GET STARTED (or Get Unstuck!) – A Course in Writing Strategies

The goal of this course is to get started on a new writing project, or to re-start an existing project, and to develop ways for you to stay on track, writing until completion of your draft.

Using a set of Writing Tips & Prompts, we introduce a practical method of focusing and executing a consistent and inspired plan of writing actitivity, a “convergence of practice and mystery.”

Along the way we’ll ask questions about your project: Who is it about? What is happening in the story? When is your story taking place? Where in the world is the story happening and where is the story going? Why are you taking the reader there? As journalists would say, the Five Ws basic to any story:  Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

We’ll also look for the beginning, middle, and end of your story (not necessarily in that order).

And we’ll create a safe space to play, make mistakes, have some laughs, and invite all of the literary spirits to help guide us forward.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down”            – Kurt Vonnegut

Tip #1: Assemble Your Writing Tools

Yellow legal-size or letter-size pad, and a package of pens or pencils. Obama likes black Uni-ball Vision Elite rollerball pens with a micro-point.

Tip #2: Set Your Deadline

A first draft of 250 – 300 pages by January 2022? You can do it!

Tip #3: Pass me the elephant—one slice at a time

Divide your total project into short portions and divvy up those portions into shorter pieces. Assign a deadline for each of these pieces.

Tip #4: Old-Fashioned Calendar

Mark the projected progress of your project. Hang in your work area to cheer you on for being “On Schedule” – or kick your butt when you’re not.  Cute animal photos may be helpful.

Tip #5: Rewards Program

Lunch break stroll around the block. Mid-afternoon Tea Time with cookies. End of working day Happy Hour (don’t overdo it!). Whatever fills your sails.

Tip #6 Stop in the Middle

Don’t stop your day’s work at the end of your assigned piece. Write the first sentence of the next portion, and don’t worry if it’s terrible. You’re going to fix it tomorrow!

Tip #7 Create a Word Bank

Your grab bag of words that you come up with, based on free associations in the following categories:

a) a part of a house, b) a season, c) a musical instrument, d) a part of the body, e) a color, f) a piece of clothing, g) a unit of time (decade, hour, century), h) a time of day (dusk, dawn, evening), i) a body of water (lake, ocean, pond,    ditch, also river—can be moving or still), j) a part of the face, k) a type of tree, l) a kind of precipitation or weather (wind, rain, snow), m) a verb describing a   physical motion that repeats (humming, skipping, walking), and an abstract word for emotion (mercy, love, fear, etc.).

Tip #8 Postcard to a Friend

There are two ways to do it: a) Write a quick postcard to someone living or dead describing what you are writing, or hope write. And/Or, b) write about something you saw, heard, or thought the last time you left you house or apartment—a configuration of clouds, a song on the radio, a problem or joy you want to share with the addressee.

Tip # 9 Short Bursts of Fire—Reload

The Pomodoro Method: you break down your work into timed intervals, 20 or 25 minutes of total focus, separated by short breaks. Developed by an Italian guy back in the 1980s and it’s since become popular.  And guess what—it works. The mind works in funny ways, and you’ll find this a good plan of attack.

Tip # 10 – Write for the Reader in Your Head

Could be someone you know, or don’t know, living or dead. But someone whose opinion you care about, either because they need to know what you have to say, or because you admire their writing and want them like yours.

“You just have to get started. You just put something down. Because nothing is more terrifying than the blank page.” –  Barack Obama

Writing Prompts

Writing Prompt #1: What’s Going On

Describe an uncomplicated physical sensation arising from exterior circumstances–the winter cold on your skin, the summer heat, a bird chirping, the smell of something cooking–and let your imagination build on that physical sensation, until the interior circumstances emerge in the shape of a living breathing human being in the real world. Voice is third person—he, she, they. Write no more than half a page, 100 – 250 words max.

Writing Prompt #2: State Your Mission

Announce your purpose, your solemn duty, your goal in writing this particular piece. Why are you doing this? That’s not important. It’s the doing that matters most, the mission you are on, stated plainly and simply in no more than a few sentences. This is what you will print out and post next to your calendar. If you are not doing this every day, carrying out your mission with every word that you write, then you’re veering off course. By visualizing your end result, in clear and simple terms, you will achieve that end result. My book on the bestseller list–that’ll show ’em!

Writing Prompt #3: Write the last thing first

Imagine you’ve carried out your mission, and now it’s time to close the book, Here you are, 300 pages done, and according to your calendar on deadline with one day to spare. In 100 to 250 words, write the ending of your piece. Don’t worry if it’s terrible—remember, you’ll fix it tomorrow. And you may end up writing an entirely different ending! But for now, this is where you’re heading, and it should echo your mission, as stated in Writing Prompt #2 and relate somehow to that first honest sentence you wrote at the beginning, in Writing Prompt #1.

Writing Prompt #4: Word Bank Scramble

Dipping into your Word Bank account, create a world from your imagination. Voice is third person—he, she, they. Should be no longer than half a page, 100 – 250 words max.

Writing Prompt #5: Letter to a Friend

This is an extension of the writing tip where you dashed off a postcard. Now you’re going to make it longer–a letter.

1. a) Write a letter to someone living or dead describing what you are writing, or hope to write. Include the title, the location, who are the main characters, and how does it end?

(no more than 250 wds)

And/Or,

1. b) Write a letter to a friend about something you saw, heard, or thought the last time you left you house or apartment—a configuration of clouds, a song on the radio, a problem or joy you want to share with the addressee. (no more than 250 wds)

Jeanne McCulloch’s Writing Prompt: The Splat & Whiteboard principle, aka The Art of the Early Draft

Take as a given that:  the only bad first draft is the one that doesn’t exist. SPLAT,  aka the generative

stage of the first draft.  The project is to give yourself permission to get all your thoughts down on paper, no matter if they’re random, messy and out of syc.  Just splat them down on paper, or on your computer.  This is the free-flowing stage and should be fun.  Splat allows you to get past the blank page.  How?  By turning off the censor in your head, the fussy voice that wrongly believes every idea should proceed neatly, coherently, one to the next, in a first draft.  Nonsense.  That’s impossible, and if you tried, you’d be constricting the flow of the narrative voice you’re developing to the point at which you’d not be able to hear it at all.  That’s what leads to writer’s block.So, splat it all down.  Then, print it out and lay it on the floor.  It’s a mess, yes.  Good, but in there is a lot of material you’ve generated that you can use.  Not all of it, but a lot.

WHITEBOARD, aka mapping a narrative arc.  By this time, you may have an idea which of your scenes, thoughts, sentences, rough ideas, you want in the beginning of your piece, and which may fit in later.  Draw a large arc on a whiteboard, and start marking the plot points down.  You may want to move things around once you get more acquainted with your material.  That’s why you’re using an erasable whiteboard.

NB:  if you prefer, you can use a blackboard to a whiteboard, or a bulletin board and post-it notes.  What’s important is the physicality of this generative stage. The brain to hand action is what fires the imagination, allows you to hear your narrative voice, and helps you see the work as it evolves and unfolds.

Eventually, you should have a working arc with a beginning, a middle, and end, and a lot in between.

Bear in mind your whiteboard/blackboard/bulletin board map will likely still require changes, things might be excised out, things might be added.

But the good news is, this is your first draft, your blueprint, your road map, your way forward. Proceed from here, you’re on your way.