While I was in
class, I learned a lot of tools to help me write beyond the classroom. The things
I learned can apply to my own regular writing rituals and life.
These tools are
especially useful when I’m not feeling motivated or when I want to edit my own
writing.
1 – Peer Review.
This can be harder
to get outside the classroom but finding other people to read and comment on
your work is invaluable! Search on sites like Facebook and MeetUp to find writing
groups in your area (or online ones if people aren’t really your thing).
Having
an outside opinion about something you wrote can give insight into how your
writing in perceived and what you may need to change to really get your reader
to see your story as you do. You can also ask friends to read for you, but be
sure you ask for honesty, not flattery.
Flattery builds confidence, but honest
critique can build your skills.
1A – Guiding
Questions.
As a peer
reviewer, I found that there are a few questions that can help you get into the
honest critique and give valuable feedback.
“What is happening here?” Simple,
but useful for the writer to see some concrete interpretations of actions and
events. Think who are the characters,
what are they doing, what is their goal, and so on.
“What are two really
strong moments, and one weak moment?” I like to balance feedback in workshops,
start with a strength, then a weakness, then end with another strength. Try not
to think in terms of how you would
write it differently, but how the author uses moments to convey meaning.
Focus
on specific moments in the story or poem. Don’t try to “fix” the whole thing.
That’s not going to be of much help in the long run and likely to just
discourage the writer.
2 – A Journal.
The practice of keeping
a writing journal really changed how I observed the world around me. Just a
notebook and pen, but when you keep it with you and write down everything you think
of, you find some seeds for later use.
I like to make it a game. I challenge myself
to copy down an overheard conversation or to describe a scene I see out the
window. Make up stories about what the people around you are thinking, go people
watching and see who happens by! Maybe that person can inspire you.
I once
stood in a crowded subway car writing down a backstory for a punk couple
standing beside me because the way the spoke and interacted with each other was
different from any couple I’d ever seen before.
Or recently I saw someone smack
the guy next to him on the shoulder because said guy was zoned out watching a
train go by. I wrote a scene about the guys planning a heist and the distracted
one was the reluctant tag-along who just wanted to escape on that train.
Let
your imagination run free!
3 – Warm-up
writing.
Some days, you just
don’t want to write. Or you don’t know what to write. Fix that by starting a
day/session/whatever with just a few minutes of writing. It can be to a prompt
(more on that later), to a song, to a picture, anything. Especially if you are
feeling blocked or stuck in a project, just start writing some randomness and
see what comes up.
Set a timer for 3 to 5 minutes and go for it.
The only rule
is: you can’t stop writing until the timer goes off.
Even if what you have
after that time is nonsense, you’ve now been writing for several minutes and
the chances are you can do some more about something that really matters. Some
days that warm-up writing is all I do in a day, but it keeps me writing something every day.
4 – Prompts.
Writing from a
prompt is not something I do naturally, and I really had to learn to use them
well, but now I find that writing prompts can be a great resource when I feel
blocked.
There are all kinds of prompts you can use for different projects. And
every person is going to find different qualities in a prompt useful.
But
really there is a lot more I want to say on the subject, so that will be the
topic for next week! Stay tuned for my thoughts on Prompts (and some sample
prompts that I like to use)!
There are my 4 Tools I took from writing classes, do you have more? Thoughts on what I said here? Let me know!