Gooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you happen to be! And welcome to Day 2 of Writing Camp!
Before we get started, give yourself a hearty pat on the back. You made it back for another day of writing! Go you!!
Now that we’ve all congratulated ourselves for being amazing, let’s figure out how to move forward from Day 1 and lay the groundwork for Day 3.
What Day 2 is all about
On this second day of Writing Camp, we’re going to focus on building. By now, if you’ve completed Day 1, you’ve got something written or typed down. Hooray! You have words! That’s always a good thing. Now: how do we produce more words? How do we build on what we’ve got so far?
Birds and breadcrumbs
There are two tricks I use to keep moving once I’ve gotten started on a piece of writing. The first: breadcrumbs.
Every time I stop working on a piece at the end of the writing day, I leave myself a few scrappy notes about where I want to go when I eventually return to the piece (ideally, the very next day!). I usually leave these little notes for myself at the very point where my draft breaks off, in bold and prefaced by the phrase ‘START BACK HERE’ so I can find my spot easily. Since my writing brain is fully switched-on by the time I hit the pause button on my writing at the end of the day, it’s usually brimful of ideas regarding where I want to go next. It’s helpful to have those ideas noted down for when my writing brain is much less switched-on, i.e. at the start of my next writing day.
The second trick I use to keep moving: I get silly.
I must admit that getting silly comes pretty naturally to me, which is probably why I’ve tried to parlay that ability into humour writing (it’s a work in progress). But in this context, ‘getting silly’ can be thought of more broadly as ‘lightening up’.
Someone who was also a fan of lightening up while writing is Anne Lamott, perhaps most famous for coining the concept of the ‘shitty first draft’ in her wonderful work on writing: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (you can read substantial extracts from the book here). Essentially, the ‘shitty first draft’ is the inevitably bad first crack at a piece of writing. The term ‘shitty first draft’ is a helpful concept in part because it helps you to lighten up on yourself while churning out those first words:
In the Bill Murray movie Stripes, in which he joins the army, there is a scene that takes place the first night of boot camp, where Murray’s platoon is assembled in the barracks. They are supposed to be getting to know their sergeant, played by Warren Oates, and one another. So each man takes a few moments to say a few things about who he is and where he is from. Finally it is the turn of this incredibly intense, angry guy named Francis. ‘My name is Francis’, he says. ‘No one calls me Francis—anyone here calls me Francis and I’ll kill them. And another thing. I don’t like to be touched. Anyone here ever tries to touch me, I’ll kill them’, at which point Warren Oates jumps in and says, ‘Hey—lighten up, Francis’.
This is not a bad line to have taped to the wall of your office.
Even if you don’t end up taping ‘Lighten up, Francis,’ to the wall of your office, this little scene is hopefully enough to help you crack a smile.
So whichever of today’s prompts you decide to follow, I’d like to invite you to lighten up on yourself and whatever you’re working on. Hang loose. Get silly if you have to. Sometimes I do this by calling a piece of writing a ‘horrible draft’ or ‘shitty first draft’. Sometimes I lighten up by using ridiculous words or phrases or imagery (‘And it’s at this point in the poem that we see the matter of gender come to the fore once again, when Grendel’s mother goes absolutely apeshit’). Freewriting is another way of getting your brain to loosen up.
So: ‘Lighten up, Francis’. And leave yourself breadcrumbs at the end of the day.
Day 2 Writing Prompts
Pick whichever one feels right for you.
Option 1: Freewriting
If you didn’t try producing a freewritten description of your piece on Day 1, I encourage you to try it today.
If you did the freewritten description of your piece, let’s try something different. Read through what you produced on Day 1, even if it’s just your freewritten description. Then set a timer for five minutes and freewrite about whatever comes to mind—it could be your own sense of where you’re heading, your thesis statement, a particular character, an image, a word. Do not stop. Do not look back. Do not worry at all about using perfect punctuation or sentence structure. Just empty your brain onto the page.
If that’s all the time and brain you’ve got for today, that’s fine (and congratulations on getting through Day 2!). Just take a moment to assess where you stand, and leave yourself a couple of breadcrumbs for Day 3. These could take the form of explicit instructions (‘Pick up on this idea and expand on it’) or a tiny description of what comes next (‘Next I want to set the scene for X by doing Y’).
If you feel like you could keep going, you can either (a) set yourself a goal for the rest of your writing day (e.g. set a timer for 20 minutes, or set a goal of writing at least 200 more words) and/or (b) try out Option 2 below.
Option 2: Directed prompt
Yesterday’s prompt was all about finding the heart of your piece, the reason you’re writing it in the first place. Today, let’s think about endings. Take 10 minutes and write about one of the following:
How your story ends.
Where you want your reader to end up emotionally.
Where you want your reader to end up intellectually.
The questions that will remain even after you’ve completed your piece (i.e. what can’t be covered within the scope of your piece).
The questions people will be able to start answering once they’ve read your piece.
The image you want to leave in your reader’s head.
Option 3: You do you
If you’re at Writing Camp for the camaraderie and accountability rather than the prompts, that’s great! Do your own thing, and let us know about it in the chat!
Ok, folks: time to write!
I’ll see you tomorrow for Day 3 of Writing Camp!
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