Writing Practice

            I’ve made a new resolution: I’m going to carry out Writing Practice each day, regardless of whether I’m engaged in a project or not. I know it will stand me in good stead. If you want to know how it works reading Natalie Goldberg’s brilliant Writing Down The Bones.

            Basically, you buy a notebook, put a heading at the top of the page each day, and then for a time which you set yourself, write everything that comes to you about that subject. You don’t edit or censor it in any way, you don’t even worry about grammar. What you write is for your eyes only, the writer’s equivalent of the visual artist’s sketchbook. You are after honesty.

            It is slightly different from Morning Pages (see Julia Cameron’s equally brilliant The Artist’s Way) in that you set yourself a topic. With Morning Pages, which are equally important, you write in a stream of consciousness fashion whatever comes up as it comes up.

            I’m not engaged in a project at the moment, and maybe that’s a good thing. I was beginning to feel like I was on a treadmill. I was obsessed with horror fiction, whereas now I would like to write whatever story comes up. Whether it’s in a genre or whether it’s a straightforward contemporary story; provided only that at least one character tries to do at least one thing in order to achieve at least one goal, makes at least one mistake in the process and learns at least one hard lesson as a result.