The Laboratory #1 with Stephen McClurg

Trying something new in this episode. The Laboratory will appear on the first Monday of every month. In each episode, my co-host and I will discuss experimentation in literature (as well as many other things) and - this will be the laboratory part - we’ll assign ourselves a writing exercise each month. This month, it’s a cut-up hybrid exercise. You can find the rules/guidelines at the end of the show notes.

Stephen McClurg teaches and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. After winning the National Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Contest, he spent a week writing haiku for the Washington Post‘s blog. In the past he has published articles, essays, reviews, short stories, poems, and comics in newspapers, journals online and otherwise, and appeared in the anthologies You Ain’t No Dancer and Voices from a Safe Harbor. He has written and composed music for award-winning short films, art installations, and dance.

Rules for Exercise #1

Use the following three techniques to create a new text. It’s not required to make sense.

1) Take 1-2 pages from a mass market paperback - black out sections or cut up the pages to create a “new” text.

2) incorporate a second none-prose text, either song lyrics, a poem, bits from a screenplay

3) generate original text using automatic/free writing for 5 - 10 minutes.

4) OPTIONAL - try to generate a coherent text or narrative out of the three sections.