Friday, December 2, 2011

Razor's Edge for 12/2/11

I succeeded in writing over 50,000 words - again - this November. It felt good to do this. I like many parts of the novel and the main characters and think there are two possible re-visions to turn this into either a long short story and/or a novel. I didn't write a "novel" in 30 days; but the good part of a novel, yes.

Then on November 30th, the day after I uploaded my winning 50k+ words to NaNoWriMo, I was talking to someone about my revelation and intent in regards to my scheduling. Work, teaching, writing, sleep, and - shock, yes - even some down time, which will help all of these areas. And keep me well and rejuvenated. I arrived home from work and one of my weekly writing meet-ups to discover the hospital bill from the incident two months ago. Despite all of the money I've already paid on previous bills over the last two months, it is huge; unexpected. I thought what I'd already paid would have made it less.

At this moment I'm struggling to hold onto my hope of maintaining reduced non-writing work hours and to maintaining a steady schedule of writing hours. Along with sleep and exercise and down time. This will pass but in this moment, I'm struggling.

So my thought about today's Razor's Edge prompt [yes, I know I missed some in November - but they're back] is to write from your own life. If nothing comes to you from the memoir perspective, then make it fiction, or base it on someone you know.

Today's prompt:

(with a nod of thanks to Ariel Gore for being a great writing facilitator role model...)

Make a list of 5 things you wanted to achieve in your life.

Pick the strongest desire and make a list of 5 roadblocks its achievement. (Or, if you're not sure, list a couple for each one and see which stands out.)

Now - write. Write how it felt, what it smelled like, the colors and the sounds. Write how you got through it and how you persevered or changed your path, or where you are in the process.

Start with: "The one thing I really wanted was .... "

Write for 10 minutes.

Go.
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