Artifice and More Maps

 

Artifice Magazine has a really cool “wish list” of things they’re looking for in submissions. The items on it serve as great exercises. Two of my favorites, (pretty much because they have to do with my last post/have to do with everything I’ve been thinking about this week) are:

• A narrative in the form of a maze
• A maze in the form of a narrative

Write that map. Go get published.

Here to There

Write about a place as if you are drawing a map of it with your words. Think about the position of places in terms of everything in your description. Where does that road begin and end? How does the position of your words reflect the content of the landscape? How does what happened in that place reflect the map of it?

The picture I found for this post makes me think about mapping characters. While I’m writing I’m going to think about where these people begin and end, not in terms of time or events, but with place.

More memories

When my father was a child he couldn’t understand how a camera could capture a person. He thought that every time someone took his picture he had to scrunch his body up really tiny so that he could fit inside of the tiny camera. This is him in action. Funny that he grew up to become a photographer, hm?

When photographer Larry Sultan’s father was forced to retire early from his job as a corporate executive, Sultan wanted to take a photograph that showed his father’s frustration and powerlessness in retirement. But, in fact, Sultan told his father not to smile. The photograph was posed. Sultan’s father told him,  “Any time you show that picture, tell people that that’s not me sitting on the bed looking all dressed up and nowhere to go, depressed. That’s you sitting on the bed, and I am happy to help you with the project, but let’s get things straight here.'”

So…

Write about a time when you felt like you were a character in someone elses story. This could be based on a photo of you that tells a story using your image or someone talking about you. It could be over hearing someone talk about you, for example. Think about how their story compares to your own memory.