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September 17, 2004
On Writing
Prisoners, Lovers, Politics, Hurricanes. This is my roulette wheel of topics. I'm tired of all of them.
Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to write about. How did my day go? I went by my doctors to get my blood taken, I wrote several scripts, I forgot to get my meds—twice, I went to a meeting, I watched a movie with Will (Love Actually, a pretty good movie, rent it if you haven't seen it and like romances), I made a quote on web site work, I got the web site work. On a scale from bad to good, with good being 10, today was somewhere around 7. Nobody wants to hear about my day, unless it involved sordid sex with the plumber. As if I could afford a plumber.
No, I know what I need to write about, again. I need to write about writing.
I finished the first draft of a book by taking an hour every morning and just writing. You can find the prologue of my story, A Mirror's Shard here: Prologue. I worked best when I went to a critique group every week and had regular interaction with people reading my work. As I couldn't afford the maintain my participation in the critique group, I don't have an incentive to write regularly. The answer? Maybe it's time I formed my own critique group.
All interested parties email me.
I write best when I just go on and on and worry about correcting the mistakes and things that sound awkward later. If I get bogged down in a word choice, I never finish what I'm doing. The primary thing is to plan to spend a little time after each session to go over what I've written and correct any typos then.
Bird by Bird was an incredibly useful tool for me to get a good writing habit going. It made me understand why things like not getting bogged down in the details had its uses. But like all good habits, we can undevelop them as easily as develop them.
To-Do List
- Personal Writing
- Letter to Insurance Commissioner
- Contact Credit Card Companies to Request Extension
Posted by Bastique at September 17, 2004 11:56 PM