Hello all, and CONGRATS on getting halfway through the 50/50 class, it's now day 29, so you only have 21 days left!
Passing over the midpoint of any class is always a good time to step back for a minute and consider how its going for you.
Often with a 50 day class, writers may find that they had a lot of momentum for the first week or two, but then that momentum dropped off and they stopped writing daily. Or maybe you are still writing daily, and the work is coming easily. But in case you need one, here are a few ways to jump-start your creativity and your writing.
Experimenting
One of the things a 50/50 class is designed to do is to allow you to experiment wildly. If you always write from your memory, try creating a character and writing from that character's point of view. If you always write stories, try writing a poem. If you always work in the imagination, try placing your awareness in the present moment and writing about the object, person or landscape that is right in front of you. There is, of course, no way to fail at a writing experiment. So if you got some text, then you did it perfectly.
Read Something New
As long as we are talking about experimenting with writing on the edge of your comfort zone, a 50/50 class is also a great time to experiment with reading more widely. If you only read non-fiction, pick up a novel. If you only read memoirs, go find a Sci Fi novel. If you never read young adult lit or children's literature, go to that section of the bookstore and pick up the first book that looks interesting. If you know nothing about popular music, go read a copy of Rolling Stone. Read at least one thing that pushes you a bit farther out into the world of language and writing and see what happens! Its not about loving that new book, its just about seeing how its made.
Go Someplace New
And while you're at it, go fill up your senses with as many new things as you can. Drive a different way going home and see a part of your town or city that you forgot about. Make a date with a friend to eat in a new restaurant and taste a type of food that is totally different from what you normally eat. Go hang out in a bakery and smell the smells, what story do they remind you of? Writing new things sometimes requires new experiences. get in the habit of taking yourself as a writer (and your notebook) with you, everywhere you go.
I know that some of you have been working in the genre of memoir/ personal stories, while others have been working with fiction or poetry. Over the next week I will be posting some text about each of these genres, to provide you with a bit more information on each one. Read through the posts, and please feel free to email me or post questions for your fellow writers or comments and let me know how your experiments are progressing. Thanks to everyone who has emailed me so far, its been great corresponding with you.
All the best,
max
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Twenty Days In : Sharing Your Work With Others
Hello all and Congrats on the first 20 days of 50/50 writing, only one month left to go! I hope that by now you have a good-sized pile of first drafts, and that you have built some kind of daily writing practice.
Making It Easier
If you have been struggling with this class, the urge can sometimes be to get frustrated and to try and tighten your own expectations of how much you should be able to write everyday. Instead, try lowering the bar you set for yourself, until the practice of writing daily becomes very easy to do. For example, simply decide that you will write 14 lines (or sentences) per day in response to each exercise. If you are REALLY swamped for time, give yourself permission to write only 5 lines per day. Remember that even 5 lines per day can be the difference between Writing and Not Writing! Do whatever you can to make it easier and get something, anything on the page each day. Notes, fragments, memories, a single question, anything at all.
Ways to Share The Work
One of the best things about writing regularly is building a range of first draft texts that you might exchange with other writers, if you choose to. As you may have read in the Frequently Asked Questions, this blog will unfortunately not be a place to post the creative work that you are doing everyday. But sharing your work and getting some useful feedback can be an important part of your evolution as working writer. So I wanted to offer five possible ways you might share the work you will do during the class.
1. Print and Read the Work Yourself
As writers, we are constantly trying to practice the art of seeing our work clearly, without judgment, and this process begins by learning how to appreciate the pages we write. We have to learn how to see the strengths and weaknesses in our own work, which requires some intentionality. So if you are used to writing a page of text, scanning it once and then closing the document or journal and heading off into the next part of your day, consider a change in plan. Try to experience your daily text as a READER as well as the writer. There are lots of ways you can do this; for example, when you are done writing your text, print out a copy and go tuck it between the pages of the book you usually read before you go to sleep at night. Or, when you are finished writing for the day, email the document to yourself, so that when you load your new messages tomorrow morning, it will be there in your In Box, waiting to be read. I even know some writer’s who read their daily work out loud, so as to hear its possibilities more clearly. These are all simple methods that allow you to stand, if briefly, in your reader’s shoes, to discover your own text at a different time of the day, in an unexpected moment.
The goal here is not to fall in love with your own work, or to judge it or edit it endlessly, its simple to build an appreciation for the fact that you WORKED as a writer today, and to start becoming familiar with your own voice and style on the page. This familiarity is what we have to build in order to see clearly what needs to be done to strengthen a text. If you can’t SEE it, you can’t make it BETTER. Give it a try!
2. Set up a Peer Writing Partnership
There is nothing as useful to working writers as having good company. Building a community of writers usually starts with two folks deciding to trust one another and make a bit of time to share their work. There are lots of ways to set up a Peer Writing Partnership, here are two:
On-Line Writing Partnerships
If you choose to work with someone on-line, then contact a friend who you know to be a creative writer, and invite them to join you. Set a schedule that works for both of you. You may want someone to read your work daily, but your friend may only have time to read and send you work once a week. The key with any writing partnership or group is to make an “Equal Exchange”. This means that you two find a schedule that works for both of you and, most importantly, that you exchange an equal number of pages. It doesn’t matter if your friend is working on a Sci Fi novel and you are working on a series of Haiku. If you send them 3 poems each week, then they can excerpt 3 pages out of their novel to send to you. The first goal in a writing Partnership is to read and get to know one another’s work. As you become more familiar with one another, feel free to ask Author Questions, specific questions about your own work. General questions (“Is this interesting at all?”) are NOT as useful as specific ones (“Does the title sound too sinister?” or “Does the character of the little boy seem realistic to you?”) . Stay away from the “ILLEGAL” question, which is ANY version of “Does this suck?” It is the writer’s job to answer that, not the Reader. No one can assign core value to your work but YOU.
In-Person Writing Partnerships
It’s always more fun to sit down with a friend, exchange work, read to one another, discuss what the possibilities are, and then do a bit of writing together. So find a friend who lives near you, make an Equal Exchange of text and time, and jump in! Knowing how busy you both probably are, shoot for meeting for at least 1 hour once a week, in a quiet place that is convenient for both of you. You can email each other your text beforehand, so that you won’t have to take time in person to do your reading, although some folks love to hear the work out loud.
3. Set up a Peer Writing Group
Maybe you have two or more friends, who are as interested in writing as you are. Choose a convenient place and a time, and keep the text exchange equal and mutual. Remember, the fact that you all may be writing in different genres doesn’t matter. Sometimes poets prefer the company and attention of other poets, or novelists prefer to work on text with other novelists, but what matters most is finding a safe, comfortable and intelligent working group of writers who like to eat and laugh as much as they like to give feedback.
When giving feedback remember that your OPINION is not as useful as your attention and your creativity. Instead of telling the author what you “loved” or “hated” tell them what you noticed and where you got lost. Give specific examples and make specific suggestions of things they might try in the next draft. As an author, get in the habit of asking Author Questions, specific questions about your own work. Listen to the responses you get and incorporate the suggestions if they are useful to you. And stay FAR away from anyone who believes that being mean, cruel or manipulative is “helpful” to you as a writer. If you wouldn’t trust them with your kid, don’t trust them with the first draft of your text.
4. Start your own Blog
If you are looking for a place to post your daily writing so that friends and fans can see what you are up to, you might want to consider starting your own blog. There are lots of free blog sites, including; blogger.com, blog.com, livejournal.com and others. Since you may already have set up a google account in order to add comments to this blog, go to blogger.com and explore.
There are a few things to keep in mind when blogging; remember to check the “settings” on your blog, so that you can choose who should have access to it. Be wary of allowing “anonymous” comments on your blog, and be aware that even if you restrict access to users you know, it is NEVER possible to totally restrict content that is posted on a blog. So don’t load up your whole novel if you are worried about copyright infringement. That said, if you DO start a blog of your writing, send me and email and tell me how it goes!
5. Work with a Writing Coach
It may be useful for you to take a local or on-line creative writing class, or start your own writer’s group. But if you are looking for someone to work with one-on-one to read and evaluate your text, and to help you figure out what steps are next for you as a writer, you may want to work privately with a Writing Coach. There are a lot of folks who do this work, and (of course) a lot of scam artists as well. Be wary of anyone who is not themselves a working writer and editor, and be VERY wary of anyone who promises or “guarantees” that they will get you published. Local colleges and universities sometimes have faculty members who teach creative writing and work as Writing Coaches in their spare time, and some Content Editors or Copy Editors do this kind of work as well. Find someone you can afford, who treats both you and your work respectfully, and communicates with integrity, honesty and skillfulness. If I can be a resource in helping you find someone who is right for you, just let me know.
Optional Follow-up Meeting With Max
This semester, at the request of a few students who also took the 50/50 class last time, I have set up an optional follow-up meeting, that you can register for if you are interested. This option is very simple: After the class is over on October 20th, you would choose 10-15 pages of work that you wrote over the 50/50 class and send that work to me via email, attached as a Word document. In your email to me, write any specific Author Questions or concerns that you have about the work. I will print out your work, read it through, and make some detailed notes. Then we schedule an hour long phone session in which we will discuss the work and what the next steps might be. The usual rate for this process in regular one-on-one coaching sessions is $75 but for this class I have waived the reading fee and lowered the hourly rate to $50. If you are interested in this option, please just drop me an email and let me know.
(For more information on the on-going work I do as a Writing Coach, you can check out: http://www.hollowdeckpress.com/coach.html)
Whichever method you choose for sharing your work with others, the goal should be to begin to step forward and take yourself more seriously as a writer. Cultivate writing friends and partners who speak clearly, skillfully and honestly, and who make you laugh! Find some concrete ways to become a little less isolated as a working writer, and let these 50 days of writing become the first step in moving your work and your voice out into the world.
Keep it going!
and be well,
Max
Making It Easier
If you have been struggling with this class, the urge can sometimes be to get frustrated and to try and tighten your own expectations of how much you should be able to write everyday. Instead, try lowering the bar you set for yourself, until the practice of writing daily becomes very easy to do. For example, simply decide that you will write 14 lines (or sentences) per day in response to each exercise. If you are REALLY swamped for time, give yourself permission to write only 5 lines per day. Remember that even 5 lines per day can be the difference between Writing and Not Writing! Do whatever you can to make it easier and get something, anything on the page each day. Notes, fragments, memories, a single question, anything at all.
Ways to Share The Work
One of the best things about writing regularly is building a range of first draft texts that you might exchange with other writers, if you choose to. As you may have read in the Frequently Asked Questions, this blog will unfortunately not be a place to post the creative work that you are doing everyday. But sharing your work and getting some useful feedback can be an important part of your evolution as working writer. So I wanted to offer five possible ways you might share the work you will do during the class.
1. Print and Read the Work Yourself
As writers, we are constantly trying to practice the art of seeing our work clearly, without judgment, and this process begins by learning how to appreciate the pages we write. We have to learn how to see the strengths and weaknesses in our own work, which requires some intentionality. So if you are used to writing a page of text, scanning it once and then closing the document or journal and heading off into the next part of your day, consider a change in plan. Try to experience your daily text as a READER as well as the writer. There are lots of ways you can do this; for example, when you are done writing your text, print out a copy and go tuck it between the pages of the book you usually read before you go to sleep at night. Or, when you are finished writing for the day, email the document to yourself, so that when you load your new messages tomorrow morning, it will be there in your In Box, waiting to be read. I even know some writer’s who read their daily work out loud, so as to hear its possibilities more clearly. These are all simple methods that allow you to stand, if briefly, in your reader’s shoes, to discover your own text at a different time of the day, in an unexpected moment.
The goal here is not to fall in love with your own work, or to judge it or edit it endlessly, its simple to build an appreciation for the fact that you WORKED as a writer today, and to start becoming familiar with your own voice and style on the page. This familiarity is what we have to build in order to see clearly what needs to be done to strengthen a text. If you can’t SEE it, you can’t make it BETTER. Give it a try!
2. Set up a Peer Writing Partnership
There is nothing as useful to working writers as having good company. Building a community of writers usually starts with two folks deciding to trust one another and make a bit of time to share their work. There are lots of ways to set up a Peer Writing Partnership, here are two:
On-Line Writing Partnerships
If you choose to work with someone on-line, then contact a friend who you know to be a creative writer, and invite them to join you. Set a schedule that works for both of you. You may want someone to read your work daily, but your friend may only have time to read and send you work once a week. The key with any writing partnership or group is to make an “Equal Exchange”. This means that you two find a schedule that works for both of you and, most importantly, that you exchange an equal number of pages. It doesn’t matter if your friend is working on a Sci Fi novel and you are working on a series of Haiku. If you send them 3 poems each week, then they can excerpt 3 pages out of their novel to send to you. The first goal in a writing Partnership is to read and get to know one another’s work. As you become more familiar with one another, feel free to ask Author Questions, specific questions about your own work. General questions (“Is this interesting at all?”) are NOT as useful as specific ones (“Does the title sound too sinister?” or “Does the character of the little boy seem realistic to you?”) . Stay away from the “ILLEGAL” question, which is ANY version of “Does this suck?” It is the writer’s job to answer that, not the Reader. No one can assign core value to your work but YOU.
In-Person Writing Partnerships
It’s always more fun to sit down with a friend, exchange work, read to one another, discuss what the possibilities are, and then do a bit of writing together. So find a friend who lives near you, make an Equal Exchange of text and time, and jump in! Knowing how busy you both probably are, shoot for meeting for at least 1 hour once a week, in a quiet place that is convenient for both of you. You can email each other your text beforehand, so that you won’t have to take time in person to do your reading, although some folks love to hear the work out loud.
3. Set up a Peer Writing Group
Maybe you have two or more friends, who are as interested in writing as you are. Choose a convenient place and a time, and keep the text exchange equal and mutual. Remember, the fact that you all may be writing in different genres doesn’t matter. Sometimes poets prefer the company and attention of other poets, or novelists prefer to work on text with other novelists, but what matters most is finding a safe, comfortable and intelligent working group of writers who like to eat and laugh as much as they like to give feedback.
When giving feedback remember that your OPINION is not as useful as your attention and your creativity. Instead of telling the author what you “loved” or “hated” tell them what you noticed and where you got lost. Give specific examples and make specific suggestions of things they might try in the next draft. As an author, get in the habit of asking Author Questions, specific questions about your own work. Listen to the responses you get and incorporate the suggestions if they are useful to you. And stay FAR away from anyone who believes that being mean, cruel or manipulative is “helpful” to you as a writer. If you wouldn’t trust them with your kid, don’t trust them with the first draft of your text.
4. Start your own Blog
If you are looking for a place to post your daily writing so that friends and fans can see what you are up to, you might want to consider starting your own blog. There are lots of free blog sites, including; blogger.com, blog.com, livejournal.com and others. Since you may already have set up a google account in order to add comments to this blog, go to blogger.com and explore.
There are a few things to keep in mind when blogging; remember to check the “settings” on your blog, so that you can choose who should have access to it. Be wary of allowing “anonymous” comments on your blog, and be aware that even if you restrict access to users you know, it is NEVER possible to totally restrict content that is posted on a blog. So don’t load up your whole novel if you are worried about copyright infringement. That said, if you DO start a blog of your writing, send me and email and tell me how it goes!
5. Work with a Writing Coach
It may be useful for you to take a local or on-line creative writing class, or start your own writer’s group. But if you are looking for someone to work with one-on-one to read and evaluate your text, and to help you figure out what steps are next for you as a writer, you may want to work privately with a Writing Coach. There are a lot of folks who do this work, and (of course) a lot of scam artists as well. Be wary of anyone who is not themselves a working writer and editor, and be VERY wary of anyone who promises or “guarantees” that they will get you published. Local colleges and universities sometimes have faculty members who teach creative writing and work as Writing Coaches in their spare time, and some Content Editors or Copy Editors do this kind of work as well. Find someone you can afford, who treats both you and your work respectfully, and communicates with integrity, honesty and skillfulness. If I can be a resource in helping you find someone who is right for you, just let me know.
Optional Follow-up Meeting With Max
This semester, at the request of a few students who also took the 50/50 class last time, I have set up an optional follow-up meeting, that you can register for if you are interested. This option is very simple: After the class is over on October 20th, you would choose 10-15 pages of work that you wrote over the 50/50 class and send that work to me via email, attached as a Word document. In your email to me, write any specific Author Questions or concerns that you have about the work. I will print out your work, read it through, and make some detailed notes. Then we schedule an hour long phone session in which we will discuss the work and what the next steps might be. The usual rate for this process in regular one-on-one coaching sessions is $75 but for this class I have waived the reading fee and lowered the hourly rate to $50. If you are interested in this option, please just drop me an email and let me know.
(For more information on the on-going work I do as a Writing Coach, you can check out: http://www.hollowdeckpress.com/coach.html)
Whichever method you choose for sharing your work with others, the goal should be to begin to step forward and take yourself more seriously as a writer. Cultivate writing friends and partners who speak clearly, skillfully and honestly, and who make you laugh! Find some concrete ways to become a little less isolated as a working writer, and let these 50 days of writing become the first step in moving your work and your voice out into the world.
Keep it going!
and be well,
Max
Monday, September 1, 2008
Day One: Getting ready to Write
Hello all and welcome to day one. I sent out the first writing exercise, so it should be waiting in your email In Box. If for any reason you didn’t get it yet, please send me an email and let me know. All daily writing assignments will be sent out by email, not posted here on the blog.
As we all get started here on day one, I wanted to post a few thoughts on some things to think about as you jump into your daily writing. There is an old maxim by writer Kingsley Amis “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one’s trousers to the seat of one’s chair.” I always laugh out loud when I read this, because i guess writing really does boil down to that. In the end, it is always about simply sitting down and turning towards the work.
As you each launch into this 50-day investigation, take a moment to consider what patterns and preferences you already have as a writer. Start with location, where do you prefer to write? Sitting at your desk? In a comfortable chair? There is no "right" location, choose anywhere you are comfortable and not likely to fall prey to distractions.
Consider the tools you prefer to use, do you write a first draft most easily when working with pen and paper? Do you prefer to write in your journal, or do you work best when you are typing directly onto the computer? What time of day works best for you? Are you a morning writer or someone who writes best late at night when the day is almost over? Even if you don’t usually write everyday, you already know a great deal about yourself as a writer. The trick is finding a way to USE what you know about yourself, without being limited to it.
For example, many of us would love to have the whole week free to do nothing but write, no going to work or tending to family, no obligations or chores, no emails to return or phones to answer. But this kind of time and space is usually quite rare. So we have to figure out how to work in the times and places we already have available to us.
If you know that you work best in the morning, try to give yourself 30 minutes before work to start a bit of writing. If you work well in the middle of the day, take yourself to lunch and sit with your notebook and see if you can get some text. If you work well at night, keep the notebook by your bed and write a few lines before you go to sleep. If you are crazy-busy all day long, print out each assignment sheet every day and put it in your pocket. Whenever you get a spare minute, pull the sheet out, flip it over, and legibly jot down one or two things.
The key here is to lower your expectations until the work becomes EASY to do. If you would love to get 3 pages, start by just trying to get the first 3 sentences. A strong beginning is all you need. Give yourself permission to lay down your utopia of being the Perfect Writer and just focus on getting those first 3 sentences. Remember that the elaborate trance and idea of the Writer You Want TO BE can sometimes keep you from living as The Writer You Already Are. As the writer Marge Piercy said “The real writer is one who really writes. Work is it’s own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.” There is nothing wrong with being loved, but I think I understand what she means. Sometimes we will get a magnificent, whole first draft, but other times the work will simply emerge in messy, fragmented fits and starts. Either way you will be WORKING as a writer, and that is the real goal. Building a sustainable rhythm as a writer is always more valuable than any individual text we make. So for these 50 days, set up a realistic plan for yourself, taking into account both what is Preferred AND what is Possible. Keep the moves very small and manageable, and try to have fun!
As we all get started here on day one, I wanted to post a few thoughts on some things to think about as you jump into your daily writing. There is an old maxim by writer Kingsley Amis “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one’s trousers to the seat of one’s chair.” I always laugh out loud when I read this, because i guess writing really does boil down to that. In the end, it is always about simply sitting down and turning towards the work.
As you each launch into this 50-day investigation, take a moment to consider what patterns and preferences you already have as a writer. Start with location, where do you prefer to write? Sitting at your desk? In a comfortable chair? There is no "right" location, choose anywhere you are comfortable and not likely to fall prey to distractions.
Consider the tools you prefer to use, do you write a first draft most easily when working with pen and paper? Do you prefer to write in your journal, or do you work best when you are typing directly onto the computer? What time of day works best for you? Are you a morning writer or someone who writes best late at night when the day is almost over? Even if you don’t usually write everyday, you already know a great deal about yourself as a writer. The trick is finding a way to USE what you know about yourself, without being limited to it.
For example, many of us would love to have the whole week free to do nothing but write, no going to work or tending to family, no obligations or chores, no emails to return or phones to answer. But this kind of time and space is usually quite rare. So we have to figure out how to work in the times and places we already have available to us.
If you know that you work best in the morning, try to give yourself 30 minutes before work to start a bit of writing. If you work well in the middle of the day, take yourself to lunch and sit with your notebook and see if you can get some text. If you work well at night, keep the notebook by your bed and write a few lines before you go to sleep. If you are crazy-busy all day long, print out each assignment sheet every day and put it in your pocket. Whenever you get a spare minute, pull the sheet out, flip it over, and legibly jot down one or two things.
The key here is to lower your expectations until the work becomes EASY to do. If you would love to get 3 pages, start by just trying to get the first 3 sentences. A strong beginning is all you need. Give yourself permission to lay down your utopia of being the Perfect Writer and just focus on getting those first 3 sentences. Remember that the elaborate trance and idea of the Writer You Want TO BE can sometimes keep you from living as The Writer You Already Are. As the writer Marge Piercy said “The real writer is one who really writes. Work is it’s own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.” There is nothing wrong with being loved, but I think I understand what she means. Sometimes we will get a magnificent, whole first draft, but other times the work will simply emerge in messy, fragmented fits and starts. Either way you will be WORKING as a writer, and that is the real goal. Building a sustainable rhythm as a writer is always more valuable than any individual text we make. So for these 50 days, set up a realistic plan for yourself, taking into account both what is Preferred AND what is Possible. Keep the moves very small and manageable, and try to have fun!
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