we have to go back again and again to books - good books, that is. And read again and again the visions of who we are, how we can be. The struggle we go through as human beings, so we can again and again have compassion for ourselves and treat each other kindly.

-Natalie Goldberg

This exercise came from a book called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It's one of the shorter ones! But if I do more from her, I'll take out fun pieces from them, just to get us thinking. When I was around 10 years old, my father bought me this book and we began, once a week, to read one "exercise" and then put our pen/pencil to the paper for 10 - 15 minutes, timed writing. Don't pick up the pen from the page. If this piece ends up being some sort of "introduction," great! You can tone it/edit it later, and post it next week. If it just gets you revved up to write something else - anything else! Then, that's great too. We're just here to write!