Sunday, September 9, 2018

Keeping the Writing Process Concrete


Starting out again after a hiatus from writing (which usually means less writing), I'm enjoying being able to see and touch my current day-to-day achievements. In that light, I'm continuing to write in my daybook and currently have more photos on order to paste onto pages and write about.

I want to move toward writing fiction again, so I've been thinking about how I can concretize the experience to provide me with immediate feedback. I've decided first, to use an extra flashdrive to place all the short stories I've already written in one digital place. Not only is this an incentive (hold my stories in my hand!), but it is also practical. I find that over time my writing tends to get scattered--saved in different places . . . and misplaced. A second action step I'm taking is physically printing the stories and placing them in a box. As the box fills up, I can see my progress. I was inspired to do this by the story of John Steinbeck's writing of East of Eden. When he presented the manuscript to his editor, it was in a mahogany box. I don't know if I can find a mahogany box, but I'll find something.

Right now, it's almost six in the morning, not yet dawn, and I can hear the rain falling outside. I've taken some time to write this little piece about writing, this little thought-moment about my writing life. I've done this now once a week for over a month, which I've published on this blog. Feels good.

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