In my previous post, I talked about epiphanies, sudden realization of something you knew but didn’t know. You can make them happen. I learned this technique from Chip Scanlan at the Poynter Institute, who used it for a different purpose and in a different form.
You need four sheets of paper and a pencil. You write a partial prompting sentence at the top, such as “My Z made me Y…” or “I didn’t know that X….” Then you fill in the blanks (Z and Y, or X), and continue to write without raising the pencil. You scribble at top speed, never backing up, never correcting, never reading, never worrying about spelling or grammar or sense. You keep this up until you run out of steam, usually halfway down the page. Then you stop, stand up, walk around, shake your bootie, and sit down again.
Then, without reading what you wrote, you repeat the whole process, starting with the same partial sentence with blanks, and scribbling non-stop, borderline mindless, until you run out again. Then, without reading, you repeat the process twice more, or until you write to the bottom of the page. Then and only then, you read what you’ve written on the final page.
When I first tried this technique, I discovered I’d written, “I’m glad my father died.” I didn’t know that until that moment. Yesterday, I led a stuck writer through this process, and she discovered what she was failing to say was not at all what she wanted to say. It’s a quick and dirty coaching technique.
You can direct your epiphany a little by slanting your opening sentence fragment. Lately, I’ve wondered why I could never sing as an adult. (I can’t even hum!) So my opener could be something like this: “I sang as a child until ….”
N.B. Sometimes this magic doesn’t work.
[Ever experience an epiphany by writing?]