Kathy! This was like a post from the creative angels! Twyla Tharp's book is one of my most treasured sources for inspiration. In fact, I use her "start with a box" idea for organizing larger projects that live inside me and haunt my days and nights. Just seeing those boxes on my shelf keeps me in process with the work. I tried your "50 random sentences" exercise...wowza! That one is a keeper for me. One of my random sentences that sent me humming: *When it's after midnight and your boyfriend doesn't show up and your wearing a sequined dress that shimmers like phosphorescence under the Christmas lights, what choice do you have but to lick the last drop of Dom Perignon from your crystal champagne flute, lean over and kiss the bartender, and call yourself a cab.* Thank you, Kathy!
That's excellent! Love all the details that brings in tension from the get go and my goodness, the character is already so alive for me. Yes keep going! I'm glad you enjoyed the exercise, Katie!
Thanks, Patti! I have since layered Kathy's prompt onto this sentence and written 50 different random endings. Now I think I might have a braided story percolating from that one sentence :)
Thanks for a great post. First, I love that Twyla Tharp book so reading about it was a good reminder. I did the 50 sentences exercise many times over the past month (holiday season) and it helped kick start my creative process. I'm not great at following the rules, and often I would write a sentence and suddenly I was writing sentences to follow it and sometimes ended up with a paragraph or half page (or more) without even "trying." And then when that impulse ran out, I moved on to a new sentence. Then, days/weeks later, I went back and pulled out some sentences/graphs to work with. Thanks for the creative input. ;)
It's a wonderful book! So full of wisdom for creative folks of all types. I love that you said "I'm not great at following the rules" because I'm 100% the same. Really, anything that gets you to the page and writing is fine by me. So much of it is just getting out of one's own way. A few people wrote to me after yesterday's 3 in 90 workshop to say, basically, thanks for giving me permission...Thanks for reading, Patti, and leaving a comment!
Kathy! This was like a post from the creative angels! Twyla Tharp's book is one of my most treasured sources for inspiration. In fact, I use her "start with a box" idea for organizing larger projects that live inside me and haunt my days and nights. Just seeing those boxes on my shelf keeps me in process with the work. I tried your "50 random sentences" exercise...wowza! That one is a keeper for me. One of my random sentences that sent me humming: *When it's after midnight and your boyfriend doesn't show up and your wearing a sequined dress that shimmers like phosphorescence under the Christmas lights, what choice do you have but to lick the last drop of Dom Perignon from your crystal champagne flute, lean over and kiss the bartender, and call yourself a cab.* Thank you, Kathy!
That's excellent! Love all the details that brings in tension from the get go and my goodness, the character is already so alive for me. Yes keep going! I'm glad you enjoyed the exercise, Katie!
Love that sentence, Katie. Hope you kept writing.
Thanks, Patti! I have since layered Kathy's prompt onto this sentence and written 50 different random endings. Now I think I might have a braided story percolating from that one sentence :)
I have the Twyla Tharp book too. What she says about dance applies so well to writing.
It’s so apt!
I love this book as well. I gravitated toward her idea to have a box for her project and everything about it went in that one space.
Thank you always for the work with dreams! I have been having some vivid ones since back from Iceland.
Thanks for stopping by, Tammy! Yes, I loved the boxes idea too! It really resonates with me.
Thanks for a great post. First, I love that Twyla Tharp book so reading about it was a good reminder. I did the 50 sentences exercise many times over the past month (holiday season) and it helped kick start my creative process. I'm not great at following the rules, and often I would write a sentence and suddenly I was writing sentences to follow it and sometimes ended up with a paragraph or half page (or more) without even "trying." And then when that impulse ran out, I moved on to a new sentence. Then, days/weeks later, I went back and pulled out some sentences/graphs to work with. Thanks for the creative input. ;)
It's a wonderful book! So full of wisdom for creative folks of all types. I love that you said "I'm not great at following the rules" because I'm 100% the same. Really, anything that gets you to the page and writing is fine by me. So much of it is just getting out of one's own way. A few people wrote to me after yesterday's 3 in 90 workshop to say, basically, thanks for giving me permission...Thanks for reading, Patti, and leaving a comment!