June 9, 2010 Newsletter - Short Story Workshop Starts Friday

In our latest Creative Writing Newsletter, read about the Short Story Workshop coming up this Friday and the encore of Freewriting Across Genres coming on June 25.  If you would like to register for either of these courses, visit our Online Registration Page.

Also, you don't want to miss our Online Workshop Survey.  With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can help us determine which classes to add to our roster over next couple months.

Freewriting Across Genres is Off to a Good Start

I'm very pleased to announce the start to our summer workshops with Freewriting Across Genres, which began yesterday.  To give an idea of the scope and direction of the course, here's a selection from the teaching material...

Instant Freewriting Prompt

In the Member's Area today: find Immediate Inspiration through The Power of Lists.  Or, if you'd like a more in-depth discussion of getting in the Prompt-Formulation Zone, see our Writing Prompts Blog for Listing Your Way to a Good Prompt.

Listing Your Way to a Good Writing Prompt

Writing Prompt: Lists (20 minutes)

This exercise provides a way to find out what it is you really need to write about, the subjects and themes that are so important to you that you'd don't even realize their effect on your life.  This exercise is particularly useful for writing memoir, and it can also be adapted for poetry...


Step 1 - Choose Your Subject

To start, first choose a place, a subject, or an event.  Generally, you want to find something which you are intimately familiar with - your childhood bedroom, for example, or a memorable trip you've taken.  I recommend taking the first such idea that comes to mind, regardless of how emotional or dull it might seem - you'll find there's probably a reason it's the first thing you thought of.

Step 2 - Write Your List

Next, begin writing a list of nouns associate with this place, subject, or event.  Write continuously - don't pause to think about the nouns, just write them one-after-the-other.  You might end up repeating words, and that's perfectly all right - the goal is to keep the pen to the page.  For example, I might write about the inside of my refrigerator (it just came to mind):

ketchup
mustard
bouillon
soy milk
orange juice
sweet potatoes
mold
oranges
mold
mold
oranges
ham
eggs
pancake mix

It seems like a simple list, possibly a little too revealing (Mold shows up three times?  Why am I so obsessed with mold?  I don't see it in my fridge that often...)  Yet this list carries interesting meanings for me.  Normally, I don't have ketchup - I never buy ketchup.  But I have some that a friend gave me when he moved to another city, and my girlfriend loves ketchup.  I could write a story about how she also likes Thai fish sauce, and now I have a bottle of the stuff in my apartment.  Then we have the sweet potatoes, my favorite food.  It's sad when I have to throw them out because of mold.  Especially since I have to cook for myself to save money.  And saving money is part of my larger plan to become a writer - which would take me to larger topics like how I relate with my family, how I chose my apartment, and other areas of my life I wouldn't post online.  Then we come to the ham, eggs, and pancake mix.  No, there's no pancake mix in my fridge - and no eggs, either.  But breakfast is my favorite meal (particularly pancakes), and my mom simply refuses too cook messy food on the stove in the morning.  So no pancakes, and I spent much of my childhood eating eggs from the microwave - again, this leads to interesting ideas for further writing.

Step 3 - Write Like the Wind

The key to the exercise is to write quickly.  Jot down as many nouns as possible over the course of five minutes or so.  And then, once you have a good list (twenty nouns, more or less - sometimes I go with ten, other times I don't hear the muse until I hit fifty), set a timer for ten minutes.  You can go longer, if you like, but use the timer - it pushes you to write faster.

Now the fun part - writing the thoughts that come from your list.  Timer set, write what you're thinking.  Write whatever comes to mind.  Go as fast as you can, never raising the pen from the page (or never pausing your typing).  Don't worry about typos or grammar - these things can be fixed later.  The goal is just to get the thoughts out on the page, wherever they take you.  It may feel chaotic at first, but you'll find that a hidden order emerges as you write.

Step 4 - Repeat

The beauty of this exercise is that you can do it anywhere, anytime, without a specific prompt to start with.  Even if you're just waiting in line with a couple minutes, you can jot down the first five words that come to mind and then scribble away from association.  And a nice variation would be to rearrange the words into a poem.  Or, if you're primary aim is poetry, then simply write out lists of rhyming words - you'll be amazed by the associations you find.

Happy Writing!

Ryan

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January 22, 2010 - My Novel Just Ate My Cat

Greetings Fellow Writers!

Yes, we've just reached the Third Week of 2010 - I'm feeling worn out already.  How are you doing today?  Is your new year off to a good start?  Have you had a chance to do much writing?

If you haven't written much yet this year, I encourage you to take a look at today's freewriting prompt below - fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent of that desire to to clean the bathroom.  And if you're working on a novel or another long piece of fiction, we have two article links below you'll be very interested in - Curing the Urge to Write and Researching Your Material.

If your e-mail is plaintext, or if you have trouble with any of the links below, please visit our Newsletter online at www.12writingworkshopsonline.com/newsletter.


My Novel Just Ate My Cat
Do you feel lonely?  Unappreciated?  Financially Unstable?  As if your life is no more than a slow death by papercut?  Then you might be a writer.  Visit Ryan's Blog for for information regarding the treatment of Deteriorative Autoimmune Writing Disease of the Liver.

New! at 1-2-Writing
Research.  It conjures up notions of boredom and term papers.  But it doesn't have to.  In fact, it's one of the best ways to bolster the realism in your fiction.  Find out more about How to Thoroughly Research Your Material.  (Or just use Wikipedia - it's quicker...and free...)


Friday Freewriting Prompt
Are you ready for 15 minutes away from the humdrum of modern life?  Then take this quick meditation in memoir, Opening the Door.

New! in the Members Area
As always, you can post your freewriting exercises, poems, and stories in our Members Area for feedback and discussion.  Not a member yet?  Then Click Here to Join - membership these days is Completely Free!  (As an Added Bonus, you'll get More Than You Pay For!)

Happy Writing!
Ryan

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Ryan Edel
1-2-Writing Site Administrator
www.12writingworkshopsonline.com

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January 12, 2010

1-2-Writing Newsletter - January 12, 2010

Greetings Fellow Writers!

After a long period of reduced activity, the "New and Revised" 1-2-Writing returns to provide workshops and inspiration for 2010.  For links to all of our new features, please visit our homepage at www.12writingworkshopsonline.com.  And please pardon our dust as you stop by - a great deal of the revised site is still under construction, but we'll have more up and running soon.

New! 1-2-Writing Members Area
For those who have taken our Summer Freewriting courses, we've decided to expand this program into our Members Area on the website.  Through the Members Area, you'll receive weekly freewriting prompts as well as access to our Creative Writers Support Forum.  In addition, throughout the year we'll be offering additional workshops free of charge to our members (and we all know how cool free stuff can be).  To sign up, just fill in the form from our homepage or reply back to this e-mail.

Upcoming Classes
For January, we're bringing back the weekly freewriting prompt starting this Friday.  Every Friday, all our members will receive a prompt to inspire some fun writing over the weekend, and then you can post your work for comments in the forums.

Starting next Monday the 18th (Martin Luther King Day), we'll have a one-week "intensive" freewriting course.  We'll have three freewriting assignments (10 min each plus some additional "prep" to get everyone ready to write) for the 18th, 20th, and 22nd.  Space is limited - the course fee will be $20.  Visit our Registration Page to sign up.

New! at 1-2-Writing
Starting a Novel?  Visit the creative writing blog too read tips on Starting Your Novel.
Do you write Poetry?  Learn tips here about Writing in Meter.
Considering a Master of Fine Arts?  Then you'll want to visit our MFA Resource Page.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like to see something new posted on the site.

Happy Writing!
Ryan

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Friday Freewriting Prompts

January 22, 2010: The Door

Freewriting and Memoir

Today, we turn to memoir for our inspiration.  As a freewriting tool, memoir is one of the best ways to reach deep into the subconscious mind in the search for inspiration...

However, it can sometimes be difficult to face past memories, let alone share them with the world.  This is why we never require anyone to share every story for a freewriting workshop - your writing is yours, to keep or to share as you wish.  And I urge you to remember this always - write whatever comes to mind, regardless of what others might think.  You have my permission to tear up any story you don't like.

So, first, please set your timers for 10 minutes (you may take 15 minutes, if you prefer), but don't start the clock just yet .  Once you're ready, please read on.


Now then, for today's prompt:
This prompt is one I personally enjoy.  It's a very simple prompt, and this is why it works so well.  Yet before coming to it, we're going to use a few minutes to center ourselves.  Often, writing feels challenging because it's hard to let go of the stresses of the rest of the day.  But for right now, we're going to do just that.  First, I'd like you to go ahead and take in a deep breath - a deep, soothing breath.  You may hold it a moment, and then let it out.  As you read, know that the shape of these words has been fitted to your next deep breath, and you're already taking in that deep breath.  You're letting it fill your body because today, now, this moment, you have only words and this breath.  And you let it out as a feeling of peace descends.  Breathing, now, is soft.  It is deep.  It is regular and comfortable.  You are enjoying this moment because today, as you read, you imagine a staircase.  It is a tall staircase, lit only enough to guide your way up to the landing.  And you are glad to be on this staircase.  This staircase, it leads to a door, one which you have never opened.  But there is something you want to write about, and it lives behind this door.  You have always wanted to write about it, and you are glad that today has come.  Because today, at this moment, you are at peace with your words.  Today, we relax as we take one step up, and then another.  For this subject - this very important subject you have always wanted to write about - is more than words.  It is an image.  It is a shape.  It is a collection of sounds you hear in your waking dreams.  And just now, at this moment, as you take each step nearer to the door, you hear these sounds coming from behind the door.  And so you reach forward, turning the knob, and opening your door.


Describe what you see.  Write as fast as you can until the time stops.

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About Ryan Edel

January 15, 2010: Freewriting with Heroes and Fruitcake

Everybody start your writing utensils for the first Friday Prompt of the New 1-2-Writing!
We’ll send these out every Friday to all Newsletter subscribers.  To post your work for feedback, please sign up for our Member’s Area.

Now then, Set your timer before reading further (10 minutes for this one), and have your paper or keyboard ready.  For this prompt, you’ll write down some “facts” for the story, and only after you’ve written down these facts should you go on and read the prompt itself...
Now, the “facts” of your story:

Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a mystical, magical land very different from our own.  It can be either a science fiction place with starships and a version of Microsoft Word that doesn't crash, or it could be a fantasy place out of Harry Potter where enchanted quills write stories of their own using lambskin parchment and black dye from Endless Ink, Inc.  Or, if you like, it could be a world very much like our own, except with one subtle change (think The Simpsons: there's a scene where the weather is terrible, it rains every day, but each raindrop is a sweet sugary donut).

Write down the name of this world, and the one key difference between this world and our own.

That done, imagine for yourself a kind of "hero" for this world. It can be an ordinary person with a special determination to "do right" by combating the scourge of donuts that have devoured the local weather, or it can be a superhero with some special power such as the ability to impose Linux stability on Microsoft systems with a wave of the hand.

Write the name of this character and the one "special power" or "special determination" which makes this individual a hero.

And now, The Prompt:

Your hero is getting married tomorrow.  It will be a very traditional wedding.  And the in-laws have brought a loaf of their famous fruitcake as a gift to the bride-and-groom-to-be.  But there's a catch: your hero is very, very, allergic to fruitcake.  And they've already set a healthy slice on our plucky hero's salad plate.  All eyes, now, are on the hero to pronounce this fruitcake delicious or...

(now write as fast as you can for ten minutes)

Happy Writing!

Ryan

Be sure to sign up for our Member’s Area so you can post your story for comments – all freewriting feedback will be positive and reassuring.

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Return from the Wilderness

Seriously, the past four months or so feel like I've been in the wilderness. I was only out of internet and phone range for eight weeks, but my work on the website and my writing and everything else literature related has been flagging terribly. It hasn't been happening. The pen had run dry, and I was busy.

For me, it's been a dry spell for writing, but so much fun in so many other ways. I've set up a new apartment in Baltimore, I'm starting on my MFA, and I'm surrounded by people who aren't just working at writing, but are working their lives around writing. I, finally, am working my life around writing. And it's a great feeling. But all these months leading up to it have been the exact opposite. Instead of writing, I've been...doing other things. I've lead science students on hiking trips through the forests of West Virginia. I've seen the 2.3 acre radio telescope at Green Bank - the worlds largest moving object on land, the most precise radio telescope on the planet. I've said hello and goodbye to nearly two hundred of my best friends. I've attended lectures on global warming and breast cancer and maple syrup disease. I've talked with friends I hadn't seen in ten years, given writing seminars, driven a U-Haul on Pennsylvania Avenue through D.C. during rush hour, chased people with water balloons...and of course I was the one who got wet...

What, then, does this mean for my writing? Have I given up my novels? Do I have to relearn the short story? Am I stuck now with writers block?

The answer to all of the above is no. I stopped my forward progress, but I didn't stop my writing. I've been writing snippets of things all summer - morning show ditties, impromptu songs for my girlfriend, 10-minute free-writes with science students. But none of these short works have been typed, none of them are "publishable" or even really manageable. They fill up notebooks of all shapes and sizes, pretty much whatever paper I had on hand at the time. It's unlikely that any of them will ever show up here or anywhere else online. There were, in fact, no Dagny stories, not a one (and if you know who Dagny is, you understand what this means...the word "payback" comes to mind...)

Often, as writers, we fall prey to this myth that all our stories must be good. We believe that we must craft every word to be if not perfect then at the very least great. Sometimes, we'll spend days and months and years worrying over the same story, trying to get the elements just right. We rebalance the plot, reconstruct our characters, deconstruct the setting and the mood and the tone of our stories. We revise the one story until we're tired of it. And to become professional creative writers - the kind of people who get paid for stories and poems - this process is crucial to future success. Publishers and MFA faculty want to see the best we have to offer. They want to see that we're worth the time to read. But for many writers, this process of revision gets confused with the process of creation. Oftentimes, we credit ourselves with growing as writers because we have made one story better.

Don't stop with one story. Experiment. Spend ten minutes writing something that you know you'll throw away. Skip the laptop routine and scratch out a few words that you won't share with others. With writing, an essential aspect of mastery is practice. As in any field, be it sports or science or music, we become good because we experiment. Every professional violin soloist spent years if not decades scratching out notes that would torture the human ear - and it's that practice which provided them the confidence and skill to be performers today. It is the same with writing. Just as no violinist would spend an entire lifetime playing a single concerto to the exclusion of all others, as writers we cannot afford to work on a single novel or a single poem to the exclusion of all else. There are too many techniques, too many ideas, too many facets of life to chain ourselves - and our literary careers - to the quality of a single piece. We must break ourselves of the idea that every story will be good and realize that experimentation is as much a process of elimination as it is a process of creation. We create, we judge, and we sift the gems from the sand. But trust me, there are no diamonds without a lot - and I mean a lot - of rough.

This said, let me leave you with a bit of guesstimation regarding my own work. In my apartment, I have an entire file box filled with stories I wrote before and during high school - thousands of pages of original, handwritten work. On my computer, I have my stories sorted by year - from 2002 until now, we're looking at probably twenty to a hundred stories per year. Some of these stories were meant as novels, some as novellas, some as shorts, some as still-births. One of the stories weighs in at 190,000 words, and it even has an ending. Out of these hundreds of thousands of words - actually millions of words spend for several hundred story ideas - I have about fifteen short stories that I'm happy with. I have one short novel that I'm happy with. I have half of another novel that I'm happy with, but it doesn't have an ending. And out of all this? One short, short story has been published so far - I earned $100 for it back in February. And why am I starting on a master in fine arts? Because I'm not that great of a writer. I want to be better. I want to learn what it will take to be better.

So as you write, remember to break out of the house every once in a while. Try that wild, off-the-wall story idea that probably won't work. Don't worry about wasting time. Don't worry about whether it's "worth" your time. All writing is worthwhile. All writing is worth producing. It might not be worth reading when your done, but that's okay. It's part of the learning. We cannot succeed until we learn how not to fail.

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About Ryan Edel

Fiction - The Unplanned Birth

In my workshop today, one of my writers touched on the fundamental difference between fiction and nonfiction. She said that she normally writes nonfiction, and that she’s accustomed to outlines and roadmaps for her writing. But she hasn’t liked the results of her planned fiction. She found that she likes the results of her freewriting, but that the process is scary – there is no planning, and editing is needed at the end. But still, the she likes the results.

Part of the reason freewriting inspires the creative process is that it forces the mind to write automatically. The result is that the words you produce are words you’re intimately familiar with. You begin writing about your life, about the things you’ve seen in life, even if the story is not a true story. And it works. It has the feel of truth, because in a deep way the words written on autopilot are truth – your truth. The life you’ve been living.

This is the funny thing about good fiction - it can't be planned. It's as random as our lives, as constant as the stars. Certain aspects of the human experience are accepted as absolute - the need for food, for example, or the strain and exhaustion that come with stress - but the events and decisions of an individual defy outlines. It's a strange phenomenon - generally, most writers avoid crossing back-and-forth between fiction and nonfiction. Before freewriting, I tried to control my writing. I wanted to “make” it good. I believed in working hard to produce the “perfect” story. But results of controlled fiction aren't good, let alone perfect. The characters are stale, the decisions pre-planned, the conflict watered down.

Fiction is not nonfiction. How do I know? Try writing nonfiction without an outline and good sources. That's just not a good idea, not for a longer work. The reader has to believe in the work, and for nonfiction that means believable, reputable facts. And these facts have to fit together tight as a jigsaw puzzle. To make the truth coherent, you have to sit down and plan it out, piece it together, see how every isolated piece matches with every other.

It's not that fiction's any different in that regard - the "facts" must still be "right," and they must certainly "fit together," but the source of these facts is a different place entirely. Some call it the heart, some say it’s the unconscious mind, others believe it's the soul. Tapping it, though, is hard. Allowing the disorder and the chaos of the inner mind to creep out onto the page is a process all by itself. And then telling your conscious mind – the part of your brain that stops you from giving embarrassing revelations at work – to step aside? For some, it’s inconceivable. I've met people who don't believe in freewriting and won't try it - they hold on to the control they have, choking their own creativity. It's not a pretty sight - flat characters, organized plots without purpose, antagonists who don't care about anything except owning the world.

When editors look for good fiction, they aren't looking for someone who can string words together in the "correct" way. They're looking for someone who can reveal a protagonist's inner hate, someone who can show the antagonist's hidden love, a writer who makes us appreciate life in new ways. As you push forward in your writing, make sure that you are learning to write from within rather than simply pen beautiful sentences. Don’t plan your novel to death – write it. Feel it. Express it. And then later, after the words are on the page, after you’ve bled your soul through the keyboard, go back and edit. Assert the control you didn’t need before. Make sure the grammar isn’t too ugly. But don’t do this until you’re done. Don’t edit until after the last line is written. If you’re tempted to edit early, tempted to “tweak” the story a little bit, just keep one thing in mind: you can always edit grammar. You can insert and delete characters and subplots in a finished story. You can even go through and emphasize a theme that didn’t get enough “air time” in the rough draft. But no matter how much you edit, you can’t revive a story without heart.

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About Ryan Edel

Writing through Distraction

Freewriting's open, free-form structure is great for the office, the beach, the classroom - anywhere you go that allows only snatches of time to write your story. Since the free-write is usually not intended as a marketable story, you don't have to worry about typos or smudges or whether you can concentrate enough to make the story "good." But it still takes concentration to write, especially to "get in the groove" and write fast.

This is where your real-world setting can pose some problems - the distractions around you may threaten to short-circuit your creative process.  Fighting the distraction often makes things worse - using these distractions to your advantage, on the other hand, can actually help generate new ideas.

Inspiration for Creative Writing

I once asked my classmates in an online workshop about their habits for "finding inspiration." I think I asked "what do you do to get in the writing mindset." The first response I got back was "You should strike that thought from your mind." According to my classmate, no one who wants to be a writer should wait for inspiration or "the right mindset" - you have to just sit down and write. The next day, our teacher chimed in her complete agreement. Writing, as she pointed out, is a daily habit.

Unfortunately, those weren't the answers I was looking for. Mostly I wanted to start conversation, but also I was looking to get an idea of the sort of writers my classmates were. Writers come in all shapes and sizes, and the reasons for why they write reveal a great deal about their personalities. Some write for catharsis, others for the sheer joy of words on the page, a few here and there for the sadistic pleasure of writing a horrible end to people they don't like (not that any readers here would do such a thing...right?)

But most writers don't exactly know why they write. I can give ideas as to why I write, but no one reason is "the" reason. But the tricks I use for inspiration, those are facts. For a long time, I only had simple tricks. Sometimes I'd take a break and watch a movie. Usually I had a good book sitting by my computer. Every once in a while, when nothing was flowing, I'd play a video game - I don't know why, but it helps.

But then I took a freewriting workshop. For those of you unfamiliar with freewriting, it's a way to channel your unconscious thoughts directly onto the page. To freewrite, you sit down and set a timer for maybe ten or fifteen minutes (you can go for longer or shorter, if you like). During those minutes, you write. You write fast. You write the first thing that comes to mind and the next thing that comes to mind and you edit nothing. Just let it flow. Outlandish, unusual, uncomfortable - whatever the thought is, get it on paper and move on to the next one.

From freewriting, I discovered a whole new meaning for the word "inspiration." Instead of waiting on an outside stimulus to "get my mind going," I learned that the greatest stimuli come from deep within, like the deep ocean waves you never see or feel until they come rumbling to shore.

I've taken a few freewriting seminars, but the course that introduced me was a week-long Amherst Method residency taught by Pat Schneider. Pat's Amherst Method is a complete package for learning to write from within - she incorporates freewriting with guidelines to maintain an open and accepting environment for her writers to share their work. If you can, I highly recommend taking an Amherst Method workshop with one of the many certified instructors nationwide.

If you can't make it to a workshop due to time and/or distance, Pat has two very helpful books on the Amherst Method. Writing Alone and With Others and The Writer As an Artist: A New Approach to Writing Alone & with Others are both great resources for getting in touch with your inner self through the Amherst Method. Also, I have heard very good recommendations for the works of Natalie Goldberg. Her most well-known book on this subject is Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Written in 1986, this book explores Goldberg's own experiences with inspiration and how to capture it on the page - Pat Schneider recommended it to our class as a way to become immersed in the methods of freewriting.

If you have a chance, take a freewriting workshop or take a look at some of these books. And let me know what you think. What do you do for for inspiration? How do you get "in the mood" for writing? Or have you found a motivation that keeps you sitting at your writing desk every morning?

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About Ryan Edel

How to Write Compelling Characters

There is nothing - nothing - that will kill a story faster than a dull protagonist. I'm not talking about a character who sits at home with his mom on Friday nights eating popcorn while watching reruns of that morning's soaps (though that would, of course, be pretty dull). Worse than this is a character who sits at home and does nothing, thinks nothing, decides nothing. The kind of protagonist who takes life in stride and learns nothing. A dull character, indeed.