Mar
20
Looking for 'brain' gold
Week 2 of Holly’s course is pure gold. Her exercise in finding out what topics and issues might form the basis of your future writing is simply incredible.
This week’s material is about discovering who you are, what makes you tick, and even discovering what your purpose in life is.
I now have on the back of my office door a large map of all the things that make me tick, and I’ve had SO MANY IDEAS as a result of this map that there have been nights that I’ve lost sleep from all the mental commotion!
I would recommend spending the initial minimum time that Holly recommends with getting the ’sweet spot map’ started, but make sure you put it up on a door or wall so you can come back and add things to it as they occur to you later.
Mar
8
Holly Lisle, Writer
My intention with these reviews is not give too much detail about what the course material contains, since this is Holly’s intellectual property, but to give you my opinion about how her course broadens my skills as a writer.
Holly begins her course addressing the THINKING problems that can cause a would-be author trouble from getting started, or if they never finish what they start.
The first week’s material can be immensely helpful for people who have a yearning to write but don’t have much to show for it.
In fact, I’ve come back to this first assignment when I’ve hit obstacles progressing with this course myself (I’ll mention those difficulties later).
It’s good to be reminded of the mental games writers play on themselves.
On the issue of getting started, I’ve also found in Becoming a writer by Dorothea Brande, also helpful for someone like me who comes from a technical, left-brain writing background.
Brande’s writing advice is, before anything else, to get up at least half an hour early and just start writing whatever…
This way you’re more connected with your creative side and haven’t put your brain into gear with lot’s talking and mind-clutter.
Jack Dann, Writer
Something Jack Dann also mentioned once which I loved too was that if you don’t write first thing in the morning, you get to the end of the day and you’ve probably written nothing, so you feel screwed. If you take charge and do your writing first thing, then you won’t feel screwed.
The other piece of advice Dorothea Brande gives in addition to writing first thing in the day is to assign yourself fifteen minutes at some point during the day to also write, and over time try different times to see what effect it has on your writing.
Just getting going with regular writing and learning more about yourself by doing will teach you more than just thinking about it.