Have Writing Fun with the Association Game!

Note: I sometimes forget that my blog is supposed to be about writing (not my totally awesome childhood), that it is supposed to provide a delicious snack for those of you sitting at the table with pen in hand and notebook laid out in front of you. So here’s a game you can play when you’re Jonesing for a way to generate ideas. Start with a sentence, and then make every subsequent sentence take a word or idea from the previous one in a new direction.

Sometimes you end up with patterns of thought that, upon closer scrutiny, tell you what you want to write about. Sometimes you end up with something that is an end in itself. Sometimes you end up with nothing.

The only rule: no thinking between sentences. Ready? Set? Go.

I have this thing that makes me want to write associations, just one sentence after another, without regard for meaning. Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, had an extraordinary influence on my life. This was in college, when I was frequently under other influences, not all of them so productive. High school seniors are applying to college, and sometimes trying to be productive, but it is much more productive to moan about the amount of work that needs to be done than to actually do it, particularly if your goal is to turn your life into a dramatic production.

Life is a magazine, a game, the subject of a question. What is life, you say, under the influence and avoiding productivity. What is the What? Dave Eggers asks, and the question makes me want to avoid opening the book. Book ‘em, Dano was the catchphrase for that show with the curling wave that my parents watched in the seventies. Now McGarrett’s son and James Caan’s son play lead roles; one is a fake son and one is a real son.

The sun in children’s drawings is almost invariably wearing sunglasses, and this is certainly some type of Zen koan. For me, Zen is swiffering, not the aggressive grinding of the Swiffer Wet on those sticky gum stains students leave on classroom floors, but the light glide of the dry Swiffer sheet over tiled floors. I just chose a tiling template for my blog – not this one but the other.

I like to think of Shylock as the Other and not as a target for an audience’s anti-Semitic  fervor, but maybe that says more about what I want to believe than what's actually in the play. The Target – for upscale effect, we pronounce it Tar-jhay – in White Plains recently opened a grocery section, part of its continuing quest to be all things to all people. If Chaka Khan is Every Woman, and Whitney Houston is Every Woman, who are the rest of you? Are and you are really letters masquerading as words.

When I was in high school, one agreed by saying Word up. As proof that Americans love efficiency, regardless of socioeconomic condition, the expression was shortened to Word. Irregardless is to me nails on a chalkboard, a pet peeve. Try using chalkboard metaphors with teenagers and you’ll get nothing but a blank stare. Locke said that we are blank slates. Who wouldn’t want to start over with a clean slate?

Mr. Slate was Fred Flintstone’s boss; when you capitalize Flintstone, Bill Gates approves, but if you go lower case with it, Word gives you a case of the red squigglies. StoneGate sounds like it would be an upscale housing development, but Flintstone Gate, not so much.

We don’t have a scale in my house, so the only way I know how much I weigh is to use the Wii. The Beatles said that you have to carry that weight a long time. Don’t I know it? I carry that weight, but I try to ignore it. Life is happier that way.

Life is a magazine, a game; it has lots of photos, lots of pieces. My children, game players that they are, . They like to be on both sides of the lens. When I went whale-watching, I saw the whole thing through a camera lens. I don’t recommend this – one should have one’s eyes wide open when watching whales. You get better perspective that way. One should watch one’s children with eyes wide open, with some perspective: the long view (I grew up on Longview) and the short view.

Maybe, someday, I’ll take my own advice.