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.
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!
Poetry: For poetry do an erasure or black-out poem from the following: Roger Ebert's review of the 1994 film "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" (one star).
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.
Fiction or (poetry): 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:
- The French Consider Jerry Lewis the Greatest Screen Comedian of All Time
- Acting More Normal
- Strange Shapes
- Like those zookeepers on late-night talk shows who always have pets crawling out of their collars
- Simultaneously a Spectacularly Good and Bad Detective
- Weird Nerdy Strangeness
Erasure Selection:
You know that the French consider Jerry Lewis the greatest screen comedian of all time. You've looked at some Lewis comedies, but you don't get the joke. You know that a lot of critics praised Steve Martin in "The Jerk," but you liked him better after he started acting more normal. You are not a promising candidate to see "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." The movie stars Jim Carrey, best known as the all-purpose white guy on "In Living Color," as a Miami detective who specializes in animals. He'll find your missing bird or your kidnapped pedigree dog. And as the movie opens, he's hired by the Miami Dolphins football team to find their mascot, a dolphin named Snowflake, which is mysteriously missing from its home in a large tank at the stadium.
The plot deepens, if that is the word, when Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino also disappears.
Carrey plays Ace as if he's being clocked on an Energy-O-Meter, and paid by the calories expended. He's a hyper goon who likes to screw his mouth into strange shapes while playing variations on the language. He shares his house with so many animals that he's like those zookeepers on late-night talk shows who always have pets crawling out of their collars. And he is simultaneously a spectacularly good and bad detective.
The story eventually involves Sean Young, who is much too talented for roles like Lt. Einhorn of the Miami police department; Udo Kier, once a distinguished German actor-director, now Ronald Camp, sinister millionaire; Courteney Cox, as the Dolphin's chief publicist; and Noble Willingham as the team's owner. Most of the people look as if they would rather be in other movies. Sean Young is a trouper, however, and does her best with dialogue like, "Listen, pet dick. How would you like me to make your life a living hell?" The movie basically has one joke, which is Ace Ventura's weird nerdy strangeness. If you laugh at this joke, chances are you laugh at Jerry Lewis, too, and I can sympathize with you even if I can't understand you. I found the movie a long, unfunny slog through an impenetrable plot. Kids might like it.
Real little kids.
