Stochastic Writing Practice

In Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, she describes an exercise that I have always been obsessed with. “Create Order from Chaos” is about as simple as it gets: drop a collection of coins on a table and rearrange them into a more pleasing shape. The activity is meant to practice carving beauty out of the shapeless. In this framing, creativity is not something that happens when inspiration strikes— it’s a muscle you can strengthen. Lately I’ve been wondering how we might incorporate the same low stakes, stochastic tactics of the “Create Order from Chaos” exercise into writing practice. Here are a few different ways for doing so.

1. Use a random word generator to find a trigger word or phrase. Now write three different sentences. The sentences can be inspired by the word or incorporate it directly.

2. Go to a window and look outside. What do you see? Pick one thing and write three sentences about it, inspired by it, or incorporating it.

3. Pick up a random book close at hand, open it, and point to a random word on a random page. Write three sentences, incorporating that word or inspired by it.

Each of these approaches is meant to be exercised in less than five minutes as a way to stretch your creative muscle. In each case, I think it’s important that your multiple sentences not be related to one another. That is, don’t start writing a paragraph. Doing so would lean too much in the direction of giving the sentences a shape, of raising the stakes more than we want. Lean into the fragmentary nature of the individual sentence.

When we write, we’re usually trying to say something specific. By practicing free form writing in the ways above, we’ll be ready to go when we sit down to say something important. John Coltrane’s relentless work ethic comes to mind: “We practice so when the doors of perception open, we’re prepared to step through.”