When I was living in Texas, I joined a writers’ group that, once a month, picked an exercise from the book Naming the World and created an excerpt to be turned in for a critique. While at first I was skeptical of this group — I mean, spending extra time writing stuff that isn’t my novel? Why waste the time? — I grew to value the exercises, the time I spent reading how others had interpreted the lessons, and to appreciate the work that began to flow from me. My novel, Cold Run, actually emerged from not less than two of the sketches that I had done for the NTW group.
Fast Forward/Squiggly Line/Squiggly Line
I am embarking on a life of trying to make writing my career, and was looking for a way to hold myself to some sort of regular schedule of writing exercises short of taking a creative writing class, for which I just don’t have time. Also, I was looking for something on Twitter akin to the #MondayBlogs or #writertips hashtags, only for a writing exercises community. I decided to start something and invite my online writers’ community to participate.
Namely, every Friday I will post up a writing exercise, and invite my fellow writers to attempt the exercise and post the results on their blog, then share with Twitter under the hashtag: #WriteFridays. I will also invite them to ping back this blog with their entry or enter the link in the comments. Once you post your entry, then hang out on Twitter or the blogosphere, read and re-tweet or share others’ work, and provide encouragement to our fellow indie authors. I’ve already got a good idea to start with this Friday — stay tuned!
#WriteFridays #indieauthor #writertips – see you there!
