A father's advice on writing.

A father's advice on writing.

11/15/11 8:21p
It was a very late start for her with her writing challenge - she was starting in the evening instead of her usual morning session. This was her main teaching day, when she taught a morning class and an afternoon class. Last week she had not managed to write at all that day. She would at least give it a try or see if she could do half a day's writing quota. This was a relentless pace to keep up with - the 1667 words a day needed to fulfill the 50K words of the Nanowrimo challenge, which was supposed to be a novel for National Novel Writing Month.

She had hit a wall the previous two days and somehow managed to break through it just last evening. She was finishing up when her Dad called. He wanted to know if she had decided to do 'that writing thing'. Yes, she told him - she was doing it. Good. He'd been thinking a lot about it and he had some ideas for her that he wanted to tell her about. He seemed so excited to be able to advise her on this. When she had first told him about it he had just gotten back from having been in the hospital for heart surgery - a heart surgery that he'd needed to go back in for second time a week later. He had immediately warmed up to this writing venture and had given her advice about it then.

Here he was with a more extensive version of the same advice. In his view 'the writing thing' was not the Nanowrimo challenge but simply to get serious about writing. He was having a hard time allowing that she had decided to try to stick it out through the challenge, even though they both agreed it was foolish in many ways. She had gotten this far and wanted to see what else would come up from going through in this manner proscribed/prescribed. There had already been several good results from working this far through it , that she was reluctant to give up half way through. She would have to try a few more days to see if there really was no more growth in store from doing it.

It almost seemed like her enthusiasm about doing it and learning what she was learning from it, affected others she told about it. Just the way her Dad had warmed up to the subject even though he was just home from the hospital. It had provoked him to think more about it and share his ideas with her, as if it was awakening his own desires to pursue writing, but even more, she wondered if perhaps he should have been a teacher. He was so passionate about this. He always had to teach all the kids things about everything. They did not usually like it because he could be such a heavy handed teacher. He always needed to show how to do things, or to explain how things were. This did not allow for the view of the one being shown,

8:47 pm guess - 500 words (actual 522!)

The first point of his advice was, just as he'd told her the first time, that one first needed to build the habit of writing on a daily basis. One needed to do this at the same time of day every day so that it became second nature just to write. It was preferable to to do it in the morning. That was when one was fresh, and one's ideas could flow the best. It also meant that other things in one's day would not get in the way and crowd out the writing work. If necessary one should rearrange one's schedule to accommodate this new writing schedule. One should write no more than 500 words a day. He told her to sit down and write a list of all the things she knew about - places, people, things, skills she had, etc. etc. He said there was a lot she knew about. This would provide a big pool of topics to write about. He told her he wished he'd thought of this when he was thinking about getting further into writing. Every day choose something from the list and write about it. Having a list of things she knew about would leave her free to write easily. He said that writer's block was caused by writers getting stuck with writing something they knew nothing about.

Whether that was true she did not know. Her wall, or block, was because she suddenly doubted what she was doing and therefore could think of nothing else to say, or that she was willing to say within the context. Then she suddenly found things to say again. She had discovered there was loads to write about. But she had also suddenly not wanted to write about anything much. It was hearing something intriguing on the radio that reminded her of things and got her wanting to tell about these things. One had to find a way to want to write things when it felt like one did not want to. One needed to work through one's passing moods. One did have to look at why one did not want to and acknowledge that but one did not always have to indulge those passing feelings. They could be a kind of self sabotage at work.
9:17p 910 words

She was reaching her limit for the day of what she felt she could write, though she had not yet reached her quota. Her Dad had gone on to tell her how writing essays about the subjects on the list would grow into a portfolio of pieces that overtime would tell her own story. At first she should make her priority to be getting the stuff down on paper. Once the habit of writing consistently was established she might find she wanted to improve her writing. She could do that then. She might find that some of the pieces would fit with each other to form larger pieces. She liked the idea of a portfolio or collection of pieces very much.

For now though she was done for the day. The rest would have to be made up the next day.
9:29 pm 1056 words