Day 50! So What Happens Now?

Congrats!
Since you made it all the way through this crazy class, I wanted to leave you all with some closing thoughts and ideas.
Take some time over the next few days to sit down with the pages you’ve written. Read through the work, not with an eye towards what might need editing, just looking for ideas and possibilities, and being impressed with your own effort in crafting these first draft texts. What are the aspects of this class that you could continue on your own? Consider the three possibilities listed below and think about how they might work for you.

1. Writing steadily
For working writers, it all comes down to this; doing the work. Hopefully you have all gotten to experiment this semester with the feeling of writing every day, or at least every week, and you have those rhythms in your body now. Even if generating text was difficult for you, look at the components of inspiration and writing regularly. Try some of the writing exercises that you didn’t yet have a chance to try, or try some of your favorites again. Most exercises and prompts can be done multiple ways, multiple times. Come up with one to two word prompts and/or writing exercises of your own. Keep track of them in a file or notebook. Collect lists in that same notebook, lists of topics, subjects, words you love, words you hate, prompts, people who you want to make a portrait of, character names, locations you are obsessed with, memories from childhood, sounds, colors, objects, first lines, titles, last lines, found fragments, etc. Take that “Idea Book” with you when you sit down to write, and you will always have a place to begin. Keep putting a working title on each text, along with the date the text was written. Keep making big, messy first drafts that are built on possibility, not on necessity. And keep track of your own work, honor it as it emerges, make a sacred and dedicated place to keep all our your texts.

2. Sharing your work with your peers
Most of you probably wrote in a solitary way over the past 50 days, but as we discussed at the beginning of the class, the opportunity always exists to share your creative work with others. It’s an amazing thing to draft texts and take notes while holding the awareness that someone will want to hear what we most want to say. When we begin writing with this awareness, it can potentially add strength and a quiet confidence to our work. Simply reading and witnessing each other is a powerful act, and it is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a writing community. So find other folks to share your work with, either in person or by phone or email. You may choose to schedule a monthly phone call or meet for coffee once a week with a writing friend, whatever works for both of you. It doesn’t matter whether your writing/ reading partner is a novelist and you are a poet; simply try to choose other writers and artists with whom you can make an Equal Exchange. (ie: you send them 3 pgs, they send you 3 pgs) Even before you get the stage of giving and receiving skillful, useful feedback, simply being read by others can be an incredibly important tool. And if you are sitting down for coffee with someone, take 20 minutes and write together! Remember, it is always a revolution to allow oneself to be found.

3. Finding writing exercises everywhere
As you can see from these 50 exercises, writing prompts and ideas are all around us, in both the mundane and the extraordinary aspects of our daily lives. Learn to look at your world through the eyes of a writer and start collecting ideas, prompts, subjects, first lines, last lines, themes and things to try. When you come up with a great one, share it with your writing friends and peers.

If you would like some feedback on your work, please let me know. I'd be glad to read some of what you wrote and schedule a Follow-up phone session to discuss what you got and what the next steps might be. If the structure of a class was useful to you, then check out other writing classes that may be offered in your area. There will be another 50/50 On-line class offered in the Spring, and I might offer an On-line Workshop as well, so keep an eye out for the Spring class flyer and just holler if you have any questions.

Thanks so much for joining the class. If there is anything I can do to support you as a writer, please drop me an email, I am always happy to help. Take good care of yourselves and k e e p w r i t i n g!
Many thanks and many blessings,

Max