Secret Message Writing Exercise (Epistolary Poem)

This is a great writing activity that I learned from DW, but I’ve modified it a little bit so that it will be easier to use with my poetry students. (D, please feel free to post your own version or other versions you have heard of.)

materials:

• lined paper
  
• tracing paper
  

instructions:

1. at the top of the sheet of lined paper, write Dear ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever. this will be your reader, your audience, and you will write a letter as if to _______________.)
   
2. write a secret message to someone that you’ve been meaning to tell but never had the guts to do it. (1 – 2 sentences, but they don’t have to be full sentences). write it on the lined paper so that the message is scattered on the page but so that you can still read it top to bottom and left to right.
   
3. now forget your secret message
   
4. when the moderator begins to keep time, start writing and don’t stop. write anything you want but don’t stop, even if you get stuck. if you can’t think of anything, just write nonsense until something comes to mind.
5. whenever you get to a word in your secret message, use that word in the sentence you are writing at the time.
   
6. when you are finished writing, use the tracing paper to circle the words that spell out your secret message. this tracing paper is your decoder.
   
7. pass the letter to your left (you can choose to pass the decoder with it or not)
   
   

RESULTS:
We ended up doing this exercise, slightly modified (and we didn’t share any of the secrets) at our recent Kundiman Salon on Jan 2. There were about 10 of us in our apartment (including RL, DW, and myself.) We wrote for maybe 30-45 minutes, then shared the whole thing in the group. It was a pretty fruitful exercise for me, but for others it was frustrating. The most frustrating thing for me was that I resented my message every time I came upon a word in my “way.” But others appreciated this aspect of the exercise.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this with my students, since they keep coming and going. I thought it was a lot of fun to do though.