Transfusion for Creativity: On Switching Genre

The writer’s group to which I belong recently instituted a new practice, which doesn’t replace but enhances our reading of our works in progress. At every meeting, one of us provides the group with a prompt—an image, a few words—and we all create some short work inspired by it to submit for critique at the next meeting. The variety of “takes” on the prompt is always stunning. Some are serious, some are lighthearted. This person may submit a poem, another a flash fiction. We use Google Docs to share and comment on one another’s work, but there are many platforms available. The main thing is to respond.

Now, it could be seen as a distraction to stop the manuscript of your novel to write a poem or a teeny tiny story or whatever other short form suggests itself (mini-essay, anyone?). But I think that isn’t as true as it might seem, as one of my blogging colleagues has recently suggested.

Anemia of the imagination?

It’s no secret that it does a writer good to step away for a moment occasionally. You may be physically tired, or mentally tired. Perhaps you’ve mislaid your sense of direction, or the manuscript has suddenly become stale to you, and you seem to have lost all the freshness that is the core of your style. Your problem may be anemia… of the imagination. Give it a transfusion: something out of the ordinary. Learn to look at the world and your writing differently.

“But,” you say, “the important thing is butt in chair. If I don’t keep plugging ahead, forging through my dry spell, I may lose heart altogether.”

There’s a lot to that. But there comes a time when the well is dry. You can write all day and not produce anything but words. Your imagination count is low, and that’s why everything is so tiring. Transfusion time!

New Blood

Many of us don’t consider ourselves poets. We love prose, and (ahem!) the longer the better. I thought I couldn’t produce a haiku to save me. All that idea in three little lines? Even flash fiction. By the time I’ve set the scene, it would be over. But forced to think small by our biweekly prompt, I found I could condense. No need to grope in vain for a subject: there it is, right before you. Now, imagine. Does the prompt evoke sadness? Joy? Hearing what others have come up with demonstrates how no one interpretation is right. That diversity alone is a source of wonder.

It seems to me that novelists, essayists and poets all see the world a little differently. Poets can indulge in a kind of close-focused curiosity that doesn’t often find a place in prose, unless you’re Annie Proulx. So, for a fiction writer like myself to have to put on her microscope specs and look close, closer, closest—it rearranges the entire head. Now I’ll take that new viewpoint into the writing of my novel, and it will be new, seen through new eyes.

Not a Competition

One thing can really freeze a person up in this genre-bending exercise, and that is a fear of looking inexpert. We have so much mastery over our own form, and to find ourselves a novice again—especially by comparison to those who are more accustomed to poetry (and really, really good at it, in the case of my group)—can be mildly embarrassing or worse. But the object is not to produce The Best Poem. It’s to put on the mind, the eyes of a poet, to send a fresh burst of oxygen through your imagination so your prose can breathe. Never think you’re being unfaithful to your manuscript; this isn’t a distraction, it’s honing your art.

You don’t have to be a part of a group to do this this either, although it’s more fruitful to get feedback. Set yourself a biweekly or monthly or even daily goal. Pull your prompt from any page of the newspaper or a magazine—be it a phrase or an image. And dare to think small. It’s like a transfusion for the imagination!