Writing. It’s a funny old game, isn’t it? You want to write, you really do, but you find yourself making all sorts of daft excuses not to. For example, I’ve recently taken up knitting and I find myself wanting to relax in front of the TV, needles clacking away as my current project slowly grows, and it’s only when it’s too late to begin anything else that I lament not having spent the evening writing.
I’m currently reading Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction, and as with most creative writing manuals, it comes complete with writing exercises at the end of each chapter. I’m making a note of these, and mulling them over, but do I actually do any of them? Do I heck. I wrote loads of material when I did a creative writing night class, and I usually write my fingers off whenever a magazine or website has a closing date for a reading period. But without a teacher/editor to give me feedback, or a deadline to which I have to work, I often find it difficult to muster up the impetus to get the thoughts down on paper/screen.
So I’ve come up with a solution, in conjunction with a friend. He’d like to get back into writing himself, so I’m going to set us writing tasks based on those given in this particular book. We’ll each have until Monday to complete them, by which point we swap work, and then have until Wednesday to read them, and come up with comments. Then the whole cycle will begin again. Hopefully, having someone to provide feedback, and having a deadline, will kick me back into writing again…
Watch this space.
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