#freewrite

[gibbsweatherill224m]

Madeline

[ghostingpen]

here again to attempt a full 8-hour writing day. i've also been attempting a ritual where i handwrite for an hour to warm myself up and that's been getting me to great word counts, about 800 words on average per hour.

today's song: slowly - the altogether, karen han

novel progress: 8591/90000

[one-step-at-a-time25]

A freewrite for writing class that escaped me

[mooneyedandglowing]

XIX

The day is lost to too much thinking, as many days are. For this day, it is craft. + I barely intend to discuss much of it here or now although suppose I might. I am thinking in the terms of logic. The bad metaphors. + the writing that only illuminates the self. Look at me. Look at me. I am special. I am complex. I am a wellspring of humanity. I am self-aware, see, in the way I can name what is ugly or approach the body though absurdity. I am writing in a stream of consciousness. I am telling you what I am doing so as to refute you your criticisms of what may be shallow. Here, here is my theatre. Here I invoke the name of writers I never enter conversation with. I quote them + let you figure out the rest. There, across the page, is my heart beating for itself. Within it all, I am rarely loving the world without making the world into another useful tool for which to differentiate myself. I am unique. I am grotesque. I am reaching for purity. The obscenity I deploy is to trick you into believing that I am honest + open. Expansive. So far beyond the rest. + so I never take it too far but I take it all just far enough. My veneer of exposure. My control over the lens through which you see me + how this limits how I might perceive you. But I am not interested in that. In you. I used to think it meant something to be beautiful but now I do not although I desperately want you to see that I am beautiful + love me + fuck me. Nothing matters by the end. I tell you that this is the whole point + render anything I may have confessed obsolete. Even my attempts at sincerity, my journey in transcending the self, remain about the self transcending itself. I ventriloquize the natural world, turn tree, bird, + all into puppets for my own elevation. I am positioning myself in the way I most want to be seen + the selective bravery of my confessions will mislead you to think I am admirable in my profound vulnerability that falters under scrutiny + contains no inquiry. I flash the knife, your eye catching the reflection of light, but never hold the sharp edge against my throat. I am entering into another through this. None of this is myself but is the copy of what I have read + then demystified. I am mocking someone. You won't know who, but yet, perhaps I can tell you why. Perhaps it is more flattering if I don't.

But I cannot commit the same sins of art as the other or not in the same manner, wishing for you to see what you will in separation from what I might construct. I must leave room for the reader's own interpretative freedom. My word is a window for you to crawl inside from. My word is a window through which I view the universe. + so I can tell you about my contempt, how I look down on those who are better received or received at all without what I consider the effort to internalize craft. Those who do not, in the words of Piercy, "like it more than being loved." Those who see this process as a means of becoming the painting themselves over the harder, more annihilating aspect of holding a dialogue with the audience. if the self is too central, the work collapses under narcissism's posture, so here is a statement I will not rescue myself from, will not excuse or dress up or attempt to explain away: Often I am a being of disdain for my fellow man, regarding some as obstacles in my own advancement or receiving of anything I may want, + what I will do to them in the confines of my imagination include the ugliest of our impulses: humiliation rituals, at times even a wish of cosmic misfortune, accidental violences that will keep my own hands clean. + where I should feel disgust, there is often only righteousness or resignation that I am what I am + that what I am is creature + beast. Similarly I will ask: do not look away. My ghastly nature. I should perhaps care more. + what else has the day been lost to? A swollen brachialis. Concerns of rhabdo, imagining my muscle leaking into my blood + killing me. If I were spiritual, one may call it karma for the hatefulness within me. + See. Here. Look hard + notice: this is how to truly be unlikable + unflinching. Foul words not to leave my lips but to exist within me as entities. The public self wants to be known by its restraint, but the private self is the human center from which I can communicate. The obsessive, recoiling, pedantic self who knows its intelligence + is in conflict. Yet it is not true that any one self is more real than any of my other selves. In reality, in the most raw form, I have become the inverse. My worst traits my own mask over the gentle heart I find pathetic in its longings, its understanding + forgiveness. The worst in me conceals the best of me from my own recognition. + so see what I have done? I've swung open the window + let the air come through. I've said something about an uncommon experience so many of us share within—the avoidance of the self—without telling you what you should take from it. Because you, the reader, should take only what you need + this is for me to never define + to rarely know or else the contract breaks. I lose my authority.

So what am I avoiding now? My life, which I think might find me if I were to wait long enough. I wish for life to become embodied, a large, shadowy figure that can open the doors of my home + pull me outside into participation. But I am more powerful than life in this way. + I have no answer for this either. I read War + Peace in the waiting room of the GP surgery before they swab my cervix for HPV, which a letter confirms I do not have. I have a marble of keratin excised from my neck + discover a dead pigeon on my way to remove the stitches. I am disappointed by the scar not being larger. The image of the pigeon broken, purple + green + black + iridescent, refuses to leave me. Its neck was snapped. Same as the neck of the herring gull I find in the road on another day. Its body pristine. No blood. Just like the dog I once buried. Dead + yet preserved in a state of beauty disguising the fatal affliction, the final injury that has stolen all breath.

I do still want to indulge myself, prone to that as much as anyone, as much as all of us. I think of my lover. I think. My erotic container. I want to consume him. I say, "I love you so much; I want you to suffer for it." For eight hours or more he lives inside me. + then leaves. From a distance, he sends me photographs of fields + forests as I return the favor with the sky, the sea. Still, there is always more I'd like to tell you, to transform into something of meaning, to transmute into form. + the friend as well. My thoughts + ruminations + how I know I am unfair in my narrative with him, but this is what we do, isn't it. We tell ourselves the story in the way that will serve whatever we most need to stay unchanged. + so I fictionalize his version into a pity-born kindness, where 'for a while' translates reasonably into 'never.' It doesn't matter that this hurts me. It only matters that it makes it easier for me to continue how I am. Which is weak + human. Unremarkable + cruel.

[roserosanna]

I think I'll always miss my friend who is dead in a way I can't explain to someone who hasn't been close to someone who died young. I'll always remember how it felt to look at her body with no wrinkles and she was wearing fake lashes that made her look like someone else we went to high school with. I put my arms around my back because she was always so warm and big. I couldn't touch her while she was cold.

There's this all encompassing grief now, to lose a friend that young. She had her whole life ahead of her but I'll never get to see who she would have become. To know someone who died young is to mourn the life they had and the life they'll never have, to watch whisps of them in the air knowing you'll never catch anything. It's not a fallout, it's not a fight. In your life, no matter what you do, you will never speak to this person again.

[nanowrimo]

Smash Your Word Count Goals in 3 Easy Steps

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1) Set A Goal & Write It Down

The psychology of goal setting is pretty clear. It’s what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Research has proven that people who set goals experience higher motivation and are more likely to feel accomplished.

However, the type of goal you set makes a big difference to your efforts. Make sure that your goals are (a) clear and specific, (b) realistic, and (c) measurable.

Being clear about your goal will help you hone in on what you’re trying to achieve and ignore distractions. Make sure to write it down, as well. Research by psychologist Gail Matthews has revealed that people who write down goals are 33% more successful than those who simply set a goal in their head.

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2) Practice Freewriting

Freewriting is thinking. It’s as simple — and as difficult — as that.

While every writer is unique, and there is no one way to be a writer, there are similarities we all share as humans — especially humans in the modern world — that create common obstacles to doing the things we love — like reading, writing, and yes, thinking. There are the obvious external obstacles: social media, email, the internet. But there are sneaky internal obstacles, too — the main culprit being the inner critic.

As humans, we are judgmental. It’s in our DNA. Our brains are constantly assessing situations, imagining outcomes, and making decisions. It’s part of survival at a very basic level. However, that means that when we do anything, including writing, we tend to automatically assess our actions — judging our own words, tweaking and editing them as we go along. That constant evaluation not only hinders progress, it can also stop us from ever getting started. And if we do manage to sit down to write, that inner critic creates an unconscious anxiety that prevents us from experimenting and writing down our most innovative and creative — and weird! — ideas.

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Many people haven’t written this freely since childhood, but there’s a reason this method is taught in MFA programs. Getting your thoughts down first and revising later increases productivity and yields better, more creative work because it allows you to give your brain fully to each task. It means that when you’re drafting, you’re drafting, and when you’re editing, you’re editing. There’s no context-switching or multitasking.

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[gildedbearediting]

Writing Exercise: The Idea Sprint

This week’s writing exercise idea came when I was exploring Dave Birss’ site. He’d put together a spot where you could do an idea sprint. The timer has several settings on it. So get your phone or an egg timer. Set it to one of the following: 90 Seconds 3 minutes 5 minutes 7 minutes 10 minutes If you have Hank Green’s Focus Friend, then by all means use that as your timer. (You’ll be able…

[wanderingcas]

i've wanted this thing for YEARS. and now after saving up and asking for birthday present funds, i've got it. i've already cranked out 1,000 words on it in the last half hour. I'm in love and not to be dramatic but it's now my second child