The Lazy Susan

Today was the last session of my four week writing workshop. In tonight’s class we were encouraged to bring a piece of writing that has been sitting with us, or not sitting right with us, for some time. I brought to class a draft piece I wrote last year located in my “Free Writing” Google Doc where I keep a (semi-)running stream of consciousness of essays to explore, This particular essay mused on what it’s meant to be an Asian tourist traveling in Western societies — and living in Western cultures.

We went through several creative prompts to become unstuck (unstick?), and one of them was so powerful that I wanted to it with you. The prompt was inspired by the poem “The Lazy Susan” by Adrienne Su.

Part I

The inspiration (well, part of it).

Prompt: Copy over either the first or last line of your final paragraph (of the text you brought) onto a fresh page. This will be your new first line. From there, write 6 to 10 additional sentences, one stacked over the other. Let this free write take you to a different place from however your original text ended. In fact, you could try refuting your original premise.

Part II

The inspiration - all of it. It gave me chills.

Prompt: Create a line unit palindrome by unfolding the same lines in reverse order. Make small changes (verb tense, pronouns, homonyms) to sharpen or possibly estrange the text, as the spirit moves you. Does mirroring the same words reveal a different position or way to view the ideas? If another voice arises (perhaps not yours) who is speaking?

My own writing is a work in progress. I’m playing around a lot with sentence structure to give the reader the right feeling and I’m not quite there yet, but I hope it’s the same sensation I got when reading Adrienne’s work.