Writer's Journal

I’ve been taking a variety of writing courses, including “Writing Great Fiction” by James Hynes, as well as Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on the Art of Storytelling. I’ve collected no small amount of books and other online programs that I plan to work my way through gradually, and I also recently added Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on the Art of the Short Story. I had been working on the broad strokes of a planned epic fantasy novel/trilogy and trying to incorporate the various writing exercises in these classes in starting to build the characters and scenes from this novel.

I’ve realized that it’s the practical act of writing that’s most important, and I need to find ways to spend most of my time engaging in this process, whether in service of this novel or any other purpose. The appeal of JCO’s class was projects that I could finish in shorter course that would allow me to have more experience at seeing a story through from beginning to end. All this preamble to say I’m adding this section to my page as a sort of “writer’s journal” at the suggestion of JCO’s course.

Her advice is to carry a journal (pencil/pen, paper, notebook, etc.) with you at all times and jot down any impressions, feelings, observations, et al., that occur to you during the day. I may eventually put that into practice, but since I spend most of my days in my home (yay, fee basis lifestyle), I’m going to try and make this a regular part of how I begin my mornings. I’ve been doing a version of this in my blog for nearly fourteen years now. Still, I wasn’t posting every day (sometimes going months without a post), and I was usually posting what I would consider “newsworthy” issues (in my particular milieu).

My intent is to make this a habit of just writing what’s on my mind, and I’ll probably have a sort of after-action review of the previous day, including any significant discoveries, accomplishments, failures, difficulties. You know, stuff.