“Practice for a Writer”

Mary Nuzum

Write – write everything you see and everything you hear.  Use note cards and write a phase per card.  Play solitaire with the cards, then stack them and use them in that order to write a story,

Write – write with purple pens on paper that smells of lavender all that you hear while sitting in a café at 2:00 in the afternoon.

Describe colors by smell; flowers by touch.  Describe the faces of your neighbors as you laugh out loud for no obvious reason at all.

Describe your child – real or future.  Tell how he/she looks and talks and dresses as a teenager.  Describe their face when he/she becomes a parent.

Always buy blank cards for Birthday and Christmas.  Write in them how you feel when you hear their voice, and sign your name.

Fill a notebook a month with writing for the more you practice the better you become. Write at a park and frolic with words.

Read your work out loud at a Karaoke bar on Tuesday and Wednesday nights to the music of the Bee Gees.  Make a date with a friend for coffee and read them a piece you have written about what you want to be when you grow-up.

Write an eulogy for a dear friend; and one for an enemy.  Write them again in Spanish.

Write the sounds and textures of life as a homeless mother.