This is an exercise in three parts, based on Paul Ricoeur’s model of triple mimesis (which I talk about in an article here):

Mimesis I (experience): stand outside your home and look at your street. Take note of the people, trees, buildings, creatures, stones. Imagine how you must look to someone just driving by: how unfamiliar, perhaps unremarkable, perhaps odd. Write a scene in which a passerby describes you, standing there.

Mimesis II (reading): Select a book or story you admire and really study the first paragraph. Look at where it begins, think about how the beginning relates to the rest of the story. Look at how the sentences are constructed, how they inter-relate and flow. Think about the level of diction in the story. (Re)Write the scene of you outside your home using the same structure and technique as the writing you admire.

Find or reclaim a piece of writing that has had a strong influence on you - the book that changed your life; the rejection letter that nearly made you give up; the poem that broke your heart. Carry it with you for a while. Read it closely and carefully; let it drop into your life like a stone drops into a pond. Don’t write about it. Let (or, rather, observe the ways that) the life you are living - this story, this life - makes daily changes to what is written there, to what it means. (oh yes, I know, I’m being whimsical. You can turn this into homework: Read this piece of writing once a week for a year, and each time, write down what you think of it, how it makes you feel, how you are because of it, what you think it means. One sentence each week. That’s 52 sentences. None of which will be the same.)

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