Creating Metafiction (1)

Are you looking at a blank page, and despairing of ever getting some words down today?
Below are just some of my many methods, which anyone can apply, in order to nudge one's poetic imagination into higher gear.
Try them out! If they help to overcome writer's block, they have served their purpose well. Even if you may only get one sentence that appeals to you out of it, for all your trouble, it'll at least start you off. And it's fun!
Applied systematically, however, these methods can lead to a more ego-freed writing that, I guarantee, will surprise you with its uncanny results.

Instalments with further methods will follow in this blog.


OPERATING WITH CHANCE (Part I)
[Version: 15.09.1993]

Question: What is the highest art?
Answer: Making the most of the raw materials of futility.


METHOD 1
1. Make lists, lists and more lists.
2. Use all devices deemed useful or necessary.
3. Use lists as prompts during improvised storytelling (tape these sessions via dicataphone, etc. or whatever)
4. Type, or rehash via typewriter or PC, etc. (= neat copy)


METHOD 2
1. Cut up all lists with scissors.
2. Jumble with cut ups of all material deemed interesting/useful and once gathered as such.
3. Place onto paper via chance operation and affix with tape. An elegant and convenient variation of steps 2 and 3 may involve the following: copy the gathered material onto one-sidedly gummed transparent folios. Cut up, peel off the back and affix cut up fragments to paper as one would a label.
4. Copy (copy machine) = 1st rough copy.
5. Delete according to chance or taste or method = 2nd rough copy. (Can be a method related to the prose content, e.g. texts from 3 authors are used, therefore every third word could be deleted, etc. or in similiar manner. Try different methods starting off with the same material to compare results obtained, and examine for the most compelling result.)
6. Re-type results / re-hash (in whichever manner developed or deemed opportune/necessary) = neat copy.


METHOD 3
Develop result of Method 1 or 2 further, by intermingling the result with other results of these or further methods.


EXAMPLES
1) for Method 1, point 1: see the text "I Like"
2) for Method 1, points 3 and 4: see my text "I Confess"
3) for Method 1 point 4: see my text "True Confessions"
4) for Method 2, point 6: see original copy of a cut-up-mesostic of mine
5) for Method 3: see my text "I Confess (Confession IV)"


VARIATIONS
Layout of cut-up/mesostic product as
1) Spiral mesostic, or
2) Carpet mesostic (See examples in: "Cageware. The Revolution of Life and Language", NeXTart, Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, New York 1993).

(c) George H. E. Koehler, 1993