On a Very Useful Writing Exercise

Neither/Nor

When I go into the storeroom of my head, looking for something Y to compare something X to, fossicking out the stuff of analogies and similes, I can often get stuck reaching around at the same height, accessing only the no-bending-or-stretching shelves.

In other words, I’m not getting at all the other stuff that’s in there.

Next week, I’m teaching Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. One of accompanying texts is Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures in Literature.

Speaking of Proust’s vast collection of miniatures, Nabokov admiringly quotes Derrick Leon:

Enriched by his remarkable and comprehensive culture, by his deep love and understanding of classical literature, of music and of painting, the whole work displays a wealth of similes derived with equal aptness and facility from biology, from physics, from botany, from medicine, or from mathematics that never ceases to astonish and delight.

Each of us has our own culture, our own junkroom of stuff, that we’ve acquired over however long we’ve been paying attention. Along with biology and physics and so on, we have pop culture, slang, sense memories, half-learned languages, pharmaceuticals, and other things I can’t reach right now.

This exercise I call Neither/Nor, and it’s that simple.

Before starting your proper writing of the day, fill a notebook page, or half an A4 page, with a column that might read something like this:

Neither fish nor fowl

Neither brandy nor mascara

Neither Sonic the Hedgehog nor grapheme

Neither modem-screech nor Clytemnestra

I think you get the idea.

The first couple of couples may be conventional, like fish and fowl, just to get you started. But within three or four lines, you should be climbing up to reach higher and higher shelves, or going down on your belly to stretch out into the dustiest corners.

What haven’t you thought of for years? What’s in there somewhere?

Try to make the Neithers and the Nors as different as you possibly can. Try to put words together that have never existed in the same sentence.

If you can’t think of anything, go for Proust’s or my list of suggestions.

Neither [botanical reference] nor [slang word]

After completing that initial page or half page, you can look back up the list and start creating even unlikelier pairs.

This isn’t about free association, and learning from your subconscious, although that may also be going on. This is about reminding yourself that such things exist, already, already ready for use, in your head — and that, if you need to, you can grab them.

And more importantly that, if you felt like it (which perhaps you’re now a little more likely to) you could write about them.

Because you’re more various than you thought you were.