"Write Freely" Rules of the Road
I list the 10 Rules for "Fresh Writing."
Rule #4: Go with the flow. Check the critic at the door.
When we begin our writing sessions, before we have clicked into the zone of writing, sometimes the critic slips in on little cat feet ready to haunt us. Some voice we have heard in the past, some warning that tempts to hold back creativity loves to stop us in our tracks.
The critic has a place in the afternoon when we are editing, or the voice that says, "Stop, Look and Listen" to keeps us from crossing the street without caution. But... this critic, mean old Aunt Minnie, your mother's voice, an admonishing father, all can make us strive for perfection and immobilize to creating.
Before we begin our work, CHECK THE CRITIC AT THE DOOR. If that nasty buggy won't stay outside your house, then imagine a bubble in front of you. Put that demon little wiggler in a bubble, and like letting go of a balloon, let the bubble go. Let it drift out of your space, your house, your neighborhood, way to the edge of the universe. Then gently or with great aplume, explode the bubble. Hurrah! If exploding seems too harsh, dissolve it. Let it fade away. Make fireworks and let it go. You are free. You have permission. So now sit down and write freely. Celebrate your progress! Get to writing.
Go with the flow! Check the critic at the door.
Post your writing
A couple of Santa Fe Writers have posted some of their writing as comments at the See Your Self in Print posting below. Join them.
Post samples of your story in the comments on this blog.SoupKitchenWriting.com. Go to comments, paste a bit of your story up to 3000 characters. Click subscribe in comments and you can also subscribe to this blog and get new entries sent to your email. Post your work and see yourself in print! Anne
Writing in Santa Fe
USING PROMPTS
Start with one of these lines. Repeat the line until something starts churning. Write whatever comes out of your pen. Be courageous, say anything from your "grocery list" to "My mother had too much stuff. I felt..." Write at least 10 minutes or at least several pages. If you get stuck repeat the start line.
Time your writing. I set a timer for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 45 minutes. When the buzzer goes off I give myself a few minutes to complete the work. If you time your writing, your body will naturally adjust, giving you a good beginning, middle and end. At the end of the time if you tell yourself to wrap it up, your body will usually come up with a great ending line, the cap.
Try timed writing. Send me samples of your work. Anne www.SoupKitchenWriting.com or blog.WriteYourLifeStory.org
START LINES:
"I remember..."
"If only..."
"She could have..."
"What I really want to say is..."
SEE YOURSELF IN PRINT
You have been doing great work.
Your new challenge: Send it out. Post samples of your story in the comments on this blog.SoupKitchenWriting.com. Go to comments, paste a bit of your story up to 3000 characters. See yourself in print.
Dear Ending
Writing prompt: To my writing: Dear . . .
By Karen L. Reddick
Dear Ending,
Will you ever end this 10 year agony? Will you allow me to finish this masterpiece that I call a Novel?
The stage has been set, the cast has been drawn, but the curtain will not fall. So many people have read your work and so many people want you to finish what’s started.
Give me a sign that you are ready. Give me a clue so I can move on.
The steps are in place, the readers’ await, but you sit in a drawer, unable to show yourself. You sit in a drawer, failure you say. You poser, you phony, you fake. The ending holds back for fear of exposure. For if the ending would come then the story would show that you’re not a writer, just a two-bit ‘ho.
How silly you are to think you can write. Your muse is gone now. Close this chapter and say goodnight.
Move on, move one, the story is great! Success, success it’s there don’t wait!
Karen Reddick, Author of Grammar Done Right
www.TheRedPenEditor.com
From a Soup Kitchen Writer
Dear Writing,
Dearest writing! Lovely stream of words on the page! Why do you run into hiding when we get near other writers? I understand it’s not the writers themselves, necessarily, but the Big Writing Events where they congregate. What scares you about those events? What pierces your heart, what paralyses you, makes you mute? For myself, I feel I will be found out, proven a fraud. Something will be expected of me that I won’t be able to deliver. They will see through my shell like a pane of glass, I will be exposed and found wanting. That is my fear. Ungrounded in any lived experience but undeniable in feeling. Have you piggybacked onto my fear? Have you let my neuroses infect you? Do not allow it! Lovely writing, resist! Your voice is a bell, pure in my heart. Do not let the world squash you, or I will be lost. I rely on you daily to connect me to the things that matter, to keep my head above the waves of the daily grind that threaten always. Writing, you are beautiful. Cool when the fires rage, warm in the dead of night. You are golden in this tarnished world. My solace. My lifeline. Be strong, I will back you. Others may criticize, may say this world should go there, the ending is all wrong. Those are trifles, not the substance of you. You are the ink leaping from my pen, the unseen worlds forming in my mind. We will persevere in the face of Right Writing, Correct Grammar, The Way It Should Be Done. That is balderdash, and we won’t listen to it. Stay with me, my pearl. Together we will brave Big Writing Events, and we might see familiar faces, other writers clutching their sacred boxes of writing, hoping no one will take them or force them open. Shielding them from callous eyes, yet wanting to offer them, their most precious gifts.
Kathy Mitchell April 30, 2008
Meet Author Alyson Stanfield and her new book "I'd Rather Be In the Studio!"
Today I’m hosting Alyson B. Stanfield, author of
I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion. Alyson is here as part of the blog tour to help promote the book and is also giving away a free copy. She’s invited me to ask a question related to the book. Welcome, Alyson.ALYSON: Thank you for inviting me here, Anne. I have loved every writing workshop I've attended with you. You are such a positive person and I'm thrilled you wanted to host me on your blog.
ANNE: That's great. And thanks for the quote in your book from our workshop on "Why do we write by hand." You are a genius in marketing. Let's get right to some questions. And folks read on, you can win one of Alyson's new book.
How much time do you spend in writing your blog and emarketing materials?
ALYSON: This varies greatly and I really should keep track of it. In fact, your question has prompted me to do so. Maybe we can do a follow-up post next month and I’ll let you know a definite answer.
What you should know now is that in the beginning of ArtBizCoach.com, I spent probably 80% of my time marketing. I was trying to build an audience for my newsletter and randomly sent it to anyone who cared to open it. (Don’t do this unless you plan on personalizing each email. Otherwise, it’s considered spam.) Someone once told me that small business development centers tell start-ups that they should spend 70% of their time marketing for the first couple of years. I believe it.
Right now, I do very little direct marketing. I have a subscriber base of more than 7,000, which tends to help me get the word out. My goal is to keep writing a value-laden newsletter and helpful blog posts. This is how people find me. Good news travels fast! All of my workshops these days are the result of invitations sent to me. In other words, I didn’t have to seek them out. For this reason, my schedule looks very different from someone who is just starting to build a business.
What does your marketing schedule look like?
The things I do each month (or about once a month):
Write at least one article for publication, such as one for Art Calendar.
Host one complimentary teleseminar with a special guest.
Check my Web site stats.
Meet with a couple of people for coffee or lunch.
Meet with my mastermind partner.
Things I do each week:
Write my newsletter and record it as a podcast.
Link my newsletter in a blog post somehow.
Listen to an expert on a teleseminar. Last week, I listened to one on creating video for your site. I’m all pumped up about doing video now.
Attend one meeting, such as the monthly Colorado Independent Publishers Association meeting.
Check Facebook. I’m not terribly adept at this yet, but I keep going back and old friends and classmates find me, which I think is amazing.
Check my blog stats.
Update my Web sites. I have a number of them, so there’s always something that needs work. I tend to do the updates as needed.
Send thank-you notes. Lately I’ve been sending them to people who leave nice reviews on my book’s Amazon.com page.
Allow time for planning. Currently, I’m planning an artist seminar in Colorado next fall. It’s my response to having to travel so much this spring.
Things I do each day:
Comment on blogs. I am addicted to Google Alerts, so I know right when someone has posted something about me or my book on their blog. So, I hop over to their site and leave a comment.
Check in with clients and students in my classes. You may not think of this as marketing, but I do. It’s critical to maintaining relationships.
Blog. Really, I don’t post to my blog every day. The posts seem to come in fits and starts, so I might have a ton of ideas for blog posts on one day. If they’re not time sensitive, I’ll postdate them and pretty soon I have a week’s worth of posts.
Plan my day. This is my most important step. I do it at night and review it again in the morning.
Twitter (this is new to my schedule and I don’t know where it will lead, but I’m trying it out--see twitter.com).’
Please link here for the free book giveaway instructions:
http://idratherbeinthestudio.com/blogtourfreebook.html Interested in winning a free copy of’
I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion’ Visit this site, read the instructions, and enter. Your odds are good as she’s giving away a free copy on most of the blog tour stops. You can increase your odds by visiting the other blog tour stops and entering on those sites as well.THANKS ALYSON.
And thanks for joining us. Here is how to reach her. ANNE www.SoupKitchenWriting.com
Alyson B. Stanfield
Author of
I'd Rather Be in the Studio!
The Artist's No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion
P.O. Box 988
Golden, CO 80402
303.273.5904
website -->http://www.artbizcoach.com
blog -->http://www.artbizblog.com
HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR WORK
Some folks have asked me: How can I organize the writing I have already done?
During the week of each writing session, I suggest that you type your entry into your computer exactly as you wrote it. Give it a title and a date. I include the time of day because 8:00 am writing is different from 12:00 am work. This way you will not get behind in recording your writing into the computer. You can go back to the piece later for editing. More on recording your edited work later. Keep writing, Anne
APRIL IS POETRY MONTH
Join Poet, Carolyn Jennings.
Liquid Poetry Event April 11, 2008- Denver Poet Laureaute Chris Ransick And Colorado Poets Lend Their Spirit and Support to Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
Please join Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick, Carolyn Jennings and his merry band of Colorado Poets at 7 p.m. on the evening of April 11, 2008, at the Wynkoop Brewery's Mercantile Room at 1634 18th St. in Denver, CO, for a gathering of Denver's literary community to celebrate two of life's greatest pleasures: poetry and beer. Special guest poets Mike Henry, James Diego Frey, and Joy Sawyer You can submit your poem to be read to <poetry@wynkoop.com> by the deadline April 4.
Sounds like fun. Anne www.SoupKitchenWriting.com