Cubing

Ponder This

"The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening."

--Douglas Coupland

"I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone."

--David Sedaris

"There aren't many great passages written about food, but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called 'Horned Pigeon.' He had been on the run and hadn't eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable."

--Sebastian Faulks

As a prewriting technique, cubing allows you to focus on a description-based perspective and forces you to use more showing than telling, which is always good. In practice, I find it difficult and a little bulky to use it through all 6 steps on one topic, but I like to use it as an exercise anyway, just to see what develops.

Forcing yourself to think of your thing, event, person or situation from all six of these questioning positions allows you to find a different way of approaching your topic—a way that only YOU could come up with, virtually guaranteeing a unique and innovative piece of writing.

I find it particularly useful to use in bits and pieces in the course of an essay, especially where I am having a difficult time putting a certain thing into words. Cubing often gives me just the angle I’m looking for, and helps me to expand my thinking into areas that would not have occurred to me otherwise.

You can use this writing technique to create innovative description of people, places, things and events—but also abstract concepts, like freedom, or faith. It allows you to describe things in a way completely unique to you, and to create description that will impact your reader as fresh and different, giving them a perspective that can expand their views on your topic, and give them fresh and unique connections to your material.

Describe

We describe things based on the 5 senses. Ask yourself:

What does it look like? Smell like?

Sound like? Taste like? Feel like?

Use figurative language devices.

Argue

Take a stand. Ask yourself: do I like it? Why or why not? Do I hate it? Why or why not? Am I indifferent to it? Why or why not?

Compare

Think about the connections that YOU make to your subject. The point is to find your own unique perspective. Ask yourself:

What is it similar to? Different from?

Use unusual comparisons to create a unique description.

Analyze

Describing something by looking at its different parts, components, or aspects can often give you a new idea about it. Ask yourself:

What are its parts? What is it made up of? What does it consist of?

Apply

Another way to describe something is to think about how it is used. Ask yourself:

What is it good for? What are its uses? How do you apply it, and when?

Associate

Associations are completely unique to each individual, and will create a unique description. Ask yourself:

What does it remind you of? What does it make you think about? Does it bring up any memories of people, places, or events?

Describe

Looks like: Having a lot of time, writing, being in love with life as well as people, a shiny new car, warm apple pie, laying in bed with a lover into the late morning, going to a Rangers game and eating nachos and drinking Dr. Pepper

Smells like: the earth after a good rain, sweet lavender and chamomile on my pillow, Rob’s warm body next to mine, clean sheets

Tastes like: dark, rich chocolate, warm apple pie, a hearty stew

Feels like: Rob’s body next to mine, his shoulder when I lean on him, peaceful contentment, knowing a higher power is in my corner, success, but not in a material way

Sounds like: laughter, yummy noises, the quiet of early morning, the silence of a clean mind after meditation

Compare

Happiness is like pizza—there are toppings for everyone, and everyone likes their own combinations. Some like stuffed crust, chewy, maybe stuffed with cheese, and some like the crunch of a thin crust. Maybe all meat, or all veggie, or a combination, maybe pineapple and Canadian bacon. No matter how you like it, most people enjoy pizza, and can tell you what they like and what they don’t.

My Cubing Practice on the topic of Happiness:

Analyze

The parts of happiness are contentment, spiritual growth, belief in something greater than oneself, focusing on the good things in life, helping others, looking at what you have instead of what you don’t have, physical exercise, good health, family and friends.

Apply

Happiness leads to pleasantness, to lovely exchanges with other people, to fulfillment, to a desire to pursue interests, to a peaceful and serene life

Argue

I definitely prefer happiness to unhappiness, and seek to fulfill the components of happiness so my life is peaceful and serene.

Ponder This

"For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together."

--Hilary Mantel

"The advantage of writing from experience is that it often provides you with details that you would never think of yourself, no matter how rich your imagination. And specificity in description is something every writer should strive for."

--Christopher Paolini

"Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too."

--Andy Warhol

Happiness would seem to be an obvious goal for all humans, but we sure have some weird ideas about what will make us happy. Perhaps due to advertising, perhaps due to spiritual ignorance, there are a lot of people who seem to associate happiness with material goods: money, cars, houses, things we “own” or keep as belongings. I used to think this way too. Constantly after the next thing that was going to lock in my happiness, I pursued people, things, money and lovers as if once acquired, they would make my life seem worthwhile.

It took me a long time to realize that hanging my happiness on others’ opinions and actions was an exercise in futility. I was constantly unhappy, and when I did achieve that next thing, job, relationship, new item, there was always another thing out there that became necessary before I could say that I was happy. As my life was hurtling toward the earth, destined to smash into thousands of jagged shards, I became desperate enough to ask for help.

What ensued was a long period of spiritual growth. I’m no guru, but I have learned that like pizza, there are a trillion different combinations that come together to create happiness for people. Some may like Canadian bacon and pineapple on their pizza, with a crust stuffed with cheesy goodness. Others prefer a simple cheese pizza on a plain crust. I tend toward the thin crust with one meat and a ton of veggies. And, I get why others like different pizzas. I can appreciate the classic pepperoni pizza, even though I prefer my veggies and thin crust. In the same way, I can recognize when others achieve happiness, even if what they are doing doesn’t create the same feeling in me. I’ve grown enough to know that happiness is different for everyone, and, although many of us have the same components, there are a ton of different ways to get there. At the end of the pizza experience, everyone experiences a happy fullness, even though what has been consumed is different.

Inundated by so many commercials and ad placement in movies and TV, it’s more and more difficult to separate happiness from items that can be purchased. I love my apple products: iPhone, MacBook, iPad . . . but, I have to know also that should these things disappear from my life, I can still achieve happiness. If I become too attached to these things, my life takes a serious down turn, and I become obsessed, fearful of loss, or jealous of my neighbors who I perceive to have more than I do. I must find my happiness inside, independent of all outside sources, excepting some form of Higher Power, which can ground me and help me to feel connected to the earth and its inhabitants.

When I truly know that my happiness is independent of people, places and things, then I can take responsibility for myself and work to find my own joys. If I’m waiting for some person, place or thing to make me happy, I’m destined to live a life of longing and misery, for these things will always fail to fill my heart.

One of the first things I do when I wake is try to ground myself in a physical way. Meditation and prayer help with this, but even before I make it to the meditation area of my home, I pay attention to the way my feet feel on the ground. I imagine I’m walking on fresh grass, after a rain, that wonderful smell in the air, and feeling the firmness of the earth beneath me. I concentrate on the way my feet touch the floor. Are all my toes hitting the ground? Can I center my being and feel solidly planted? Is the earth supporting me completely, or are some of my muscles tensed, trying to hold parts of myself off the ground? In this way, I bring my mind to the present, and I can be grateful just to be in the body I have, acknowledging the earth and my connection to it.

In addition, I’ve learned that in order to share my happiness I must first possess it, and be in touch with it. I must keep myself in the present and find gratitude for even the smallest of life’s mysteries and pleasures. Standing, for example, and really feeling this massive planet called earth supporting my weight, the action of gravity giving me a feeling of being held to the earth in a belonging that far exceeds any one human’s assessment of my worth.

Happiness keeps me grateful, and it keeps the wonderful blessings of life at the top of my mind. How can I complain about what I don’t have when I’m focused on all that I do have? How can I be jealous of my neighbor’s good fortune when I’m aware of my own? Simplicity as a spiritual principle also contributes much to my happiness. When I realize that I’m much happier with less rather than more, I find myself grateful even for the limitations in my life. Who hasn’t over-indulged in food only to spend the next few hours in pain and self-loathing for feeling sickened by the very thing that sustains us? I may love pizza, but if I eat too much of it, it makes me feel sick, and so limiting my life helps me to stay in balance, and to avoid the sickness that excesses bring. In this way, my happiness remains in balance, and I don’t take happiness to it’s ugly extreme—glutony.

Happiness may look slightly or even extremely different for different people, but at its core is the same principle: the quiet, peaceful acceptance of what is, and a willingness to change what is unpleasant either by perspective shifts, or by taking action.

You can see that I didn’t use every single description, comparison, analysis, application, association or argument I listed in each section. I did, however, use the thoughts that came to me as a result of completing the exercise to expound upon my ideas of happiness. Cubing is a great way to really find those unique connections your mind makes with a topic. These unique connections are why several, thousands, maybe millions of writers can expound upon the same general topic, and yet each essay remains unique—only the specific author can find the comparisons, analyses, etc., that create his or her perspective on the subject at hand.

While it may be true many of the conclusions of those writing about happiness are similar or even the same, the journey to those conclusions reflect each writers individual experiences, and thus, a singular expression, available only through that writer’s eyes. Some people hear things in one way, and others in another. Your contribution may just be the one someone is able to hear and thus find inspiring, regardless of it’s similar conclusions to other pieces read by the same person. It’s worth writing down, even if it only changes the way one person thinks about themselves, the world, or those about her. When you change one person, you change the world.

Associate

Happiness reminds me of Rob, of our first dates, of being with him for hours and feeling completely content, unaware of the outside world. Happiness reminds me of the joy of my niece as she reads a book with me, of my nephews playing with my dad, their grandfather. Happiness is a warm blanket, a finished chore, a difficult situation now behind me.

My Journal Entry Based on the Cubing Exercise:

Ponder This

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

--George Orwell

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

—Elmore Leonard

“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”

—Doris Lessing

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

—Lawrence Block, Writer's Digest

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”

—Stephen King, Writer's Digest

“All stories have to at least try to explain some small portion of the meaning of life. You can do that in 20 minutes, and 15 inches. I still remember a piece that the great Barry Bearak did in The Miami Herald some 30 years ago. It was a nothing story, really: Some high school kid was leading a campaign to ban books he found offensive from the school library. Bearak didn’t even have an interview with the kid, who was ducking him. The story was short, mostly about the issue. But Bearak had a fact that he withheld until the kicker. The fact put the whole story, subtly, in complete perspective. The kicker noted the true, wonderful fact that the kid was not in school that day because “his ulcer was acting up.” Meaning of life, 15 inches.”

—Gene Weingarten, Writer's Digest