The Creative Writing Guide, Chapter Two

Effective or good writing requires your developing productive habits, which often means you must break other and older writing habits, not always an easy task--but one very much worth the efforts involved.

You text offers wonderful examples from a wide variety of people on how to develop these habits. And the reading in Road Trip certainly provides further information and reinforcement about how different writers help themselves write.

Each of you will find a place/location to write, and then you will decide on productive times. And you will in all probability change your mind as the weeks progress.

To get started, however, you must, well, start.

You must will yourself to experiment.

I suggest that you pick a spot that you can utilize for the next eight weeks. Next, schedule specific times to write--and you have a lot of writing to accomplish over the next weeks, so choose well and begin the hunt right away.

You must also experiment, for one of the class goals concerns the future. This term, you will develop and/or hone good writing habits that will serve you well beyond the semester's limits and the class's requirements.

While I will not collect and read them, each of should consider keeping a journal of your writing.

If you find working at the computer comfortable, why not go to Blogger.com and create a web log for your ideas? The instructions at Blogger.com are very easy to follow. You can make the blog either private or public--if you decide to go public, let others in the class know; they can read what you have to say and leave comments. Experiment, for you can invite others to join your blog. Of course, you can do the same with Face Book. The blog, however, will allow you to archive with ease a great deal of material.

You will become familiar over the next weeks with the class blog, Creative Writing Fever.

You will also share ideas and related links with your readers on the Discussion Threads.

In other words, over the course of the term, you will find plenty of opportunities to share your writing with class members and others interested in creative writing.

But first you must either create good writing habits or hone the ones you have established.

As the text notes, when you write, you must consider various aspects of what your write about, including all five senses: taste, sight, noise, feel, and smell.

I will have a lot to say about using the senses over the next weeks. But for the first writing assignment, try to evoke senses other than sight--we will work in this area the entire term.

Indeed, these five components also describe vivid prose. So begin right away experimenting with this method of making prose vivid and engaging.

Read carefully the various writing strategies discussed. Write for a bit in a crowd, in the library, with different kinds of music playing, etc. Try reading as well, for the two, reading and writing, connect dynamically.

In other words, experiment.

As your text notes, "Annie Dillard says to be careful what your read, for that is what you will write" (36). As we go through the term, consider this class a focus for some excellent reading and writing. Get on the internet, for example, and read some material you can share with the class. You will find some excellent sites; just choose well and share.

Beginning now, however, you want to read with purpose. Reading a poem you like, consider what pleases you, something beyond the message. Concentrate on the how of the matter, how the prose or poetry works.

To overcome various writers' pitfalls, you have to push yourself to do the things the chapter discusses. As for a schedule, "As one writes, one discovers one's schedule as much as one creates it" (27). In other words, to create a schedule requires that you write at specific times and, if you can, in a specific place.

But to start writing requires no specific prompts, only general ones. Your text offers numerous "Diving Boards" here and there to inspire your writing. Well, play!

Writing will generate specific ideas, even with as broad a topic as anxiety or grass.

Your writing assignment asks you to jump right in. Now, when you write for two pages, try various strategies, from barnstorming to looping, the same pre-writing approaches one takes for general composition.

Choose one of the seven choices on Page 30 and write, write, write, whatever comes to mind. Make your goal two double-spaced pages.

After you complete these pages, let matters sit: then follow the instructions on pages 30-31, developing a polished and short memoir of 1.5-2 double-spaced pages that you will send me and, if you like, share with the class.

For this assignment, just write, and then send your work in the best form your can. As the assignment for the week suggests, the class can share before-and-after experiences as you move from a rough draft to a final copy (that you will also revise).

Now, for the sharing to work, you should not wait until Sunday night to send your work--and you can also send work to everyone the next week.

Again, follow the instructions in your text and in the assignment. Try to create something vivid, avoiding, among other things, overuse of the passive voice and the verb "to be." And you will find that sharing on the internet is a great deal of fun, and rewarding.

So, to defeat the censor and to get going, reading what others write will certainly help.

But you must write.

As I have suggested, your text offers some excellent advice about writing, including Spring Boards to help with creating writing schedules, including ways you can overcome the inner censor, that often irksome obstacle on the writing journey.

Well, you have an additional incentive: you write for a class. So, of course, you want to get material in on time so that we can all read what you have to say.

You must also aim for consistency. A class schedule will help. As you can see by reading through the chapter, all the various aspects of writing are linked, from choosing an environment in which to write to discovering a topic about which to write.

I suggest again that you keep journals for a variety of reasons. Because writing begets more and more emphatic writing, your journal will also become a source book. If you utilize your journal well, the journal will quickly become a place where you keep ideas. Check out these suggestions about keeping a journal.

Among other things, you can carry a small tablet, an idea tablet, in which you jot down images, quotations, names, etc. Record these impressions and words in your journal. You will eventually find a place to use them.

Get your writing to your fellow writers and to me as soon as you can. Revision is important, so you want to develop the habit quickly.

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