Writing Exercise 22.4

If you missed my previous post, please check out my conversation with Walter M. Robinson about his new essay collection What Cannot Be Undone—True Stories of a Life in Medicine. Also yesterday, What Cannot Be Undone was included in Kathleen Stone’s list of Eleven Over Sixty over at LitHub. Now, I’m sharing a writing exercise that Walter shared with me.

Writing Exercise 22.4: Everyone has experiences in a waiting room, whether a physical room at the doctor’s office or a virtual room before a Zoom call. Many stories start or end in a waiting room: Flannery O’Connor’s Mrs. Turpin waits in a doctor’s office filled with people she disapproves so openly that one of them disapproves of her right back by smacking her with a textbook, and Anthony Perkins hopes to impress the police that he is harmless at the end of Psycho, saying, “I’m not even gonna swat that fly.”

Describe a waiting room, real or imagined, in as much detail as necessary to create the beginning or end of a story.

Walter’s writing prompt triggered the memory of Elizabeth Bishop’s famous poem, In the Waiting Room, and when I searched for it online, I came across a poem by Thomas Hardy that I’d never read before but that uses a similar title, In A Waiting-room.

I love this prompt because waiting rooms, although they can be incredibly unique from each other, have a universal quality that readers can immediately connect with. I’m so grateful to Walter for taking the time to talk about his writing and for offering this exercise. I’m anxious to try it myself.

Please buy Walter’s new book, What Cannot Be Undone—True Stories of a Life in Medicine, available from University of New Mexico Press, online retailers, and your local bookstore.