Coming Soon!

I've been tagged over at Jaye's blog! Answers to her "5 Questions About You" and further tagging, coming soon!

Spider Moments

Courtesy of Directory Journal

I like to think of the brain like a city, crammed full of skyscrapers and towers and slums and alleys, bridges, back yards, and gnarly hedges. Memories take up residence in dark nooks and tend to get shut away and locked up, inaccessible until the barbed wire fence or shiny new apartment complex is pulled or burned down.

Some memories stand like monuments in the city of your mind.

For me, one of these monuments is the summer between 5th and 6th grade.

During the annual house makeover, my older brother landed the lawn work, mowing, and edging. My younger brother had weeds and window-washing.

My mom gave me a broomstick, sans bristle head. "Go clear out the jungle," she said.

On the side of the house grew a grand old oak tree that in years to come would be my best friend and stairway to a reading heaven--a bath mat platform roped over two sturdy top branches; I'd hold the book in my teeth as I climbed up.

But right then, the oak tree was surrounded by a jungle of bramble and overgrown palmettos, vines, and ivy.

Courtesy of EPA

And spiders. Huge nightmare banana spiders the size of your head. My job was to take my broomstick and whack down all the spiders.

Eventually, my mom and brothers stopped work to watch me bravely and repeatedly tiptoe into the infestation, broomstick raised, sneak up on each nasty, spindly-legged bastard, smack its round, segmented body as hard as my little arms could, and then run shrieking.

Spiders, when smacked out of their webs, tend to fall down on the person who does the smacking.

Now, as I contemplate that monument standing tall and proud in the middle of my city, I know this truth: There can be nothing more terrifying in this life than that rain of spiders. I had courage enough then; I'll have courage enough when...

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What are some of your spider moments--real or metaphorical? Which memory monuments make your chest swell and fortify you for the future? As writers, how do you go about learning and using these moments in the lives of your characters?

Make the Most of Less Time

The writing tool that's rocking my world.

You've settled in at your computer. Coffee? Check. Cinnamon peach muffin? Check. WIP open and cursor blinking? Check.

You're good to go.

Except you're not. Because now you're staring at the page, rereading what you wrote last, making little grimacing faces (if you're like me) because you can't remember quite where your head was and what's happening next.

Maybe this is the curse of the pantser.

Whatever the case, I realized I needed a tool to practice getting my head in the game faster. A tool to teach my brain how to put on its writing hat as soon as that cursor starts blinking.

Deb Marshall inspired me when she wrote her #wipmadness goal last week: Take full advantage of short chunks of time.

I thought, There's no way. I need at least half an hour just to get in the groove.

Enter the #5minblitz.

Every night, right before pushups and planks before bed, I sit down, open my doc, cursor ready, set my timer, read only the LAST line, and GO!

The first few times, it was like writing blindly in the dark. Now, I'm starting to feel the urge to keep going. But I won't. That's not what blitzing's for. At least not for me. Not yet.

If you're looking to make the most of less time, I challenge you to decide on a time of day for blitzing and stick to it. It literally only takes five minutes. Your writing brain will thank you.

And if you post your #5minblitz word count to Twitter, we will cheer for you!

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Come make weekly writing goals with us! We'll help you keep them: Deb Marshall hosts this month's #wipmadness.
Come blitz with us!

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Any other writer's brain tools out there?

Links, posts, ideas?

How do you make the most of less time?

Learn

Compare this learning to school learning. #thatisall

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

--Reblogged from http://willrichardson.com/