My Creative Writing night was originally scheduled for Wednesday, February 29th, but two things fell through. First, my mom was not available to babysit, as I had thought it would be more fun to go out to a coffee house or other lounge-type place to do the writing. The backup plan was to stay home, which would have been fine, but the second issue, was Amy not feeling well and not in the mood to "relax". Now let me say, my version of relaxing, is not really the same way Amy relaxes, and based on her prior P52's, her relaxing seems a lot more like work to me. So, I completely understood and I postponed our Creative Writing night until Friday.
After we put the kids to bed, we brewed our favorite beverages and sat opposite of each other in the living room, both with our new Lenovo X120e's on our laps (Yup, I didn't use a typewriter...).
I started the evening by reading Stephen King's essay, "Imagery and the Third Eye". I had read it a few days prior and I found it very helpful advice and I thought it set the tone nicely. I was concerned Amy would get bored hearing me read (I do have a monotonous, sleep-inducing voice, most of the time), but at the end, she seemed to enjoy it well enough.
The next phase of our evening entailed a timed writing exercise from Natalie Goldman's "Wild Mind". I have been reading this book for a couple weeks and really enjoyed her previous book, "Writing Down the Bones", so it made sense to me to try one of the writing exercises. We did one of the first one, where you keep writing for 15 minutes with "I Remember", take a 10 minute break and then write another 15 minutes with "I Don't Remember".
We didn't have to share what we both wrote, but we both did a little. Both of us had written a little about how we used to weigh less and we agreed the "I Don't Remember" portion ended up bringing up more negative feelings. Amy mentioned afterwards, that it reminded her how much she used to enjoy journaling. I believe most of her exercise was journaling. Mine was some journaling sprinkled with some general observational stuff (like writing about the sights and sounds occurring during a dark and windy evening, as we had) and then a little humor (I don't remember ever wearing a speedo, nor wanting to.) as a change of pace.
We both did a great job of writing the entire time. I was concerned that one or both of use would putz out. Oddly, when the timed alarm on my phone went off, it kind of felt short and we both felt like we could write more.
The final exercise was something I had thought about earlier in the week, but was inspired by Brian Kiteley's "3AM Epiphany". I did thumb through a few of them to give Amy an idea of what we were about to partake in. I think she was the most nervous about creating a short story, with little direction, off the top of her head.
The exercise was simple: Write a "first kiss" story, but from the perspective of the opposite gender. 500 Words.
Before either of us started writing, we talked a bit about our own first kisses (not with each other, by the way) and then a little bit about mindsets of the genders. Truthfully, I could have sat there talking to Amy all night and not began writing anything, but I wanted us to get something done.
Just before we were going to write, Amy mentioned she didn't know what 500 words would be like, i.e. how many pages. Having been nanoing for three years, I know exactly what 500 words is, as well as 1,667! So, I explained it to her, as basically two full pages, double-spaced, but then walked her through installing WriteMonkey, which is my favorite little minimal writing program. Its not the same as a typewriter, but it has the same concepts of what make a typewriter my favorite writing tool.
At that point, we were off. We both wrote for a while, then printed out hard copies and finally shared, critiqued and discussed. I found Amy had a solid story and we could both see how her "male" perspective had a lot of the female element in it. We had a good talk and then went on to mine. I felt like I had to major accomplishments, 1) Amy liked it and she was surprised by my story and 2) it had some solid conflicts to keep Amy reading and a different outcome than she expected.
I have to believe that these past three years of writing have honed my skills. Now, I'm not saying I'm a Hemmingway or King, but I'm a heck of a lot better with writing fiction than I used to be. So, wins all around!
By the time we were done (which we could have continued talking and maybe even do another exercise), it was close to midnight and I wanted to get to bed (I had my writing group in the morning).
Things I Learned:
- Anyone can write, whether that is in a journal or a short story. But, its a lot more fun when you share, critique and talk about everything else that may not have made it into the story.
- Yet another great example of having an enjoyable evening with my spouse, at home and no money. And I do think it was better to have kept this at home, as a public venue could have had too many distractions or been too loud to really have the intimate back and forth we enjoyed in the living room.
- I still need to plan ahead better on the babysitting front!
- I don't HAVE to use a typewriter to write. Sometimes I trick myself into believing I do.
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