The ABCs of Writing

One of my favorite forms to introduce to writing students is the abecedarian. An abecedarian is a poetic form where each line or stanza begins with the successive letters of the alphabet, from A to Z (cut and paste the word into a pronunciation app and you’ll experience an a-ha moment!). It’s an effective way to show students that having some kind of constraint is often very helpful for creativity. Students come to creative writing tired of writing thesis statements and frustrated by being forced to follow the rigid rules of the five-paragraph essay in their English classes. But the truth is, they freeze up if they’re given free rein and it’s just the glare of the blank page staring them down, swallowing their courage.

I’ll hand out an abecedarian (like this) without telling them what it is.  We talk about what is happening in the story, as well as its emotional core. Students are very quick to hear the tonal pitch of a story – for example, immediately after reading Bea Forkan’s “Abecedarian Nocturne for NICU Moms,” they sigh, “It’s so sad!” And then they ask, “What’s NICU?” Meaning, they don’t necessarily understand the logistics of a piece – what Vivian Gornick calls the “situation” – but they can feel the story that’s happening underneath, they recognize its heart.  Then, I’ll ask students to close-read the essay, the way they would a poem, looking for patterns and literary devices such as alliteration and rhyme. That’s when someone will notice that the first word of each line begins with each letter of the alphabet, in order.

Figuring out the form of a piece of writing is exciting – it reminds me of those posters of squiggles and busy patterns that were popular when I was college, where, when you relaxed your eyes, an image would surface and once you’d seen the image, you couldn’t un-see it.  But I remind my students that the novelty of form can only go so far. The story has to fit the form and the form has to – not only give the story its shape, but deepen its meaning. In the case of “Abecedarian Nocturne for NICU Moms,” the alphabet reminds us of little kids learning their ABCs and it reminds us of the ABCs of new motherhood, how one learns to become a mother – and especially a mother to a particularly vulnerable baby, as one who arrives in the world prematurely – one baby step at a time. 

Once my students have grasped the logistics of an abecedarian, it becomes easier for them to think about the stories that might be a good match for the form. This year, I was moved by one ninth grade boy, who wrote his abecedarian as a guide to living, reminding readers that B is for breath and C is for creativity and D is for dreams. His beautiful back-to-basics instructions for life inspired me to write

The ABCs of writing

Asking good questions is always a good way to start writing.  Or reading a

Book, because it’s like opening the door to another universe, where you can be reacquainted with your

Childlike wonder,

Dream of the impossible, draw from your imagination. But you must write it down because these dreams are

Ephemeral, like a delicate soap bubble, 

Fragile as butterfly wings. 

Grammar your ideas into sentences, in the

Hopes that you can describe the 

Ineffable. 

Juxtapose one thing against an unexpected other and marvel – 

Kneel before the unexpected recognition of truth.

Language how you feel into 

Metaphors that flutter into the sky on gossamer wings.

Name your fear, so that it cannot lurk in dark shadows. If you can turn

One fright into a

Poem, that fear will be 

Quelled. And someone might

Read the 

Sentences that 

Translated emotions into words and feel 

Understood because they aren’t 

Vague, but precise 

Words about your

eXperience of this world, 

Your perspective at this moment, the 

Zenith of what it means to live, right now.