Fucking your sister

Since I haven't taught a section of creative writing in a while, and perhaps I've lost some of my edge, I decided not to start out the semester with the fucking-your-sister exercise (well, I don't actually call it that when I give it), although former student Ian Brent tells me on Facebook that it was one he really liked – “I appreciated it as a great way to knock us off our horses right out of the gate, so to speak. It was a great way to look at our writing habits and thought processes without a whole lot of time for us to think about it.”

I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but since I haven't blogged about anything in a long time, I'll start off with this again, since it's on my mind. Here it is:

Write a letter to someone -- you choose who, real or imaginary -- but it's someone you, for purposes of the exercise, you haven't talked to in a few years. You're filling this person in on what's been happening to you, and what's been happening to you is not so good. You have a twin sibling -- probably, though not necessarily, of the opposite sex, and your twin committed suicide a year ago by jumping off a cliff.

It was a terrible tragedy, but you know you need to put it behind you and move on with it. But your mother can't move on -- she keeps taking you back to the cliff, and asking why it had to happen. And the worst part of that is, you know something that might possibly explain it, but you can't tell her: just a couple of days before the suicide, your twin came into your room and had sex with you.

You were maybe half awake -- it was like a dream, but you know it really happened. But you're not sure of anything more than that. You're not even quite sure whether you were forced or willing.

That, I tell them, is your assignment. You can turn it in and leave when you finish it, and we'll talk about it next time.

This only works as an in-class assignment given verbally – written out, as it is here, the information is too concrete. I don't repeat any of it. And I do it on the first day of class, when they don't know me at all, or what to expect of me. Heh heh.

What we talk about next time is not what they've written, but the experience or writing it. How did they feel about the assignment -- what, if anything, was difficult about it, what -- if anything -- was fun or interesting or challenging about it?

I get a range of answers, but generally they're something like this. Difficult -- the subject matter; deciding what tone to take; imagining it happening – and just the organization. Fun – the challenge to the imagination, the chance to write something taboo.

Anyway, what it all adds up to, and this is the reason I give the exercise, outside of a natural tendency toward sadism, is that basically, this is what poets do. We deal with emotionally dangerous or unexplored areas, we imagine ourselves in situations that challenge us – and there's a thrill in doing it.