Verb Stew

Natalie Goldberg wrote some empowering creativity books for writers, including Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. I experimented with one of her verb exercises this morning. Want to play? This, from page 87:

Verbs are very important. They are the action and energy of a sentence. Be aware of how you use them. Try this exercise. Fold a sheet of paper in half the long way. On the left side of the page list ten nouns. Any ten.

At this point, Natalie lists ten nouns. I’ll list mine here instead. Feel free to list yours in comments, if you’d like to play along.

moon
keys
fate
linen
blood
trunk
lightning
shard
rabbit
Rome

Now turn the paper over to the right column. Think of an occupation; for example, a carpenter, doctor, flight attendant. List fifteen verbs on the right half of the page that go with that position.

Natalie listed an occupation (cook), but I’ll use something different here.

auto mechanic:

wash
paint
sand
peel
secure
cut
soak
mix
file
drain
flush
calibrate
disassemble
polish
replace

Back to Natalie’s instructions.

Open the page. You have nouns listed in a row down the left side and verbs listed on the right. Try joining the nouns with the verbs to see what new combinations you can get, and then finish the sentences, casting the verbs in the past tense if you need to.

Lightning peeled the artifice from her expression.
Blood washed away the basin’s white.
The moon disassembled our rational arguments; we slept.

Hmm. How’d you do? Feel free to post your stew or play in mine.

Write on, all!

Photo courtesy Flickr’s The Breakdown Construct.

Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.

Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.

Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.

www.theresewalsh.com/