All Your Heartache, Worry and Grief - An Exercise

Philip Schultz wrote unpublished novels for decades. During that time, he also wrote poems, “mostly to console myself for the novels’ failures.” All his “heartache, worry and grief went into these poems, which felt more like private notes to myself than professional attempts at writing literature,” Schultz wrote recently in The New York Times. While Schultz considered himself a novelist, The New Yorker and other publications were publishing his poems. Schultz’s poetry continued to move forward; his novels continued collecting rejections. In 2008, Schultz’s poetry won the Pulitzer Prize.

Consider your own heartache, worry and grief. Make a list of them or else pick the first trouble that comes to mind. Perhaps it’s a moment you’d most like to forget. Maybe it’s a memory from a time of sorrow that seems tangential. Take the image that lingers in your mind. Build a scene around it. Set the characters in motion. Follow the story. Where does it lead?