Practice Writing Something – It Can be Nonsense
Something I talk about quite a bit with clients and in my writing community, To Live & Write … Wherever You Are, is the nature of practice. Specifically, I tend to rave about the benefits of practice – which are many – especially for writers and creatives, and especially when it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress.
I often discuss practice, making a practice (credit: Jacquelyn Frost’s daughter), what Ira Glass has to say about the taste gap, and how important it is to practice a lot so you can get through the inevitable stack of crud, like shitty first drafts, that we all produce before we start creating art and stories we actually feel great about. Not good, not mediocre. Great.
The very human requirement to practice creative skills before leveling up to good and great is behind every single one of the games and challenges I throw at Two Live & Write … Wherever You Are across the year. Imagine March, the Flash Lit months, Pen to Page, the Daily Pages months and everything in between, they’re all opportunities for writers to practice.
The very human requirement to practice creative skills before leveling up to good and great is just one of the root beliefs supporting my personal philosophy that writing labs and workshops work best for the writer when they are steeped in play and experimentation. [Another root belief is that the notion that writers have to suffer in pain or poverty to produce anything relevant is absolute bullshit, but I’ll talk about that another time.]
Proof of Write is where you get to share your practice so you’re not writing into a void. This weekly gathering is a safe space where positive feedback informs you and your writing about your progress. Working on dialogue? Test it out in a practice piece, bring it to Proof of Write, and see how it lands.
If you are a writer who struggles right now with creativity, connection, getting your butt in the chair to write, or anything else to do with your creative identity, it’s time to make a practice. It’s time to play. It’s time to draw dogs that look like cows and write prose that smells like cowpies.
Remember the joy of writing for the fun of it when you were a child? You can 100% get that back. But you have to be ready to play, stink, experiment, fail, and – most terrifying of all – succeed.
Remember the release of angst-ing all over the page when you were a teenager? You can 100% angst all over pages as an adult and then, because you’re an adult, you can make them work to your advantage; you have knowledge and resources to turn that angst into power on the page. [Um, hi. I can help with that, if you want/need it.]
Remember the intense emotions that one author squeezed from your heart and soul so profoundly that you walked around for a week feeling it in your physical body? They had to practice a lot to get their storytelling to that level. Guess what. You can 100% get there, too, with practice.
So. Make a practice. Grab one of the deliberately weird and awkward Flash Lit prompts this month (June, 2022) and take it for a weird and awkward ride. Write whatever the heck you want. Share it or don’t share it. Just do it.
Do it for you. You are worth it. Trust me; I have been where you are and I know things.
I’ve been working with writers for 25 years, mentoring on and off for about 20, running To Live & Write … Wherever You Are and all its events and activities since 2014, running labs and workshops since 2016, and coaching since 2018. So, I’ve known (and still know) a lot of writers who didn’t understand their abilities until they had chalked up some hard-core practice.
Coincidentally, most of them didn’t know they were hard-core practicing; they thought they were lightweight playing and casually experimenting. Don’t tell them, please, because they’re elbows deep into writing their first, second, and third novels, adding to their extensive short story portfolios, and growing their blogs like mad blogging scientists.
What if you could get where you want to be as a writer by beginning today with a few words? Imagine beginning right TF now with some absolute crap that no one wants to read because it sucks so hard the nearest black holes is all, Damnnnn … that sucks!
How will it feel to have written something? I think it’s fair to say that most writers prefer having written to the act of writing. So, if the act of writing feels daunting, aim for how it feels to have written.
Set yourself a simple goal. Pick a prompt and play with it. Write nonsense. Write anger. Write the frivolous and the rant-y and the giggly and the whiny. Spend 100 words wondering what the hell I was thinking when I came up with these prompts in the first place.
It’s Flash Lit June! It’s going to get weird.
Let’s dive right in with Manifest Taxidermy.
See what I mean? Weird. But you’re a writer. You’re creative. You get weird without even working at it, right? Let’s play!
Flash Lit June
- Prompt #1: Manifest Taxidermy
- Prompt #2: Aggressive Tan
- Prompt #3: The First Emperor of Arizona
- Prompt #4: White Pants and Sock Gaiters
- Prompt #5: The Final Braid of Roving
- Prompt #6: Ducks. And How to Make Them Pay
- Prompt #7: The Upside Down is Inside Out
- Prompt #8: The Ouija Pen Got Loose
- Prompt #9: Rage Against the Machine
- Prompt #10: The Ancients Lost Their Luggage on a Field Trip
What: Short story, scene, blog post, poem, song lyrics, fiction, non-fiction, personal narrative. Any genre.
Length: Up to 500 words.
Where to share: Write it on your blog. Drop the link in the comments. Don’t have a blog? Talk to me.
How to talk to me: Private Facebook messages are fine, or email [email protected]