Thursday, February 11, 2010
On getting stuck in writing fiction
Writer Suzy Spencer asked me to guest on her blog this week talking about getting stuck while working on a longer piece of fiction. This is a very appropriate discussion give my novella-in-a-semester graduate students at St. Edward's University officially began writing their books this week (I'm writing alongside them!). They'll log 4,000 words a week toward completing a 40,000-word draft in 10 weeks. The race is on!
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5 comments:
That's a fantastic idea for your class! Did you base that idea off of NaNoWriMo?
I'd love to hear out it all turns out!
It's inspired by a class that was taught I think at American University. I heard a presentation about it at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference and knew I had to do it! The original teacher definitely was inspired by NaNoWriMo, so I guess the answer is yes. We even use Baty's book as a text. The difference is we do plan before writing.
Actually, Baty doesn't discourage planning; he actually encourages quite bit of it - he just encourages you to write even if you don't have a plan.
What kind of planning are you doing with the class?
We've done character work and tried to map out what the big plot points are on the way. I have them write a 4- 8-page plan, too.
They also create a vision board--photos and such that inspire them toward characters, place, etc.
Good for you and the class. Its truly inspiring. Keep it up!
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