When I was in grade school, each September my teacher would assign us a writing project: What Did You Do This Summer? Possibly, this gave me my start as a writer, not because I wrote beautiful prose about exotic locales, but because I had to make things up. Most of my summers as a child were spent complaining to my mother that I was bored (“Bored? You’re bored? I can give you something to do…”), walking with my dog through the woods, and opening and closing the refrigerator to see if any good food had appeared since last time I checked (It hadn’t). So for that first-day-of-school assignment, I’d write about my trip to Disneyworld or the Grand Canyon. Paris.
For this blog, I’ll give you a choice: you can either write about your summer vacation, real or imagined, or you can write about your summer of writing (obviously, I’d prefer the latter). For either option, describe something new that you learned about yourself. Or about writing. Or about vacations. What did you learn and how did you learn it? What can you take with you into the rest of your life? What do you still not understand? In other words, write about yourself as a writer (or vacationer). Note: While we all enjoy praise, your response in the comment box below should be about you, not your wonderful creative writing professor. I’m not immune to a little blown smoke, but I’m more interested in you. Thank you all for sharing your wonderful stories with me! I am truly honored.
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Part of being a writer is being an observer. As you walk through your day, you gather bits and pieces of impressions through all of your senses, most of which we forget as we round the corner. For example, as I walk to the store, I simultaneously hear the music pumped directly into my brain through my earbuds, overlaid by the jackhammer tearing up the sidewalk in front of CVS. The sun is hot on my shoulders and I sneeze from the dust being kicked up by the construction. Instinctively, I step back to avoid being run over by a bicycle, and to the side so that I don’t bang into the umbrella of the woman whose head barely comes up to my shoulder. She’s wearing a trench coat buttoned all the way up to her neck on this summer day: Why?
What detail will make it into my next story? I won’t know until I sit down to write it. In the comment box below, describe the moment you’re having right now. Not what’s going on in your head (worried about word counts, dinner plans, getting to work on time), but what your senses are telling you about what’s going on around you. |
About this blogA blog is an online conversation. This one is for students of writing and is an extension of our face-to-face classroom. Here is where we can continue a discussion started in class, ask questions, and test new ideas. Archives
March 2020
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