The ego bubble is the enemy. For the better part of a year I haven't shared my work. I've been writing in a thick bubble free of any criticism - constructive or otherwise. Just last week, I popped that bubble by submitting a story to my writer's group. When I heard what they had to say, I was gobsmacked! I reacted poorly. My issue was not the response to the story I submitted, but my response to receiving feedback. I've always touted the necessity of workshop to learn the flaws of your writing, and touted not being defensive. But there I was - defending! I'm of a rather firm belief that if the story doesn't explain the idea you want to get across to the reader, than you aren't doing your job. No amount of background information directly from your mouth to the group is going to save that story - only revision will. I was upset by my own hypocrisy. I'd thought of myself as having a thick skin, being able to take critique, but I was clearly wrong....
A quiet location (not home) . Libraries are good for this. Something to look at . A window to the outside is nice, but in a pinch you can use one of those over-sized picture books from the photography section and place it, open, against the back of a library desk Something to listen to . Use an ambient noise mixer and a soundtrack to have some nice, wordless ambience. I choose the Ravenclaw Common room on Ambient Mixer and the Harry Potter Soundtrack on YouTube. Clear goals . What do you want to get done during this alone time? Make sure you know your schedule and what you want out of this session. Don’t let yourself come out of this retreat without meeting at least half of your goals. Something to read . You may get bored staring at the blinking cursor but, rather than use this as an opportunity to browse Facebook, why not make that time productive? Read something you’ve been meaning to for a long time, or grab something entirely new from the shelf just because. You can also...
I wrote my first manuscript during the 2012 Camp NaNoWriMo session. I managed, quite happily, to punch out all 50,000 words of that hideous first draft - ten days early, even! For a long time afterward - two years, to be exact - I didn't finish anything else. There was something about that first foray that really struck me and kept me motivated, and it took me a long time to figure out what that was. Turns out, it was the word counter Since I determined that missing link between me and finishing my work, I've tried many different substitutes for the NaNo word count graph. I made my own in Excel, made charts in OneNote, but nothing really helped. Then, I found Write-O-Meter Write-O-Meter is an android app designed with writer's in mind. I use it primarily to log my writing; it tracks word counts, time spent writing, and even how you felt during a particular session. There is a timing feature as well as writing quotes and special little tools to get the creative jui...
Comments
Post a Comment