Writing exercise 1: Choose a photo in a magazine or online, someone you don’t know. Choose a mood (eager, excited, sad, angry, in love, in lust, vengeful). Then free-write a description of the person.
Through black-rimmed glasses, his eyes squint under the tug of pure pleasure. He smiles, his high-boned cheeks a shine, hair fringed careless under baseball cap—a man caught in spontaneous and unaffected beauty. This is him, undiluted. What he feels, you will see. In those brown, summer-sun-flecked eyes, there is no lie. Anger glares hard; doubt calculates and surmises; frustration burns; mischief tempts and teases; he dares, he challenges, he demands. So when that strong jaw, etched with unshaven care, relaxes, when those luscious lips spread wide—white-smiling, cheek-appling, eye-glinting in glimmering-sun-rayed-dance—you dismantle in a tingling melt. Let it come: beauty in its most genuine essence. Him: life at its most worthwhile.