March 1st Monthly Mash-up Post
Follow the nouns; prompt; monthly re-cap of posts; guest post with Desperate Writer
On the first of every month I put together a free post, a mix-up of the type of offerings from The Unschool For Writer —the writing newsletter for the autodidact.
If you’re receiving this as an email and want to read on-site, just click on the title. From there you can peruse the home page, and check out the indexes (now 5 annual) in the lower right hand corner.
And welcome!
First, this week’s post by
at . I shared Q&A about my book club group and experience, and Rachel put together some sorely needed words with her usual wit, insight, and poetry. (Do subscribe!)
Looking for nouns —
One of the posts for this past month looked at two ways to push through and forward while working on a long-term project.
Here’s another possibility, something to play with, to expand. You might use this to play and make some good mud on a slow day. It’s all about the nouns.
I’ve suggested this before in novel-writing, in particular for a last or later draft, as a way to discover dropped threads.
But it’s useful at any point really. In an early, even unfinished draft, it can be a way to generate and build ideas. Or can be a way to find beautiful questions about your work. Or to explore themes.
Here’s the guts of the thing:
Using something to mark, a pencil or (e)-highlighter or whatever works for you, note all of the nouns in the first part of a work. I’d suggest—roughly—the opening ten percent of a work. Might be 20 pages in a novel or the first page of a short story.
Don’t be hesitant: mark ALL the nouns, even the ones you are certain carry through. (There might be a surprise or two.)
Use the “find” capacity to track through. Or go old school, and create notes of the nouns and the directions they meander or create, or if they fall away.
So often, especially if you work without an outline, ideas and characters bits of setting, details, will pop out… and go nowhere. And capturing the nouns is a way to choreograph.
Likewise, you can work from the end—again, I’d suggest about ten percent of the work. And backtrack. Breadcrumb nouns.
PROMPT
Almost always in these first-of-the-month posts we share a prompt. In the past, I’d create a separate thread in which you could post these. Then, in the past year, I invited you to simply add them to the comments here. But I feel that the separate thread garnered more participation and made it easier to share feedback. There were no other comments, about other topics, to be confusing.
The prompt for this month is put together from thoughts evoked by Janet Burroway’s book Imaginative Writing: the Elements of Craft.
She has a list of things to write about (following a wonderful list of things to journal about). My copy is old, the second edition. But I return to it now and again. The exercises are solid.
Two things on the list caught my eye.
Usually, for lists, I suggest not to belabour, but to set a timer, and let your mind GO. A dozen things in five minutes, I’d suggest.
However… the nature of these two lists is different. It might even take days. You might need to look through old photos, or ask a sibling or old friend a few questions. You might think about types-of-things, and scribble notes about something related—clothing you remember, for instance, in order to remember a school day. Or list past vacations/hikes/parties in order to remember… what you’ve forgotten! Ah, it’s a bit like me being annoying and asking where you last put your keys when you’ve just asked me if I’ve seen them anywhere…
As well as sharing the list, you might also let us know what you did in order to dredge up the memory!
Write either:
—a list of things you have lost
or
—a list of things you have forgotten
Please share.
Re-cap on monthly posts
I’ve already shared Two Ways to Move… so here are the others. Our month opener looked at working beyond the sense of sight, which, more often than not, is the go-to.
While no one actually posted a piece of writing on the prompt thread, the conversation was thoroughly enjoyable, with links to articles that so connect. Check it out:
Had to post for Valentine’s Day! A piece about love being an ingredient, and a little pluck rock!
And this past week a piece on dingbats… you know… those symbols to mark a transition in text. With a link to the archived piece on paragraph breaks.
So as usual, a mix of everything from punctuation, moving forward with fiction, what of our selves goes into this work…
And a thank you for your thoughts on my poll/question about the possibility of adding Substack’s “chat” piece to The Unschool. It wasn’t a unanimous “no”—but close. Close enough for me to say, okay, no go!
I appreciate the input, and the thoughts and experiences you shared in detail.
~~~
From the ARCHIVE
This one first appeared in Boston’s The Writer Magazine. I do miss that publication!
Any writing questions? Please write in the comments or send me an email:
