Repetition is a form of change

an Oblique Strategy

We’re heading into our last week of a month using Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies card deck to provide morning writing prompts in The 24-Hour Room Studio. True to today’s card, the repetition of the daily practice, the daily draw, has taken us unexpected places. It helped me conceive of a new opening chapter for my novel-in-progress, and everyday, I managed, no matter what the prompt was, to apply it with unexpected results benefit to the material I was working on. If you’re at all curious, come try out this hour of communal writing followed by brief, casual feedback at 8 am ET, weekdays. Starting in December, we’ll be adding a second time, 10:30 am ET, as well as a new approach to the prompts.

Today’s OS was drawn and annotated by Stephanie Mankins, who wrote:

I used to study the traditional drumming of the Ewe people of Ghana, and my teacher would often say that the best way to see change was in attempting to do the same thing over and over again. Repeat this pattern, he’d say, and he’d play a sequence for us. We’d attempt it, and continue to play it until—like a child repeats the same word over and over again until they no longer recognize it—we’d discover an entirely new world of sound.

How do you, as a writer, view your repeated actions? Can you see differences emerge over time? What about one of your characters? Perhaps they avoid doing the same things; perhaps they’re always seeking newness. What are they scared of discovering? —Stephanie Mankins

Good writing.

—Elizabeth Gaffney & The 24-Hour Room