In June I attended the Colgate Writers Conference in Hamilton, NY, and participated in an intensive writing workshop. The seven participants exchanged novel excerpts (up to 40 pages) in advance, and then we spent two hours each day in the workshop, reviewing and critiquing and brainstorming each person’s work. It was awesome, and I’ll write more about that later. But for now I want to share one of the exercises our instructor, author and writing professor Raul Palma, led us through. He had us pair up, and then draw each other’s face. One catch, though. We couldn’t look down at our paper. We had to draw without looking. Then when we’d finished, Raul challenged us to write a description of our faces without using physical features. We couldn’t say the word “eyes” or “nose.” The purpose of the exercise was to get our creative juices flowing. (Writing juices, not drawing juices – obviously!!!) I managed to write some free-form verse, which you can see on the bottom of my portrait, which was drawn by my fellow participant, Ryan V (who is writing a terrific horror/mystery novel!). This verse I wrote proves that I’m not a poet, but the exercise did serve the intended purpose – it made me think about writing physical descriptions in a different way.

Think it looks like me? 🙂