Back from NE with a Writing Exercise

At the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference last week Mark Doty suggested an exercise for creating a long-ish poem. I think he said that Keats did something like this exercise when he was working on "Endymion." The exercise is to take a piece of writing which you want to expand or that "needs" expanding and to pluck a line from it. Use the plucked line as the first line to create a new piece of writing. Leave the new piece of writing alone for a day. Then repeat the process. Pluck a line from the second piece as a starter. Create a third piece. Leave it alone a day. Then repeat the process repeatedly. Mark Doty suggested doing the exercise for a week, or so, to create multiple sections of a single piece. Of course, when you go back and review everything you've written, some of it will need to be cut.

I can also imagine doing this exercise using prose. However, instead of plucking a line, you might decide to pluck a sentence--like in Finding Forester.

As Don Illich says, "Remember what happened in Finding Forester."