Twelve Jump Starts to Writing

-Develop These Ideas and Get Started With Your Writing Immediately-

One:
Begin your writing with the line: “I travel with forged papers.”

Two:
Hold your hand under the running water from the faucet and write with the other hand.

Three:
Locate a thunderous silence in your life and let it roar.

Four:
Put on a stretch hat and pull it down over your eyes. Write about the pictures that parade across your field of vision.

Five:
Make a poem using the cluster of these words: landscape, spade, geology, strata, divide, fault line.

Six:
Take a poem you’ve written. Use each line in it to start a new poem.

Seven:
Have two ancestors who never met speak to each other.

Eight:
Start your writing piece with the line: “The reappearance of chocolate on the streets of Moscow after the War. . .”

Nine:
Write a poem with seven lines. In the first line, have a number. In the second line, a sibling appears. In the third line, a journey by boat. In the fourth line, rains. In the fifth line, the word “spring.” In the sixth line, the word “destiny.” In the seventh line, whatever you want.

Ten:
Rake through the leaves of memory and return to one place in your mind. Without moving from the spot, turn your consciousness slowly one complete revolution and record what your eyes see.

Eleven:
Proceed through your face and expose the lines of a poem that reside in your forehead, between your eyes, under your eyelids, down the slope of your nose, resting on your cheeks, in the crease under your mouth, and caught between your teeth. Gently lift the lines from their hiding places.

Twelve:
Use this first line for your piece: “From what I know and see of my life, in a past life I must have been . . .” (Note: It's not necessary to take a stance on past-life regressions. This is an exercise.)

* * *