Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Channeling a Character

I borrowed the exercise for my very last class at the conference from my study of intuition. Ever heard of psychometry? That's when you hold an object, and receive information about its owner from it. So I thought we could do something like that to get info about a new character. I collected a bunch of items (some of them came from the Humane Society Thrift Store), and I gave one item each to my students. I instructed them to hold the items in their non-dominant hands and write in the first person about a new character. I added, "We're just pretending." I didn't want them to think I actually expected them to channel a character.

For the first exercise, a student named Dennis asked for an object that would belong to a girl. I gave him an earring with a picture of a baby on it. In his piece, writing as a teenage girl, he explained the awkwardness of only having only one pierced ear, attributing it to a keloid. His girl character added that on the plus side of having a single piercing was the fact that if she lost one earring, she could still use the remaining one.

The baby earring was one of the objects that belonged to me. When I was 18, I developed a keloid on my left ear. I had it removed, but that's why I only have one pierced ear. Most people don't notice this, as my hair is longish. And I only have one of those baby earrings; I lost the other one.

4 comments:

Imp said...

Okay, that's freaky.


I like freaky.

Bonnie said...

What a great story. I love hearing things like that. It makes life more mysterious and exciting.

Julie Kibler said...

Did I just hear Twilight Zone music playing? That's crazy weird! :-D

Clabbermilque said...

My wife can does this sort of thing. She does it best with small carvings. I have not seen her get details of the carvers life, but she can detect their depth of spirituality and that spirituality influence on their work.