January, the novel, the new
INVESTIGATION
This month, we’ll think about new forms. For a lot of the US and many cities in the northern hemisphere across the world, January is dark, cold, rainy, and/or dreary.
It's kind of like the pages in the middle of a novel or memoir during which the action goes flat, the tension relaxes, and readers put down the book.
So this month, we will think about hybrid or experimental forms that can interrupt the static, the monotone.
EXPLORATION
Here is a reading about list essays.
One type of list essay begins with a phrase such as: Things I love to hate, People I've fallen asleep with, or, like in this essay, In the fifties.
Other options include, like in Maggie Nelson's bluets, picking something to list. Nelson picks the color blue. She number the blue things, moments, memories, types of blue, definitions, etc.
You can also use a repeating sentence to format your list. Something like: I was the worst mother of the world when.....
then write a couple of paragraphs.
Then write again: I was the worst mother in the world when...
With a somewhat controversial sentence like the one I'm using, you might write about mistakes you've made as a mother and times you've been judged as a mother and ways in which being a mother feels heavy, hard, challenging. You might use irony and sincerity in your list. You might switch the word "worst" to "best" at some point and use both irony and sincerity in your moments of "best mother in the world" the same way that you did when you were describing the moments of "worst."
ACTIVITY
Pick a project you feel stuck on or a project you're hesitant to start, and use one of the list options.
Don't get stuck on what type of list you're going to write. Here are some examples to try.
Mirror a sentence that you like that happens right before the list. Let's say your sentence is: Falling asleep on the beach under that kind of sky felt like real life. Your list sentence stem might be: It felt like real life when....
Pick an item or concept that is a theme in your work. For example, let's say you're writing an essay about becoming a nurse, and in your essay, you write a lot about the florescent lights in the hospital clinics where you work. You might make a list about different lights. See how your list can be paired with actions to move the story forward through a scene or period of time.
List all the people in your scene and what they are doing like: Mom couldn't sleep. Dad paced across the kitchen. Sammy rolled on his back, over and over, staring at all of us, expecting a belly rub.