When Italo Calvino got his destinies crossed

That’s bad? / Possibly. The cards are vague and mysterious

(This piece originally appeared on my Substack, Artless. Subscribe to that here.)

The problem of prose: how to generate all that text from the first word to the last, how to fill all that space between front and back covers? Take your average novel length (or depth): imagine having to line up 100,000 words! one after the other! The laboriousness of it, the RSI, the daunting glut of available vocabulary. It’s enough to drive you to a quick fix.

For there are ways to write a book that’s not just taking dictation from your inner monologue, or write novels that don’t involve tracking every utterance and gesture of your characters like you’re their Stasi officer. One way to generate text is through what Lincoln Michel of Counter Craft calls ‘rev engines’: repeated motifs, simple procedures that help rev your creativity, that restrict choice and so free your imagination. You might, for instance, alternate the concepts of ‘up’ and ‘down’ paragraph by paragraph: as trajectories for your characters, moods, fluctuating fortunes.

Another, more esoteric helpmeet is a sort of literary fortune-telling. Writers and artists can generate work, break through blocks, take inspiration from and towards new ideas by…