Young Writers Society

A bit of fine info from a book I'd like to share with you all... ^_~

The first useful concept is the idea of short assignments. Often when you sit down to write, what you have in mind is an autobiographical novel about your childhood, or a play about the immigrant experience, or a history of - oh, say - say women. But this is like trying to scale a glacier. It's hard to get your footing, and your fingertips get all red and frozen and torn up. Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and then try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you from behind your back.

What I do at this point, as the panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I'm going to have to get a job only I'm completely unemployable, is to stop...

I try to remember that all I have to do is write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame, all I have to bite off for the time being.. All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown, in the late fifties, when the trains were still running. I am going to paint a picture of it, in words, on my word processor. Or all I am going to do is to describe the main character the very first time we meet her, when she walks out the front door and onto her porch. I am not even going to describe the expression on her face - just what I can see through a one-inch picture frame, just one paragraph describing this woman, in the town where I grew up, the first time we encounter her.

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look honey, all we're going to for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we're going to do or now. We are just going to finish this one short assignment.

Yes...very comforting. (Breathes). Thanks for posting!

That's just what I need to do when writing very short stories. So thanks for that, Dreamy.

'Tis good advice, DD. ^_^ Well explained --

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look honey, all we're going to for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry.

and amusing. ^_~

What book is this from?

This is very good advice. Keeping this sort of idea in mind is the perfect way to keep someone from being overwhelmed.

Glad you liked it, guys.

(Snoink -> Um, that would be Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott)

Dude, I love that book. Well-written, entertaining, and bizarrely interesting. (Plus, I have several quotes from it saved on my computer... *geeky*)

Thanks DD! I'll keep it in mind. ^_^