The 2021 Writing Series is a series of daily writing exercises for both prose writers and poets to keep their creative mind stretched and ready to go—fresh for your other writing endeavors. The writing prompts take the impetus—that initial crystal of creation—out of your hands (for the most part) and changes your writing creation into creative problem solving. Instead of being preoccupied with the question "What do I write" you are instead pondering "How do I make this work?" And in the process you are producing new writing.
This is not a standard writing session. This is pure production—to keep your brain thinking about using language to solve simple or complex problems. The worst thing you can do is sit there inactive. It's like taking a 5 minute breather in the middle of a spin class—the point is to push, to produce something, however imperfect. If you don't overthink it, you will be able to complete all of the exercises in under 30 minutes.
Erasing Roger Ebert 17 "A Stranger in Town"
For today's exercise we have split paths for fiction and poetry, though I highly recommend that even fiction writers try the poetry exercise, because erasures can be a blast!
For poetry do an erasure or black-out poem from the following: Roger Ebert's review of the 1968 film "A Stranger in Town" (1 star) (Needless to say, he wasn't a fan).
Roger Ebert has been the archetypal film critic for decades, and he's written thousands of reviews. Because of their nature, almost their own bit of ekphrastic art, this series of erasures will be lots of fun!
An Erasure/Blackout is really simple: you take the given text and remove many words to make it your own new piece. One way to go about the erasure that I like to do is to copy the text and paste it twice into your document before you start erasing or blacking out (in MS Word set the text background color to black), that way if you get further into the erasure and decide you want a somewhat different tone or direction, it's easy to go to the unaltered version and make the erasure/black-out piece smoother. Another tip is to look for recurring words, in this example 'bingo' occurs multiple times and could be a good touchstone for your piece.
If you insist on fiction (or just feel like writing a "Title Mania" piece), write a piece with one of these titles taken from this section:
- To Look into the Swamp
- There Had Been Good Movies Once in the Theater
- He Thought About Good Movies
- In the Morning it Would Be Different
- The Lunchroom on the Corner
- Bad Foreign Westerns
Erasure Selection:
The movie critic lay in the dark, listening to the silkworms. He could not sleep. He had behaved badly the night before. Very badly. He had not been able to sit through the movie. Only 20 minutes after the movie began, he had left. He had wanted to stay. But he could not bear to look into the swamp. He tried to drive the fear from his mind.
He knew that he would try again tomorrow.
He fished the theater again in his mind. This time he would go in the morning. Yes, that would be better. The last time had been messy. The morning would be better.
First he would sleep. Perhaps he would dream of the good movies. There had been good movies once in the theater, he remembered. He thought about the good movies. He did not want to think about "A Stranger in Town." In the morning, it would be different. Then he would go to the movie.
The last time had been bad. He did not like to think about it. He had been a coward. Crowther, the great white hunter, would not have behaved so badly. Crowther would have stood his ground. But he had not. After 20 minutes, he had turned his back and fled from the theater. He did not like to think about it.
But now it was morning. He could not wait any longer. He went to the lunchroom on the corner.
"I can't stand to think about it," he told George, the counterman. "I can't stand to think about that audience sitting there, watching the movie, waiting for the end, not even fighting back."
"Well," George said, "then you had better not think about it."
But he could not stay away. He went to the theater again. There was another scene this time. The hero was in the dark. Then seven men lit matches. They kicked the hero. He screamed. They knocked his head against the stairs. They poured wine on him. They laughed. There was no dialog. Only thuds. It was too expensive to dub bad foreign Westerns. He would take the advice of George, the counterman. He would not think about it.
