Carrie Baker – The Growth Collective

We’ve all been there, right?!

Being a writer while also being a mother, (housekeeper, taxi driver, chef, nurse, umpire, hairdresser, blah, blah, blah) sadly means that I am time poor, not on the poverty line but I don’t have a lot of spare time to throw around.
Being also an ‘all or nothing’ kind of girl, I loathe to start things I don’t feel I’ll be able to commit to or finish.

So as much as I wanted to, the thought of doing any writing courses seemed something I had not enough time for.
On one of many trips to that magical place where the books live (our local library), I found a flyer for some free writing classes, available at times that were actually possible for me to attend (a little like the planets aligning!).

Although I had already started my novel, I had only really been bumbling my way through the planning stages and had hit a brick wall.
All inspiration had dried up, like a puddle in the desert. Gone. Vanished, as though it were never there.

There was one class I attended that really blew my socks off! (The other classes were great too, I might mention them in other posts – stay tuned!)

This class was called “Getting Psyched To Write”, taught by a local play-write and public servant, John Lombard. He talked to us about when we find it hard to write, how it’s mostly psychological (it’s all in your head in other words….).
Anyway, he had me at the first exercise…………..

My mind was buzzing, the juices were flowing, the mental blockage was…………….unblocking……

So in true writing community spirit, I’m going to share these writing exercises with you, (from John Lombard) as a kind of ‘creative laxative’.

Ready?

Activity 1: Put your Editor in a box

Writers need to play two parts: they must be vivid dreamers and ruthless editors. Unfortunately we sometimes get stuck when we try to do both at the same time, like endlessly revising that first sentence….

In this activity we are going to try and put our editor in his place.
For five minutes we are going to write badly. Awful characters, weird metaphors, bizarre leaps of logic, boring prose – everything you can do to make the worst paragraph imaginable. Something that would make you want to not so much put a book down, as burn it.

Get some paper, a pen and a means of timing yourself (watch, phone, oven timer…..)

Give yourself 5mins, and off you go!!

……………………………………………………..
Now……… How hard was that??

How hard is it to actually write badly on purpose?
I wrote a really boring bland office scene. I found it incredibly hard as I was worried I was doing it wrong, because it was so hard!
There was an interesting/ amusing mix of other people’s effort as we read them around the group.

So if it was SO difficult to write badly, does writing well seem an easier task?

Catch my next post for the next exercise!

Just Write It!