« Sundays and Cybele, my friend Peter Bryne, an invitation | Main Index | What more could you ask for? »
February 11, 2006
Dream writing
For some reason, I'm so tired today. Too long in front of the computer, I think. I generated a writing exercise based on dreams. Then Kim and Kathy and Jeff joined in and the flurry of activity was exciting and tiring as well, in a happy way. Plus it's been a busy week. Sleepers Launch night on Thursday. Fetching and carrying for my Year 12 son. Promising all sorts of things to various people, including a brochure design for my sister.
I've been reading this great book called 'Writing the Natural Way' by Gabrielle Ricco. A lot of it is what I use already and most of it I know. But I didn't know that I knew because I'd acquired my working habits in bits and pieces and not always from writing books; from design magazines, from observation Einstein-style. In the book, Ricco talks a lot about the Design mind and the Sign mind, like right brain and left brain, about clustering, and open loops.
I am building this theory about why fad-ing (the creation of a short microfiction, daily) works. She says, in the book, that clustering is a key to the design mind... and I think I do this automatically with the fad words and then use the Sign mind for logical structuring... I don't usually separate the process but I'm trying it out (adapting them t my purpose) as I read through this book.
My own Creative Experiment goes like this:
Write 10 sentences about something that happened in a dream and 10 set within events in the last week, alternating as you write. Use a list of 5 words at the top of the page and incorporate them at will. Once you've finished, look for patterns in what you've written and recreate the story.
I usually hit several walls: one at about the 6th item. Another when I'm finished because everything seems bitsy. But I loved the end result which I sent to the Butterflies of Vertigo anthology. Plus I loved reading everyone else's new work using this excercise.
Posted by girija at February 11, 2006 11:46 PM