Month: July 2011

Mixed Bag

It’s the end of a great week in Southampton. I’ve had the pleasure of working with three young writers and seeing their creativity at work at the Southampton Art School.  I also got to share my classroom with artist, Mark Thurman, and watch the progress of his cartooning students and enjoy the walls filled with his illustrations.

I had planned to do some creative writing of my own, but it didn’t happen. As a teacher, I often find that my mind is full of my students’ stories instead of mine, so it can be tough to put creative pen to paper. I put together a proposal for a textbook instead, which called for a different set of writing muscles. I also caught up on emails and read and read and read. I’m reading my first Amanda Quick novel and finished two more by another author new to me, Barbara Cleverly. I also treated myself to a revisit of A&Es Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. Lovely.

This week, I was sent this link to a great piece by William Zinsser that I passed along via Twitter–Zinsser at his best on writing good English. Drop by and give it a read, though I know I’m preaching to the converted. http://www.theamericanscholar.org/writing-english-as-a-second-language/

Hope your week was as good as mine. Have a great weekend.

Getting it “Done”

This isn’t an original idea, but if you have a goal you want to reach, it’s an idea that works. I got it from an article in The Writer Magazine a few years ago. In the article a writer said that members of her writing group sent emails to each other with “done” in the subject line when they had completed their writing goals for the day.

This is such a simple idea, but I can speak from experience that it is effective. Right now I’m working with a small group of writers and we’re sending out “dones’ every day. The first time we did this our goals were all writing goals. This time we’ve expanded our “done’ to encompass whatever individual goal a person chooses. We’re going to work on our goals for a month and then share what our goals were in August.

So, if you have something you want to do every day–exercise, write 500 words, read War and Peace–find a group of people to exchange emails with daily and you will be on your way to achieving your goal.

Do you have any great goal-reaching tips? I’d love to hear what they are!

Coffee Writing

The Writer Magazine HeaderI’ve  been having a lot of fun lately creating writing prompts for The Writer Magazine’s website. Click the link to read my Q & A with editor, Sarah Lange.

I call this writing my “coffee writing.” Coming up with ideas for writing prompts is something that I need to do with pen and notebook–and a lot of staring into space. It’s just not keyboard writing. And what better way to do that kind of writing than in a comfortable chair with a coffee at hand. Perfect.

I love the freedom of being able to draw big arrows to move things around and doodle in the margins and squeeze in words above the line and just, frankly, make a mess. The pristine appearance of a computer screen just won’t do for coffee writing. Do you do any writing that just works better with pencil and paper instead of a keyboard and screen?

Right now the prompts are available only to The Writer Magazine subscribers, but after they are published I’ll be adding them to my list of prompts at my book’s website: http://wrightingwords.wordpress.com.

Now, time to put the kettle on and find that notebook!

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