Here’s a writing exercise that calls for deep honesty and lots of guts. Write about your fears – those real, down dark fears that you don’t like to admit to yourself. What are you really afraid of?  Connecting with your fears is a great way to access your authentic self, to give voice to the real you who lives at the bottom of who you are. The last time I did this exercise this is what I wrote:

 I want to write about being afraid of death and sickness and incapacity. I want to write how I never want to be helped to the bathroom by my children and how I don’t want to see pity in their smiles as I stumble for a word. I want to write how scared I am of having to give up driving and how I don’t want to be an old lady confessing all the trivialities of my life to a doctor who only pretends to care. I want to write about fearing that everyone will eventually forget me and no one will feel the warmth of my smile and won’t miss it either. I want to write about how much I’d like to see 2025 but I’m so afraid I won’t. I want to write about the fears so that afterwards they will be drained dry of their power and lie, inert and ineffectual, like dryer lint caught in a lint trap, no more scary than that.

Here's a tip I've recommended before, from Natalie Goldberg, the best writing teacher on the planet, in my opinion. (www.nataliegoldberg.com). When your writing seems blah and boring to you, like you're just rehashing what you've said before, sit down and write uninterrupted for ten minutes and follow this rule: each sentence must have a different topic than the sentence before. Boy does this make your mind swirl, and new ideas literally leap into your brain.  Here's one I wrote:

The peppermint leaves steam with health. My cat is a pain in the ass. My scarf has beads of a vaguely Egyptian design. I wish I didn't worry so much about nothing, but perhaps it is my job, who knows. Far from here people die with the name of God on their lips. I don't think I'm as smart as everyone, but then again I'm pretty happy with my intelligence. Jim Morrison's eyes were wild with the frantic love of mystery. When I was in Paris I walked to Montmartre in the breaking dawn and saw the shop windows light, one by one. I've looked for gypsies under my bed but so far none have materialized. Today I was interviewed by a boy of perhaps twenty and got an unpleasant glimpse into the future. My grandmother totters on her old swollen feet and wants to die but doesn't know how. To do something well you must love with great passion all your relations, past and future. Walking underneath maple trees is dangerous, for they throw their missiles rapidly and do not aim at all. After all I've done, I still want more.

It is hard to write juicy prose that makes your readers tingle with recognition or awareness, and it is especially hard when writing about big abstract concepts like justice or peace or love. Because to elicit tingles and not yawns, you must write in specific detail, while still communicating universal principles. It's hard because after all, language itself is an abstraction.  So do an exercise like this: write about the ultimate abstract concept — God — but write about her/him/it in only specific details or sensory terms. (It is not necessary to believe in God to do this exercise — if you don't, just pretend you do.)  Here's the stuff I wrote:

I sing to God, but she does not sing back. Instead she talks in a voice of cotton, normal and prosaic, just folks, and I hear her voice in my ears and it sounds like my voice. That's because she's a shape-shifter, as am I. I am God and she is me, so it makes sense that she would speak of homely matters like brushing one's teeth and raking the leaves and the problems with advising adult children without hopelessly antagonizing them. What does God smell like? I think God must smell like all strong things, and subtle things too — fish on the waterfront and first lilacs in spring, and yes mostly she smells like dirt, the smell rising from the damp earth of the garden when the worms have been especially active. And God feels like a scratchy broom that pricks your finger, and the soft buttery feel of suede and the icy numbing pain stinging your legs if you wade in a mountain river. Also the hot humid breath of vines in a tropical jungle, that's God too. And God tastes like chocolate of course,  but also macaroni and cheese and fried chicken. And so what does God look like? Well now, she looks like everything, doesn't she? The smiles of children and the fiery eyes of frightened warriors and the tears trickling down mothers' cheeks when the warriors are killed, and the first daffodils of spring and the big brown maple leaves crumbling on the lawn, and the intricate spider webs made in unlikely places, and the struggling flies dying in those webs. God is too big to write about even if you use detail, so I won't try any more. I'd rather write about the poem I wrote today and the sorrow in my friend's eyes when she told me about her divorce, and the sharp sweet taste of lemon-ginger tea and how it comforts me to drink it even though it reminds me of my own loneliness.

A good way to break up your writing, and to see things in an original way, is to break up your mind. Pretend that you are crazy, and then write from that place. What form will your craziness take?  Are you catatonic, schizophrenic, obsessive compulsive?  When I do this exercise, I almost always imagine myself with multiple personality disorder. Here is a piece I wrote about my 4 other personalities — Ed, Irene, Whinnie and Kinko. (Do not call the men in white coats — I am only pretending!)

I live in the nuthouse, but I'm not alone. I'm not alone because Irene and Ed and Whinnie and Kinko live here with me. I'm in here because you're only supposed to have one person per body. How stingy normal people are! What boring lives they must lead! One personality is not enough, and even my five seems pretty chincy to me at times — I'd like to work up to 9 or 10 — then we could have a baseball team and call each other names like Champ and Bud and Dude.

I know more than any of the other 4, of course, but that's because I'm the bookkeeper and must keep track of everyone. Otherwise they may get lost somewhere out in the dangerous world of hard edges and sharp-toed boots. Ed is the treasurer and he saves the money and sometimes he presides over trials as a judge. No one likes him because he sniffs in a smarmy way. And Irene is fat and sloppy and drinks too much and carries old used Kleenex out to fancy restaurants and leaves them embedded in her mashed potatoes. And Whinnie wears a skimpy beige dress with rips in the hem that shows her skinned knock-knees, and she whines to go home but then when she is home she whines for her bed, and in bed she whines for someone to hold her hand. She is never safe anywhere, and she's right of course, none of us are. And Kinko stays in the shadows — he wears red bulky sweaters and a black slouch hat that shades his face. I don't know much about him except I've never seen his fingers because he keeps his hands balled into fists.

Here we all live in the nuthouse, but this is a good thing because if they let us leave it may be too hard to do my job and keep us all together.

Never forget that you can always write about your past.  Just ask yourself some questions.  Try these:

If you live in America, are you or your parents or grandparents from a different country? Which country or countries are your ancestors from? When did you or your parents/grandparents come to America, and why? What was the assimilation experience like? What was hardest for you or your forebears to adjust to? What aspects of your native culture did you or they retain, and which changed? Did you or they experience prejudice or suspicion? What beliefs did Americans hold about your culture, and were those beliefs right or wrong? How do you think your native culture benefits America? Do you think your relationship to another country gives you a different viewpoint from other Americans?

Ah, those sensory details … it's often difficult to remember that we have five (or maybe more) senses. Our default is sight, our strongest sense as humans, but it's good to practice writing about experiences through another sense.  Here's a piece I wrote using the phrase "I touch" to begin most sentences. Try it yourself … (maybe even share)

I touch my leg that has a big bad owie on it, because some time ago I fell through rotten wood and got a difficult infection which mangled the skin on my leg so now it looks like corrugated tin, knobby and ridged, radiating old pain and ugliness. I touch my leg anyway because I am trying to love it again – after all, it wasn’t my leg’s fault it got infected by that rotten flesh-eating bug. I picture that bug as a hairy little ugly with an evil leering grin, my masticated flesh drooling and dripping from his jaws. But that was years ago so that bug is long gone now and what is left is my left leg crying for love, so I touch it soft and tender and sing an old hymn, Amazing Grace, because my leg informs me it especially likes that song.

Never forget that you can always write about your past.  Just ask yourself some questions.  Like these (and don't forget to share):

Almost everyone has an experience of a disaster – a fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, shipwreck, train collision, car crash, explosion, etc. And everyone has a story too. Tell the story of your brush with disaster. Write about the heroism you saw – the kindness, courage, generosity, tenacity of people coping with disaster. Or write about the greed and selfishness you saw, if that was your experience. How did your disaster experience change you? How did it change your perception of others? What did you do after the disaster that you hoped would keep you safe from another one? Did you move away? Did you campaign for better safeguards?

Never forget that you can always write about your past.  Just ask yourself some questions.  Like these:

Write about a book that influenced you, such as Catcher in the Rye, or For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gone With the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Color Purple. How old were you when you read this book? Did this book change your opinions or beliefs? What did it teach you? Did it motivate you to action? Did it challenge you, or did it affirm and resonate with your own experiences? Did it surprise you? Did you recommend this book to others, or discuss it with others? Was this book recommended to you? Or was it a “forbidden” book? Did the book live up to your expectations, or surpass them? *

* Excerpt from Making History: how to remember, record, interpret and share the events of your life. More lists of questions like this can be found in that book.

A couple of days ago I wrote about how to make your internal critic go away by writing about them, and told you that my critic was named Ed.  But Ed is only one of them – like most of us, I have several internal critics, all of them nasty.  Here is a piece I wrote about Cousin Irene, the voice inside my head who is in charge of procrastination, laziness, and all the addictive distractions there are.  

Cousin Irene lurches into the room, trailing leavings from her purse – a dried-up lipstick, a wallet with a broken zipper, a scarf that has gum wadded in it, and of course those old used Kleenexes. She doesn’t pick anything up, because that is my job. She plops down on the most comfortable chair in the room. Her bulk overflows the cushion and her dress rides up on her thighs; she is wearing nylon socks that only reach halfway up her meaty calves. She tells me it’s too hot to write today, and besides there is nothing interesting to write about, and even if there was something interesting, I would not be able to find it. She demands a glass of wine, even though it’s only two in the afternoon. She asks what’s in the refrigerator, and then says I should make her a plate of something, whatever is there. She turns on the TV; it is Judge Judy, which suits her fine, she likes to sneer at all those stupid people. She spills her wine on the front of her dress but doesn’t bother to wipe it off. 

After I wrote this, I asked Cousin Irene to leave. She gave me a sly look out of her piggy little eyes and promised to visit me again tomorrow.  Oh joy.

We all have internal editors or critics. That's the voice that tells you that you are stupid, a bad singer, clumsy, boring. It's the voice that critiques every piece of writing you do, every conversation you have, the way you dance. This voice often shows up when you sit down to write. He, she, or it leans over your shoulder and whispers mean things in your ears. My voice is named Ed. He used to tie my fingers up in knots and breathe dry ice into my brain. He doesn't do this so much any more, because I found out that I could diminish Ed's power by simply — writing about HIM.

Write about your internal critic. Give it a name. What gender is it? Is it human or animal or a black scary cloud, like the monster in Lost? What does it look like? Is it tall, short, fat, skinny, pock-marked? What does it wear? Is it sloppy or tidy? Does it speak in a loud booming voice, or hiss like a snake? Does it wear too much perfume, or sweat profusely? Is it older and wiser than you, or is it one of those know-it-all popular teenagers who used to inhabit your high school? You know your critic doesn't admire you, so who does it admire? Who does it hate? Finally, ask your critic — and then write down its answer — why it says the things it says.

You can do this exercise as many times as is necessary. Eventually it will become clear to you that your critic is not on your side. And then maybe you will stop listening to it.