The purpose of this exercise is to heighten our science writing as we develop our individual voices.
In her book The Alchemy of Us, materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez writes a chapter called “Connect” (p. 27). She opens the chapter with a story about US President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession in the 1860s, where a train carries his coffin across a number of states so people may “attend” his funeral before his body is laid to rest in Illinois. She relates this story to materials science through the materials that make up the tracks (iron, steel, metal alloys). She also makes an analogy between Lincoln and the train tracks as “connectors of the country.”
She could have used the word “connect” over and over again, which would have been mediocre writing. Instead, she uses verbs like bridge and link, and ones that carry metaphorical meanings: threaded, stitched, and circulatory system of the nation. The opposite term she uses is splintered, a powerful term that snaps – we can hear it.
Professor and songwriter Pat Pattison from Berklee College of Music in Boston presents a 5-minute video about verbs: Electrify your writing with verbs. He refers to verbs in terms of “wattage.” The average writer, he says, relies on a string of adjectives and verbs with a low wattage. The great writer, however, leverages powerful action verbs (200 Watts).
One way to reach these powerful verbs is to use a thesaurus.
However, to actually dig into ourselves and strengthen our own writing by developing our own voice, we have to do much more. One way is to practice object writing. Here is a 3.5-minute pivotal video on that topic by Pat Pattison.
In his book Writing Better Lyrics, Pattison implements object writing as a 10-minute writing exercise (p. 3). The way this works is you take an object, then without lifting your pen from paper (or fingers from keyboard), you write non-stop for 10 minutes on how the object looks (see), sounds (hear), tastes, smells, feels (touch), how your body reacts to it (organic – heartbeat, pulse, muscle tension, stomachache, cramp, breathing, etc.), and how your body moves in response to it (kinesthetic – sense of motion, dizzy, balance, embrace, shrink in fear, etc.). When free-writing, you won’t write in full sentences but you’ll put down words as quickly as they come.
----
My 10-minute writing sample (11:50-Noon) -
Kate spade, spade symbol, deck of cards, mom is the queen of spades, queen of hearts, queen of cards, she wins our game while she’s half asleep in the hospital, Mom, Mom, It’s your turn. She wakes up and makes her play then sleeps during mine. Mom, Mom, it’s your turn, she plays & wins the game and I’m flabbergasted. Mom - what this does to my ego, I lose while you’re recovering and I’m fine. Wow. Queen of 500-Rum. Teaches us all to play Bridge as kids, I have no patience, bidding, bidding, bidding, I tense up, how high to bid, someone could out-bid me, or I can’t meet my bid, I set aside Bridge and play Pinochle instead, more my style, I relax, bid once, take it or leave it, no more decisions. Decision out of choice of 3 is great; out of multitudes of choices due to internet, how ppl do it? Tensing at the endless possibilities need to make a decision, go back to the eye glass case, skyblue cover, biking along the GAP trail, riding a horse through Cook Forest, skyblue with clouds writing across the sky: kate spade, New York - and dark green grass below, dark green grass on bottom of eye glass case, wow, sky blue top and deep dirty green, muddy, horse slips downhill at cook forest, no worries horse has 3 more legs, the green smells of weeds composting, not cool but not bad, bad, not like pollution from steel mills of Pittsburgh – when Mom was growing up, when I grew up, pollution level makes me nauseous on the way to school. Sometimes so bad, what did it smell like? Not dirt, that’s organic like composting weeds, but a smell worse than bus fumes. I want to head home – or back to the eye glass case – the green turns me off, muggy, humid, a green I wouldn’t use in a daily painting, I like the sky blue top of the case, shines from the sun coming through the window, kitchen-counter smooth case, brings me calmness like a weekend riding horses in Cook Forest, no worries back home, no covid, no delta variant. Mom, queen of hearts, her sweater smells like her perfume, what we wear when we need our Mom-hug, grandma-hug.
----
How the exercise improves our writing is to do this every day, first thing in the morning, and stick to the 10-minute limit. If we go beyond 10 minutes, the next day we’ll say we have no time. The 10-minute writing will not yield a piece of writing we want to use. Its purpose, through daily practice, is to help us more quickly access those words and metaphors that are uniquely us when we do our regular writing.
My suggestion:
Set aside one week to do the 10-minute writing at the same time each day. After 7 days, assess how it’s working. The first day I pretty much guarantee will be difficult. By the 7th day, I pretty much guarantee you’ll note a difference in how much more quickly your mind takes you somewhere you didn’t expect!
-Judy Meiksin
Comments