Things I Tell My Students
A Five Things Essay
Hello and welcome! I am Penny Zang, an author (Doll Parts: August 2025) and English professor. Start here to learn more about Mourning Pages, where I write about books and writing, which means I’m also writing about grief and, you know, life.
The writing prompt below is one of my favorites. Stick around to the end for updates (especially for paid subscribers) and a request to help!
I’m glad you’re here.
The Five Things Essay prompt:
Write five things that are connected. If they aren’t obviously connected, that’s part of the fun. The patterns and echoes emerge as part of the writing. You can revise with those patterns in mind. Or you can let the five things stand. My example below is part of an intentional group of five ideas, but other unexpected patterns still rose to the surface as I wrote.
I can’t take credit for this idea. Make sure to check out Summer Brennan’s “The Five Things Essay” (and everything Summer writes).
See my other attempts at Five Things:
Things I Tell My Students
1. Draw more spirals
When the sky is falling, when we are spiraling out, it helps to draw spirals.
Draw a perfect spiral, the lines not touching, like Lynda Barry suggests in Syllabus.
Draw big and small spirals, draw messy, overlapping spirals. Fill the page, keep spiraling, let your hand do the work, while your brain does something else like watch a TED Talk or listen to your teacher lecture.
We could go down a rabbit hole here with not just Lynda Barry, but also very generous, very online artists like Austin Kleon and Wendy Mac. We could tap into the genius of Louise Bourgeois, whose spirals are some of my favorite on the planet.
I say that as if I’ve seen enough spirals to judge. I haven’t seen your spirals yet.
Louise Bourgeois says, “The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos.” This feels like a thing we can all do.
2. Describe a cat’s face
Describe any face at all really. Start with the obvious, the nose, the eyes. Try to capture the expression, whatever the cat is thinking or not thinking. Then, move onto the other features of the face. Think about comparing it to something beautiful like a moon or a bear trap.
Push past any familiar expressions or language you’ve heard before. The windows to the soul, the sandpaper tongue. Focus. Reach for new words. What’s another way to describe this cat’s face?
For example, this is Smutz. He is half-potato/half-Steve Buscemi. He gives the best side eye, loves to watch TV, and doesn’t know how to meow, so he just squeaks at us. His face is one of my favorites. Describe him if you have no other cat faces at your disposal.
3. Scavenger hunt your life
I sent my students on a detail-finding scavenger hunt this week. In our new building, they looked for misspelled words, listened for snippets of dialogue, paused for strange smells and things they had never noticed before.
Maybe we’ll do something with these lists next week or maybe we won’t. The point was to notice. And we noticed a lot.
You can do this daily, I told them, any place, any time. Make a list of things you want to find each day and then search for them. Search for things that make you smile and things that make no sense. Interpret your list however you need to.
Search also for songs you forgot you knew. Like how just this morning I woke up with Rick Astley’s “It Would Take a Strong Strong Man” in my head and then I remembered hearing him sing this song in concert, which, yes, I saw as an adult, and when he started the opening lyrics, I choked up because I somehow knew all the words. I forgot that song existed, but there it was in my throat. I think it must have been one of the 45s on the jukebox in the bar my family owned. Maybe? I don’t know. I listened to it five times in a row yesterday.
I promise this isn’t a Rickroll situation.
4. Find a puddle of sunshine
Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.” It is not a coincidence that I repeated this lyric to myself a lot in the fall of 2016, too.
I’m especially thinking about the time my husband and I visited an apartment that we wanted to rent. The current tenant had a large, fluffy cat who’d found a ray of sun on the hardwood floor, and kept rolling in it. “He loves a good puddle of sunshine,” the stranger said. And together, we watched the cat in utter delight.
It doesn’t have to be literal sunshine. The delight is what matters. Where can you spread out and feel the heat, like a cat exposing his belly to strangers? Where do you feel warm?
5. Create something
We consume so much. I don’t like to get preachy about it. It’s a sentence that doesn’t (usually) need much more context. Consume a little less, create a little more.
I like to create things that no one will ever see. It reminds me of when I was little, the thrill of knowing I was able to create this *thing” that didn’t require anyone’s help or opinion. Poems and diary entries and drawings of faces, play-doh shapes, unruly board games, doll dresses made out of napkins, songs that didn’t rhyme, newsletters and horoscopes and comic strips and chaotic dance moves all alone in my room.
I could create something for myself and I could destroy it, too.
This week I’m creating hand-drawn lesson plans using markers, as I do, adding graphics when I’m tired of writing words. My favorite lesson plans are full of arrows and scratched out ideas, brainstorming in-progress. I like to flank the “in-class activities” with crooked stars to remind myself of what I most need to tell my students. It’s usually the thing I most need to tell myself.
Writing news and one big request:
My most recent short story, “Woody Guthrie is My Grandfather,” is out in South 85. And was long-listed for the Editor’s Choice Award. So excited to share it finally!
I am putting together a “street team” to help build hype and share news about DOLL PARTS leading up to the publication date. You are invited to join the team in exchange for a few bookish perks and my unending gratitude. All you have to do is sign up if you’re interested!
We shared the Cover Reveal recently, ICYMI.
I am also starting to remove the paywall on old posts, which I’ll share more about soon. If you are a paid subscriber, while I appreciate all the support, please feel free to cancel your auto-renew as I transition to a mostly free model over here on Substack.
Are you resting lately? Are you reading? What are the things you most need to tell yourself? I hope you are able to find a good puddle of sunshine for yourself.
—Penny
Pre-order Doll Parts at Bookshop (or other online retailers)
I for real needed #2 today! Thanks 💜
I love this post so much. Yes to spirals...all the time.