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\nWhen I was a child just beginning to speak, my parents drove late into the evening to the rural property they bought. As they drove up the gravel driveway, the sky spread out above us with stars glittering like a million diamonds spread out on a jeweler\u2019s vast black velvet display.
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\nAcross the fields, a million lightning bugs hovered in the tall grass, their gleaming bodies flickering on and off.
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\nI pointed at the sky. \u201c\u2019Tars!\u201d
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\nThen I pointed at the field. \u201cBaby \u2019tars!\u201d
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\nPerhaps I was destined to become a poet from early on, but my confidence in landing on that perfect metaphor virtually disappeared over the years.
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\nAs a young adult, when I was writing books and blog posts, I rarely integrated metaphors into my writing, and it showed. My work was straightforward. Plainspoken. 
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\nWhile there\u2019s nothing wrong with clear writing\u2014in fact, that\u2019s the foundation of nonfiction according to Ayn Rand (clarity first, then jazziness, she says1)\u2014it lacked punch and pizzazz. My writing didn\u2019t lift off the page and sink into the imagination or heart of the reader. It lacked that magical moment where an idea or image clicks and sticks with the reader. 
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\nMastering Metaphors to Produce Great Writing
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\nAnd I knew mastering metaphors was essential to great writing. I did write poetry in college, admiring lines like Emily Dickinson\u2019s:
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\n\u201cHope\u201d is the thing with feathers -
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\nThat perches in the soul -2
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\nShakespeare\u2019s: 
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\nAll the world\u2019s a stage,
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\nAnd all the men and women merely players;3
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\nAnd Wordsworth\u2019s: \u201cI wandered lonely as a cloud.\u201d4
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\nRobert Frost said, in an interview in The Atlantic, \u201cIf you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.\u201d5
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\nPracticing Metaphor: Create Clunky Metaphors to Land on Magical Metaphors
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\nI resolved to make a good metaphor. I practiced.
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\nMy early efforts were hardly as magical as the child connecting stars to lightning bugs. Instead, they were more like a child pointing to a horse and awkwardly pronouncing, "Dog!" 
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\nMy metaphor practice felt clunkily childish instead of enchantingly childlike, but I had to make clunky comparisons to train my brain to find the oddly ideal ones that would surprise readers. 
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\nIn a Paris Review interview, William Gass said:
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\nI love metaphor the way some people love junk food. I think metaphorically, feel metaphorically, see metaphorically. And if anything in writing comes easily, comes unbidded, often unwanted, it is metaphor. Like follows as as night the day. Now most of these metaphors are bad and have to be thrown away. Who saves used Kleenex?6
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\nThe process of making metaphors and practicing at it will result in some stinkers. The bad ones, like used Kleenex, need not find their way into your work. Toss \u2019em. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve done.
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\nMost of my comparisons fall flat, but I\u2019ve found it's worth experimenting with mediocre metaphors in hopes of landing on ideal metaphors because when we nail it\u2014when we find the language that connects\u2014the reader remembers,