Today’s assignment: Take a random page from a book and create a blackout poem from it. I chose The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and randomly selected page 131. Here’s what I came up with:

The boy slept deeply.

His heart said that happiness is a moment of creation.

“Create it” his heart said.

“Treasures go in search of children.

Simply let life proceed.”

Few follow the path to happiness.

Hearts don’t like to suffer.

I have always liked the idea of the economy of words. But more than that – the power of subtraction vs. addition. That we can distill our message into a more poignant, more powerful form by taking words away and only leaving what is absolutely necessary to get the point across. This was a great exercise. I highly recommend it!