I want to get the book Writing Down to the Bone by Natalie Goldberg. I learned of it from the same friend who gave me my first journal for my 14th birthday. That's the first I heard of the "free writing" technique, though I'm not sure Goldberg used that term.
The inner critic certainly has an important role to play in the writing process. It's called "revision." Maybe Ms. or Mr. Inner Critic has no business hanging around while we're trying to write a first draft. When starting a new story/novel/script/whatever maybe we need to stop thinking so much and JUST WRITE!
I've done a lot of that this weekend. The first draft of "The Daily Grind" is almost finished. I also wrote about 900 words on how my father was a waiter with a master's degree in library science how maybe the Talismans have some trouble breaking the class barrier once we leave school, and about 800 words on losing children's clothing in the laundromat or on the bus. I think I've figured out how to plug in the memoir. Write a little autobiographical piece whenever I feel like it, and add it to the main document. When it gets to be about 40,000 words, I'll start shaping, see what sort of book it might turn out to be.
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This is less about free writing (although almost all of my writing is like that except for work) and more about the breaking the class barrier thing. I've always sworn someday I'm going to write a book called "Getting Above Your Raising: the poor kids guide to infiltrating the middle class."
That ^^ made me chuckle. I would so identify with a book like that.
When starting a new story/novel/script/whatever maybe we need to stop thinking so much and JUST WRITE!
That seems to be my problem at the moment. I've gone through it before, but never this long a period (about six months).
I think the way you're going about the memoir is a good one. It's probably the only way I could do it. :)
That's probably the book I could actually get sold. I even talked with some people I worked with about it. About how "Getting Above Your Raising" was the term used among my white trash society to try to thrwart any success in life. "Acting White" is the corallary they toss out at black people.
One chapter: Thank You Notes, Hostess Gifts and other Stuff you never heard of.
The funny thing about my Dad & me is that we had no trouble succeeding in school or fitting in with the better-heeled. We just can't seem to translate that into the success in the middle-class job world.
It's even weirder when you think that he was only around til i was 4, and I didn't realize until I saw him again 30 years later that for him, going to college and becoming a librarian was probably about breaking the class barrier. (His father was a factory worker.)
I know I come from a completey different world than my husband. I was really surprised to see all the graduation parties for eighth grade graduation and high school graduation. In my family, they thought you were lucky because you got the opportunity to finish high school. My Mom and her brother and sister all had to quit school to work to help support the family. You weren't getting a party on top of the privilege of finishing high school. Although I did get a lunch at Burger King. For college I got a dinner and briefcase. My cousins and I always joked that we were the first generation in our family to finish high school and keep our teeth.
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