Fragment mapping
By Rose Lindsey
For this month’s Words to Write by, we’ll be taking inspiration from the book A Guide for Making Fragments from Diaries by Joshua Beckman, which was in turn introduced to me by local artist and organizer, Amy Hirayama. This writing exercise is not taken from his collection, but it follows a similar lineage of prompting that is built on the prerequisite of having already-written works available. For this exercise, it’s recommended that you grab up an old diary or journal, something that has more unfiltered, direct hand-to-page writing of yours. Other writing drafts may also work for this exercise, but the less heavily-edited beforehand, the better.
On another piece of paper (roughly the same size as your previous writing page), take your pen or pencil and draw seven random dots. They should be scattered absentmindedly, without any particular concern for form. Once you’ve done this, select any one dot and draw a connective line to another random dot. Do this again with two other dots. Continue drawing lines until you’ve created your own constellation from the dots. This constellation doesn’t need to look like any preexisting constellation or a definitive shape; rather, it should follow how you intuitively wish to connect your constellation together.
Next, take your newfound constellation and place it against your original writing. Hold up your two pages to a light source, so that you can see the words through the underside of the constellation page. From here, observe where those seven dots, or stars, align with the writing underneath, and take note of which words they’re situated over. Follow your connective lines between these seven words. What are you noticing about them as you search? Is there some kind of connective tissue between these random words? Do they correlate in interesting ways based on how the lines are drawn? What do you notice about the words the constellation lines pass over? Keep a careful eye as you read. Intuit what your reading is telling you about your formation.
Mark down the seven specific words, as well as any observations you make while reading. Then, on a new page in your journal, create a new composition with these notes as a basis. A great place to start is reorganizing or reintegrating those seven words into the beginning lines, or having each stanza/paragraph start with those seven. That said, use these notes only as a beginning scaffold; let yourself build and grow outwards from there, just as the night sky is composed of several stars beyond one specific constellation. Give yourself fifteen or so minutes to fully explore the potential of these words. When you’re done, you’ll have a new draft to work off of, and a simple method to rediscover your past writings at any time.