Writing Prompt
The Exercise
Write the first sentence of a story about a birth. Now write the first sentence about a death. Try other pairs, such as falling in love and filing for divorce. Try pairs that are not in opposition, such as spring and summer.Then invent your own pairs.
The Objective
This is a way to sharpen skill by working for a specific kind of clarity. It is about naming essences.
Student Example
A birth and a death
- I won’t be doing any bonding with either one of them for quite a while; I knew I shouldn’t have gone into the delivery room.
- He doesn’t look peaceful or tortured or saintly, and no, he doesn’t look ‘just like himself’; he looks like some dead thing that I never knew, and I don’t know why I’m here.
