A few years ago I attended the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, bonded with my tribe, and improved my writing. As I consider the coming year (Welcome, 2013!), I am reminded of point #5 below—set goals, build in accountability, and prepare for wonderful surprises.
Five Things I (Re)Learned at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival:
- I can write about anything. The topics don’t need to be important ones. In fact, when I did some writing exercises about unimportant topics (Something I have kept for a long time; Something I found recently) the writing was a lot of fun, easier than usual, and I was happy with the results. It was freeing to write about something unimportant, because I could focus on the writing, rather than the content (to the extent that they are separable).
- Writing prompts aren’t dumb. See #1 above. They can help you explore a new genre, or a new style, or a new topic. They can be fun. And they get your creative juices going.
- Writing is healing. How many times do I need to remember this? I resurrected an old story about a weird emotion (I once had an urge to kidnap a baby) and workshopped it. I had never done anything with the piece because I had no idea what to do with it; it was just so strange. I discovered two things: 1) It was a well written piece, and 2) everybody occasionally has weird thoughts. Nobody hated me for writing it. (In fact, they thought I was creative. Ha ha.)
- Read aloud whenever you can. It’s good practice, and I improve a little every time I do it. After I workshopped the weird piece (see #3 above), I read it aloud at Open Mike Night. Several people went out of their way to tell me how much they liked the piece, and how well I had read it. Surprise!
- Remember to set goals. Everyone in my class set personal writing and publishing goals, and we shared them with each other to increase our accountability. One of my goals was to submit something, somewhere, every month for the rest of the year. It immediately changed my attitude: Instead of thinking I should be submitting more often, I began focusing on what my monthly submission would be. Which is much more productive. Plus—another surprise—it resulted in several of my pieces being published.
