“I love everything about books until it comes to writing them.” —Kelly Link
Greetings, writers—
When was the last time you felt that gentle pull toward your computer or notebook, only to have it be overcome by the less gentle pull toward sweeping the porch, weeding the garden, or watching SNL clips on YouTube?
The other day I swore to myself I’d work on my own book—not the one I’m being paid to work on—but suddenly I was out in the side yard instead, attacking overgrown sword ferns with a pair of rusty clippers.
But I want to write. You want to write. Right?
Or maybe we want to want to write?
Or perhaps we simply want to have already written?
I do actually enjoy writing (not something I would’ve said ten years ago) but I still think question #3 describes me best. Obviously there are people who just love-love-love the act of writing, but I don’t know that many of them. (And if you are one of them, tell me what your secret is.)
Anyway. There’s always that mild, fleeting tug toward the work-in-progress, right? So how do we get ourselves to sit down before it? And once we get there, how do we make ourselves stay?
This is the first of two posts about how we might delight ourselves in our writing more often.
Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Get in Trouble and The Book of Love, asks her writing students to jot down all the things that please them in books, stories, and/or poems.
When they start writing their own stories, then, they’re armed with a list of things that’d excite them to include. Obviously it’s a lot easier to stay in the chair (and away from the garden clippers) when you’ve got stuff you look forward to writing.
Link, of course, keeps her own list of things she’d like to experiment with. Today, take one or two of her prompts and use them in the context of something you’re already working on, or else start something altogether new.
An animal talks.
All characters are talking animals.
Epistolary story, written in haste.
Uses the language and imagery of fairy tales, but is not a fairy tale.
A story annotated with footnotes by someone who is a minor character in that story.
The story told as plainly as possible.
A narrator who hates the reader and addresses them with malice at heart.
A baby is present in every scene — this baby can be used to surreal or realistic effect.
A story which is directly in conversation with a story by another writer. This may or may not be evident to the reader.
A sentence to repeat throughout the story.
The story refuses to be understood.
Happy writing—
Emily
P.S. “We’re ready to commit
to a rewards card because gas is cheap
and the song reminds us of being young,
which today means not yet
orphans and still surprisable…”
On this day in 1986, the song "Sara" by Starship hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Top 100 chart. Here’s a good poem that features it.
Thank you for this post, I really needed it!