The Tarot Card Exercise

The "Tarot Card" Exercise

I developed this exercise at the Yale Writers' Workshop around 2015. It contains no actual tarot cards, but it does use physical cards when I do it in class, and, like a tarot spread, it encourages you to make connections among elements that are not obviously related. To do that, you have to engage your subconscious, your intuition-- the part of your mind that writes stories, which is the same part that gives you hunches, dreams, and visions.

The Exercise

Get three random numbers between one and sixty. Go to the list below and write down the words or phrases associated with your numbers. 

Set the timer for fifteen minutes and write without stopping. Write whatever comes to mind. The only rules are: The first word or phrase must go in your first sentence. The second word or phrase comes anywhere after that. The third must be included in your last sentence.

If it feels strange or difficult, don't worry, just keep your pen moving. The end result does not have to be "good" writing or even to make any sense at all. Just follow the rules and see what emerges.



1.  a premonition

2.  torrential rain

3.  a very hot night

4.  mysterious lights at night

5.  a stain that won't come out

6.  eggs

7.  an unexpected inheritance

8.  inappropriate laughter

9.  crickets

10.  an angry outburst

11.  the taste of salt

12.  stairs

13.  a stranger

14.  a foul odor

15.  a ship

16.  something buried in the earth

17.  sweat

18.  an ancient custom

19.  a castle

20.  a drunken argument

21.  something sticky

22.  a curse

23.  a small door

24.  a woman's arm

25.  a sudden realization

26.  something sharp in the dark

27.  a death

28.  a cellar

29.  a man's leg

30.  a reunion

31.  sand

32.  a windowless room

33.  a fan

34.  the wrong body

35.  feathers

36.  children singing

37.  sparks

38.  a repetitive noise

39.  a weapon

40. very, very sweet

41.  a bout of dizziness

42.  echoes

43.  claws

44.  stars

45.  the smell of smoke

46.  cold water

47.  startled awake

48.  a small animal

49.  glittery

50.  shivers

51.  something burning

52.  ticking

53.  the scent of gardenias

54.  whispering

55.  the sound of someone crying

56.  utter darkness

57.  the smell of winter

58.  a swarm of beetles

59.  an empty theater

60.  artificial snow

2020 Classes!

Yale Writers' Workshop 2020

Monday January 6 is the last day to apply for my Alumni Fiction Intensive in June 2020. Must be an alum for YWW. Click here for an application.

If you're not an alum and would like to check out the program (highly recommended!), click here for info. General applications open January 20, 2020.



Classes at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center

for the current winter session:


Year of Your Book: Fiction

Wednesdays 10:15 to 12:15, January 15 through February 19


This course runs through the year in six-week sessions. Sign up for the year if you can; or, join when you're able. This course is for anyone who is in the process of drafting a novel, anywhere from the planning stage, to having a partial draft. Click class title to register.


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Year of Your Book: Fiction | Deep Revision

Mondays 10:15 to 12:15, January 13 through February 24
(Optional "soft opening" generative/fun class meeting 1/6)

This course runs through the year in six-week sessions. Sign up for the year if you can; or, join when you're able. This advanced course is for anyone who has a complete draft, or most of a draft, of a novel and is ready to revise. Please contact the office to inquire about this class which requires an application.


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"I Am [Not] a Real Writer"

Saturdays 10:00 to 12:00, January 11 through February 22

Runs through the year in six-week sessions. This course is for anyone who's ever wanted to try a writing class but worried that they're "not a real writer." The atmosphere is supportive, generative, experimental. Join us! Click class title to register.


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Mapping the Plot

One-day intensive: January 25, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

In this popular one-day class we'll explore the mechanics of plot and apply the ideas to your current project. Whether your novel is in the planning stage or fully drafted, this class will help you think about how to strengthen plot and structure your narrative. Click class title to register.

Or schedule a private tutorial at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center anytime. (Call first to confirm availability and times).

Private Editing and Consulting in 2020

Happy new year!

Do you have writing goals for 2020? Do you want to make some?

In the coming year, I'll continue to be available for private consultation and editing. Our work together is tailored to your needs, and can range from my serving as a private editor for your completed novel draft, to helping you generate ideas and plans in weekly one-on-one meetings. There's no required level of experience or commitment -- my job is to meet you where you are, learn where you want to go, and help you get there.

I'm an award-winning novelist with over 25 years of experience as a fiction writing teacher and editor, including my current positions as instructor at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center in Sleepy Hollow, NY, and resident faculty at the Yale Writers' Workshop in New Haven, CT.

My current rate is $100 an hour, or $100 per ten manuscript pages (double-spaced pages, or 250 words/page, whichever comes out less expensive for your ms).

To schedule an initial consult, contact the Writers' Center at 914 332-5953 | ask@writerscenter.org. Or use the CONTACT ME link on this page.

Make 2020 the year you set and reach your writing goals!

Mapping the Plot: September 14, 2019

Sign up HERE

Feel free to contact me with any questions! 

What We're Doing In Class: "I Am Not a Real Writer"

Today in "I Am Not a Real Writer," the class for people who don't think they're real writers--yet somehow always discover they are :)--one of the things we briefly discussed was "All Rivers" by Amos Oz. 

Besides being a great story, "All Rivers" is structurally interesting in that it might appear to be all flashback, but if you really look, there is a clear present-time progression of action: the action is the narrator sitting at his desk, remembering. It's not him statically sitting there, and then the camera switches to a news report about events that occurred earlier, and then we come back to find him sitting in the same position. (Which is how people too often try to do flashback.) Rather, it's him at his desk actively engaging with the process of memory. This is an important thing to note for memoir too. It's nearly always about more than "what happened in the past;" it's also about the act of attempting to remember.

This touches on themes that come up often in class. What constitutes "action" vs "flashback?" Can a memory be written one way as flashback, another way as exposition, and another way as present action (as in the Oz story)? When writing memoir, what do you do with the fact that memory is imperfect--or rather, that it is its own living, personal thing, and not a recording device you can take back to a fixed past? 

✨✨✨Things to think about.✨✨✨

What we're doing in class: Advanced Year of Your Book

John Truby, who writes about screenwriting, has a theory that a scene should be shaped like this:

From Truby, The Anatomy of Story

In yesterday's class, we talked about the beautiful "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" Gabriel García Márquez.

Look at the first paragraph, which is also a complete scene. Does it have that shape? 

Also notice how much it does in 166 words. As novelists we can be tempted to think we need whole chapters to get the reader located in terms of time, place, what matters to the characters, and what the central themes and problems will be. I would argue García Márquez does that all in this one paragraph:

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.

From "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" Gabriel García Márquez.

Odilon Redon, Aged Angel, 1903

What we're doing in class: "I Am Not a Real Writer": Some short memoirs

The title of my Saturday class, "I Am Not a Real Writer" at HVWC, is meant to bring in people who THINK this about themselves. The truth is everyone who writes is a writer, and if you're writing about things that really matter to you-- whether it's in the form of memoir, journalism, or stories about aliens-- then you're doing something worthwhile. 

This one has turned out to be sort of a memoir class, because that's what the people in it are interested in. As promised, here are some more short pieces we've been talking about. 


Marlon James, "One Day I Will Write About My Mother"

Dylan Thomas, "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B"

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And here's a good recent list: "15 Short Memoirs"

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This past Saturday, we spent a bit of time on "My Family's Slave" by Alex Tizon, and talked about approaching subjects around which we as writers feel guilt, shame, or conflicted emotions. Class members brought pages of their own writing to read aloud, dealing with this theme.