hit those keys
8. keep a copy-book
I'm not talking about swiping someone else's creative expression. That's bad.
No, what I mean is getting out the old quill and pretending you're a monk, copying down scripture and other great literature and saving civilization while you're about it.
The idea behind this is very old-fashioned and yet it's also quite modern. What you copy—not photocopy, not cut- and-paste, not download, but write out, preferably by hand—somehow moves into your brain through the concert of your eyes and fingers. What you copy will stick with you, will become part of you, ready to call upon in your own way, as a more powerful syntax, a more muscular delivery, when you need it.
Copy passages you admire—fragments of dialogue, chapter openings, cliffhangers, flashpoints between characters—whatever you need. This is a practice that pays dividends over time. If you're stuck for something to copy today, try the passage below from Annie Dillard's essay, "Living Like Weasels."
A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand as deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.
—Annie Dillard, from
Teaching
a Stone to Talk
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