Every sentence has to be three words long

The Entrance Hall of Saint-Paul Hospital, 1889

Linked from Kleon's newsletter.  From AARP magazine article called "everyone has a story to tell."

Take any ten years of your life and reduce them to two pages. Every sentence has to be three words long—not two, not four, but three words long.

You discover there’s nowhere to hide in three-word sentences. (“Walk by river. Stare at emptiness. Demons still around.”) You also discover that you can’t include everything, but half of writing is deciding what to leave out.

Learning what to leave out is not the same thing as putting in only what’s important. Sometimes it’s what you’re not saying that gives a piece its shape. And it’s surprising what people include. Marriage, divorce, love, sex—yes, there’s all of that, but often what takes up precious space is sleeping on grass, or an ancient memory of blue Popsicle juice running down your sticky chin.

When you have those two pages, run your mind over everything the way a safecracker turns the tumblers with sandpapered fingers to feel the clicks. If there is one sentence that hums, or gives off sparks, you’ve hit the jackpot.

Write another two pages starting right there.

21 More Ways to Start Writing

I give assignments in my writing classes because it’s hard to make something up out of the clear blue sky. Two pages is all I ask, and it doesn’t have to be a story. It doesn’t have to be an anything. I have learned we do better when we’re not trying too hard—there is nothing more deadening to creativity than the grim determination to write.

1. Write two pages of apologies.
2. Write two pages of instructions to the child you once were.
3. Write two pages in which something is broken.
4. Write two pages about an unwelcome surprise.
5. Write two pages about a jinx.
6. Write two pages in which something is too small.
7. Write two pages about a proposal of marriage.
8. Write two pages in which you do something wrong you do not regret.
9. Write two pages about an untrainable animal.
10. Write two pages that take place in the woods.
11. Write two pages in which you were unmasked.
12. Write two pages about scolding a child.
13. Write two pages about sitting in someone’s lap.
14. Write two pages on being too cold.
15. Write two pages on a tantrum you regret.
16. Write two pages on taking your time.
17. Write two pages about a bad haircut.
18. Write two pages in which someone kills something by accident.
19. Write two pages that end “I could go on and on.”
20. Write two pages in which a child comforts an adult.
21. Write two pages on what you can’t remember. My father, Lewis Thomas, began his memoir, The Youngest Science, “I have always had a bad memory; as far back as I can remember. It’s not that I forget things outright; I forget where I put them. I need props.”
22. Write two pages about something you wish you didn’t know
23. Write two pages about something you regret revealing
24. Write an ode to a part of your body.
25. Write two pages about your treasures.
26. Write two pages about the softest thing.
27. Write two pages about where you would fly if you could.
28. Write two pages about the moment you knew something was over.
29. Write two pages that end with “You can’t get away from it.”
30. Write two pages of something that makes you laugh every time.