not many
sustain
perception
thrown into
gloom and disrepair
the aftermath
vapor
trails
aimless
floating
seething
undernourished
to the end
Source: The New York Times
Method: I revert to cut-ups when I am too distracted, depressed, dumbfounded or deranged to write coherently and just feel like letting loose. I circle the words that catch my eye for whatever reason and then cut them out and rearrange them on the page. My method is to read a text vertically, latching onto words and phrases as the eye runs down the page and linking them together by what I would call magnetic imminence. I let it lead me with little intent. The result is often amusing, sometimes irreverent, occasionally poetic.
Peter Wortsman is the author, most recently, of a novel “Cold Earth Wanderers” (Pelekinesis, 2014); a travel memoir “Ghost Dance in Berlin” (Travelers Tales, 2013)—recipient of a 2014 Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY); an anthology which he compiled, edited and translated “Tales of the German Imagination” (Penguin Classics, 2013); and a collection of short prose “Footprints in Wet Cement” (Pelekinesis, forthcoming in 2017).