Concreteness

Object Writing

Writers often use a sensitization exercise to get themselves going. They write for ten minutes starting from an arbitrary "writing prompt," often a line of poetry.

A version of this sensitization exercise is presented by Pat Pattison in Writing Better Lyrics. He calls it "Object Writing." The procedure is shown in Object Writing. An example is shown in Object Writing for "Pillow".

 

Object Writing.

Pick some object. Write 10 minutes about it, nonstop, without editing and without pausing to think. Concentrate on as many of the seven senses as apply. (The seven senses are the usual five, sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell, along with body sensations, gut feelings, and the sense of balance.)

 

If you wish to prepare a worksheet for this exercise, you can just list the seven senses along the top of the page to remind you what you should be concentrating on, just as I have listed them in the example box.

The list of senses is itself abstract. Here are some prompts for the kinds of sense impressions intended. Ask yourself,

• Is it
  Sharp? Hard? Brittle? Soft? Rough? Smooth? Cold? Hot? Wet? Dry?
• Is it
  Sweet? Bitter? Sour? Salty? Picante?
• What does it smell like? (For smells, what memories do they bring up?)
• Is it
  Bright, dark? What colors? What patterns? What size? What shape?
• Does it feel
  Queasy? Tight? Empty?
• Does it feel
  Firmly planted? Spinning? Falling? Moving forward? Moving backwards? Moving sideways? Turning? Lurching? Rocking? Swinging? Like on a boat?

 

Object Writing for "Pillow"

Sight, Touch, Hearing, Taste, Smell, Gut Feelings, Balance   Cool, fresh laundry scent, leaf patterns, autumn hued, puffy, rectangular, thick, hot, sweaty, salty? Cotton taste, dry to mouth, muffled sounds, softens sounds in the distance, pillow fights, bouncing on bed, falling on bed, queasy stomach, sick in bed, sweaty pillow, disoriented, half awake.

 

When to do object writing

When should you apply this exercise? There are three main occasions:

First, you can apply it to an arbitrary object just before you get into writing. This gets your mind focused on the concrete and sensual, but it is not likely to produce anything applicable to your topic.

Second, you can apply it to an object connected to the topic you working on. This helps bring the topic to mind as well as getting your mind to concentrate on the senses. It may produce useful associations.

Third, you can use it to filter possibilities. Suppose you are considering an object to use as a metaphor, or you are writing a poem or song lyric and it's name rhymes. Object writing can tell you whether it has enough associations to be of use. Suppose my topic is sleep. I can find all sorts of associations for sleep including beds, blankets and pillows. I choose pillow and find the associations shown in Object Writing for "Pillow".

 

Object Listing?

You could, of course, create a blank table in your word processor with each of the senses having its own section. Whenever you need to, run off a copy and fill in the associations. I like this idea, because I prefer making lists rather than writing sentences. But a problem with having boxes to fill in for the different senses is that I cannot cluster sense impressions easily. In Object Writing for "Pillow", where I showed a few associations for pillows, I got different clusters of sensory associations depending on whether I was thinking of sleeping or pillow fights or lying in bed ill. It is easier to get clusters of associations if you don't have to worry about boxes but can just go on to the next paragraph.