Three Favorite Techniques to Foster Meandering

I stare a lot in autumn. Living in New England, it’s a season of brilliance. Light so clear and bright, air cool and sun warm, brilliant colors everywhere. My favorite time to paint outside. My favorite time to meander.

I meander to avoid getting stuck. In my writing life, I get stuck when I try for directness. When I want to go from Point A to point B too obviously. I ignore nudges from the story that tell me a less direct way. I pass over subtleties. Unfortunately, it’s a lot like racing through our beautiful New England fall. I miss stuff. On the page, this often shows up as repeating whatever has worked in the past. Too boring for words.

The same roadblocks happen in my painting too—when my vision is too straight on, I don’t catch the subtle color relationships, the more interesting shapes and forms. Magic goes away.

Maybe why one of my art teachers always had us flip our paintings upside down? What comes to the eye then? Often new perspectives, more complex ones.

Not easy to avoid repeating. To skirt dullness or boredom with our creative work.

This week I wanted to share my three favorite techniques to foster the nonlinear, the meander. These are designed to wake up the part of you and me that is alert, alive, and adventuresome in our creative expression. It allows us to discover things that might surprise us.

Technique #1: Reading backwards

I learned about reading backwards from my mom.

My mom read voraciously all her life. In her later years, she decided to vet her books by reading the last few pages first. I thought this was scandalous when she first told me. She said she didn’t want to waste time on a story that didn’t have a good ending. And even if she read the ending, it didn’t seem to lessen her enjoyment.

One day, I was revising a very stuck story. I hated the opening. So I decided to try my mom’s technique.

I read the last page, then the page before it. Suddenly I saw what was missing from the opening. It was an amazing revelation and it totally fixed the problem that had me stuck. So now, I do it with all my writing at revision: I’ll scrap the logical and read my manuscript from the end: last chapter, then next to last, all the way to the first.

I also catch more errors and see those annoying places where I fell asleep or got bored and repeated.

Technique #2: The clustering map

I love to meander via a clustering map. It’s especially helpful when I’m still exploring directions for a piece of writing. Or when I’m stuck, again, on a scene that won’t come together.

If I’m exploring, I begin by writing a word or image in a circle in the center of a page and free-associate any image, word, or idea from that, making a cluster of new circles. Often this also leads to a new way in.

If I’m stuck, I will write one phrase describing the stuck place: John enters the bar, for instance. Then free-associate anything that might happen to John once he clears the doorway.

The goal in clustering is to not edit out any idea that comes. Everything is welcome—you never know when you’ll meander into something great.

Technique #3: Mosaic word games

A third favorite meander is a word game, where you draw a kind of mosaic on paper and enter words in each shape, then play with their connections to surprise your linear self.

You can do this electronically, of course, but something enters in when it’s done by hand, drawing or doodling on paper. I simply doodle a bunch of connected shapes—circles, rectangles, triangles, or any weird and wonderful shape that might resemble a piece of broken ceramic in a mosaic tile wall or tabletop. This doesn’t have to be fancy or make sense to anyone but you, and it’s terrific fun to let your hand wander as you draw. Good for the brain too!

Just make sure you create enough blank center in each piece to insert a word.

Then brainstorm a list of words that you associate with a current piece of writing, especially one where you’re stuck.

Here’s a rather embarrassing example from my first novel (oh-so-long-ago)! After I sold the manuscript to a publisher, my smart editor noticed that three scenes served the identical breakfast: blueberry pancakes. Never mind that the cast of characters was in a lake cabin for the summer where blueberry pancakes were the norm! My editor kindly asked me to be more original with two of the scenes.

But I loved those blueberry pancake breakfasts, and the request left me stumped for a few days. You laugh. But anything can stump a writer.

So I went for a meander with this third technique. I created my mosaic of shapes. I left the spaces blank. And I made a list of associated words or phrases that came to mind from writing this scene.

breakfast

jam

butter

honey

sunshine

rain

weak light

angry

radio

checkered cloth

blueberries

Dad

dogs

empty chair

I found myself writing words that weren’t exactly in the current scenes, which is a clue that my brain was now meandering and some good ideas might be emerging. I kept going until I had about twenty-five words, then I wrote one word or phrase into the blank space of each mosaic piece.

The last step is the most fun: once the words are in place in the squares, begin scanning for the ones that leap out. Then look at the word or phrase that leaps out to you, that catches your eye. Finally, look at the words in the shapes adjacent to it.

What stood out for me was the phrase “empty chair,” and its three adjacent words: “Dad,” “weak light,” and “angry.” I was intrigued. I began a ten-minute timed free write to explore how these were connected. What I came up with was an even bigger surprise.

A new scene emerged that defined the difficult relationship between the protagonist, Molly, and her talented, distant father. I realized something bad had to happen between them. I took that simple meander into an entirely new dimension in my revision: The father’s chair is empty because something bad has happened, and what might that be? It transformed the entire story.

Meander. It’s a completely different way in. And one I highly recommend.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, take yourself back to school: Try one of the techniques above. What did you learn?

What’s your favorite way to let your creative self meander?