Week Twenty Two: Classed!

I briefly considered getting creative with the word "class" (flying first class? the upper class? having no class?), but ultimately went with this.

It's pretty much autobiographical. However, the pronoun is "he," so technically it's fiction.

Post a link to (or the full text of) yours in a comment here! Let's get classy.

Revise less?

An interesting article about our writerly obsession with revision and how it's actually a new trend:

“The ideal environment for revision is one where you can preserve several different versions of a text,” Sullivan says. With only one in-progress draft on a computer, we lose the cues that led the Modernists to step back from their work and to revise it. “It’s that moment of typing things up that led to the really surprising and inventive changes,” Sullivan says. “The authors came back to their text, but it seemed estranged.”

So why do we continue to champion revision? Sullivan suggests it’s partly due to the literary ideals and habits we’ve inherited from the Modernists. She also mentions the professionalization of creative writing, which pushed authors like Carver and Oates to teach at universities. “Writers need to look more like professors and to discuss their laborious processes,” Sullivan says. “‘We can’t teach you how to write, but we can teach you how to revise.’ And it’s a big business.”

Read the rest here!

My writing classes at Emerson and Trinity were absolutely all about revision. If I ever get to teach creative writing at the college level, I'm going to insist on creating a Writer's Bootcamp course that will stress output over perfection. It's tough to shut off the critical mind, especially when you've honed it to the point that it has something to say the second your creative mind opens its mouth.

"Without risking failure nothing important can be written"

From Jane Vandenburgh, some paraphrased advice on writing from one of the most gifted memiorists out there, Cheryl Strayed:

To write any book that matters you'll need to own both your own most ridiculously lofty ambitions together with the sobering notion that you're likely doomed to failure. You will fail, she says, because each of us is a broken and leaking all-too-human vessel, too weak and insignificant to be carrying such an important story.

Why? because each of us is profoundly, even fundamentally mediocre -- this is Strayed's perfect word -- so it's only by asking ourselves to do what we actually cannot yet do that we step up to take on the critical challenges that will be necessary.

Without risking failure nothing important can we written so we must settle down to the fact that we're sure to fail, then fail, and then fail again. If there is one true task of a writer, she says, it is to take up a story that is too heavy, one too difficult to bear, shoulder it, then walk a thousand miles.

Read the rest here!

If you've read and enjoyed any of The Rumpus's Dear Sugar columns (this one is my favorite), you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Tiny Beautiful Things. Pick up two, because you're going to want to give the second copy to someone who needs to read it.

Week Twenty Two: "I want to like this class, I really do..."

I wrote this in boredom (clearly) during one of John Coffee's classes: either History of the Bible or History of the U.S. Constitution. I thought he was great ("The word of the day is fustigate! F-U-S-T-I-G-A-T-E. To beat with a stick."), but I had trouble focusing during the parts of his classes that were not him telling us awesome stories.

Thus:

"I want to like this class, I really do..."

Unlike Weeks Twenty and Twenty One, this was not intended to be a first line... but it could be!

Freshman-Me put it in quotation marks because he thought it had some kind of story potential, but what that might have been is beyond me now. Guess we'll just have to make something up!

Sunday, midnight, 300 words!

Week Twenty One: Pushed!

It's SundaySundaySunday!

Do you know what that means?

DO YOU?!

It could mean a lot of things. But one of those things is this: It's time to share the results of this week's writing challenge!

This one's mine.

Give 'em here!

Being and remaining a working author

Happy Friday!

From David Farland, a short post about finding and keeping the writerly work ethic:

Many writers [...] keep planning to write something, to become manuscript factories, but end up producing nothing at all. They dream of writing screenplays and novels, but never even write a chapter.

Obviously, I don’t want to be the kind of person who only dreams of producing manuscripts.

Between the extremes of the has-beens and the wannabes is where I hope to be. I want to be the kind of author who steadily produces something every day. I want to be a working author. I want to be bustling and busy, and keep producing.

Read the rest here!

...and speaking of, what a great time to remind you about Week Twenty One! Be the manuscript factory. And, really, a manuscript factory could put out 400 words before the workers even arrive. For this one, you only need to be a manuscript hobbiest, at best.

It's a poll!

The Unwritten Word has been gaining a lot of new readers, and I'd like to get a better idea of what you find useful here.

Please take a moment to fill it out:

Which posts do you most enjoy reading? (check all that apply)
	Inspirational quotes about writing
	Discovering my own writing process
	Publishing opportunities/contests
	Original prose/plays
	Weekly writing prompts
	Reflection pieces about college
pollcode.com free polls

Feel free to comment if the poll is missing something!

I thank you. I do.

Timed writing

From Ryan Casey, a productivity tip that just might make you an author: 

Basically, the Pomodoro Technique is this: you set a timer for twenty-five minutes and you do whatever task it is you want to do (in our case, writing). You work solidly on that task for twenty-five minutes, and then when the time is up, you take a five minute break, no matter what. Nip to the loo, refill your glass of water — Pomo’ don’t discriminate.

Then, you repeat the cycle again. After four full cycles, you take a longer break.

Can you see how beneficial this is to writing? I usually start writing somewhere around ten-thirty in the morning. I complete four cycles and then take a lunch break. On a typical day, I’ll have four-thousand words written by the time I take lunch. On a good day, I’ll have hit 5k already.

The best thing about it is, because it breaks your work up into smaller chunks, you don’t feel as drained as you would do if you’d spent several solid hours. My productivity method used to be this: wait for the clock to hit the hour and then write until that hour is up. But it was a poor method, in hindsight — I regularly got distracted and my words per hour were nowhere near as high as I know they can be.

Another bonus? Maybe you do only have twenty-five minutes per day, but with the Pomodoro Technique, you can turn those twenty-five minutes into a goldmine of productivity. Do you have twenty-five minutes per day? Then you can finish a novel in eighty days. How’s that sound?

Read the rest here!

A novel in eighty days sounds pretty damn great to me. I've been using this technique at my day job and I've got to tell you—it works. Not only does it work, but you will end your day feeling very accomplished.

I can't wait to apply to it my morning writing ritual.

Week Twenty One: The second time she pushed me under...

Goodness, such violence.

Like Week Twenty, this one was also intended to be a first line. And so, similarly, feel free to use it as a first line, second line, last line, or even as a thematic springboard for something else entirely.

The prompt, in case you can't read my doctor's scrawl:

The second time she pushed me under, I knew she wasn't kidding.

Let's move backwards on the word count in order to lure more writerlies to the cause: 400 words, Sunday, midnight!

Tell your friends. All of your friends.

Week Twenty: Floored!

Show and tell begins... now.

Here's mine.

Where be yours?