If you’re here, the clock’s already ticking. You might be stuck somewhere inside a line break or lost, adrift, between the edges of the page. Maybe you’re stalling, poking at fragments or worrying over the white space that keeps growing sideways. Stop. Before you spiral into the abyss of the blank screen, I’m going to hand you the sharpest trick I know: straight from the Word Witch’s Desk—a thing called “The Canary Method.” It’s saved me more times than I can count. I wrote a poem about it in my first-ever chapbook I published with Noble Swine Press.
Step One: Pick out a small yellow figurine. It doesn’t matter if it’s plastic or chipped glass or, like mine, a wooden bird whittled down and painted the color of sunlight. Drop it on your desk. Find the exact spot where your eyes rest when you come up for air. That’s where it stays. The yellow turns into a homing signal—a beacon for every bright, impossible thing you can pull from the shadows.
Step Two: Before you start, close your eyes. Speak low to the bird; it doesn’t need to be fancy. “Show me where the story flies,” is mine, and the words feel weird, but they work. Intention takes the shape of sound and suddenly your brain is listening for the next thing.
Step Three: In the thick of it, when the words go muddy and refuse you, tap the canary three times. Let the fiction play out: feathers ruffle, eyes flicker, the yellow bird waking to watch what you do next. Write it. Any line. Even if it’s ugly, awkward, dead on arrival. The point isn’t brilliance; the point is movement. The muse that shows up for you isn’t always clever. Sometimes, she’s a small, stubborn yellow bird.