• As you read: Take notes! Underline what interests or surprises you, or anything you may have questions about. Write in the margins of the page. If you say something while you read, you won't fall asleep, and I guarantee you will remember what is most important to you about what you have read.

Try Out Lines (Instigating Lines)

For me the play of rewriting usually begins with what I call "instigating lines," fragments of language that contain an interesting conflict, tension, contradiction, irony, unexpected idea.

Each stands for an idea that could be developed. They are rarely sentences, sometimes just a word that has a special meaning for me. "Hero" is such a word. I was in combat in World War II as a paratrooper and I hate the casual use of the word "hero" for veterans of my generation. Few of us were heroes. In fact, many soldiers I served with who wanted to be heroes did stupid things that were both ineffective and betrayed our position, like standing up with a machine gun and firing at the enemy. I don't want to go into combat with heroes. I have written essays, columns, poems, and fiction exploring this topic--and will write more. That well will never run dry.

The line is an individual matter. It reflects your personal experience and private response to the world. Reye's Syndrome is a rare disease that killed my 20-year-old daughter. Those two words are packed with enough meaning that I wrote a book The Lively Shadow about losing her and surviving that loss.

I am amused that lawyers have "practices." I want no lawyer to practice on me. The term "mild heart attack" irritates me. MY heart attack was not mild to me; no one's heart attack is mild to the patient.

Lines often float by in my  head and I grab one to see what it means. I heard myself say "I had a long two-year marriage to my first wife" and that made me write a piece about the "short" 51-year-long  marriage I have had with my second wife. I hear a coach say a player isn't fast but he is quick and I have an apparent contradiction to explore.

I hear the term "the guilt of silence" and it reminds me of the times I have done harm by what I haven't said. "Unlearning to Write" is a line that became an article on all the lessons that my students had to be untaught--that you have to know what you want to say before you say it, that big words are better than short words, that you have to write formal introductions and endings.

Play with Images

In looking for a subject to write about or a way to respond to an assignment, I often play with images. Writing is a visual art. We see the world through language. When I recall the memories of watching my first grandchild learning to walk, his stumbles, his getting up and trying again, I remember the strong image of watching his mother--my daughter--take her first steps. And then I remember all the difficult first steps I have taken in my life. Images such as these often appear before my mind's eye. Other times they appear in a draft. I may use them or not, but the stimulate my thinking and my writing.

My head is filled with such powerful images but each day brings new ones. The other day I passed a classroom in which a professor lectured at a podium on his desk and his three--yes, three--students sat in the back row as far away from him as possible. I knew he was a bad teacher and that made me think of the geography of the classroom and those teachers of mine who were close to me yet kept a professional distance.

I watch the salesperson who stops talking and steps back when her realizes that I am selling the new bed to my wife and his job is not to interfere. I see moonlight reflected on the snow in my woods and remember how we feared the moonlight that exposed us to the enemy during the war. I notice the distance between the presidential candidate and his daughters and speculate a reason.

I do not think these scenes, I see them, relive them, experience them again in memory. It is as if I were watching a movie in which I was one of the actors. If I decide to use the image in a draft, then I study it with my mind's eye and write it down, usually seeing it even more clearly as I write.