f
there’s a novel, book, screenplay, pamphlet, article,
poem, training, or any kind of writing that you’d love to
do or simply need to do, one of the best ways to get it
started—and get it moving if it’s stuck—is a
discipline I call Spontaneous Writing. All you have to do is
set aside 10-15 minutes each day and keep your pen—or your
fingers on the keyboard—moving. That’s it.
Say you’re
writing a novel, and you know where the story starts and
ends, but you don’t know much about each character’s
nature and back story. Take an alarm or a timer with you,
set it for 10-15 minutes (your choice), and let your fingers
move without stopping. Even when you have nothing in your
mind, keep your fingers going, even if you wind up saying,
"I have nothing further to say about her" or
"I don’t know why he has that twinkle in his
eye."
You might start
by picking a specific character who you’d like to focus on
for the particular Spontaneous Writing session. Start by
writing where this character was born, when he was born, to
whom he was born, the circumstances of that birth (in
marriage? out of wedlock? a love child?), the year of his
birth or anything that might be of interest or unusual about
his birth. After all, birth is the first entrance into this
world for all of us. Was it in a hospital, at home, or under
water? Moreover, how do the circumstances of his birth
affect the character as your novel begins? How might it
affect him as the plot unfolds? All of these are just
matters of his birth itself.
Moving
on—probably for another session—focus on what he looks
like? What are his distinguishing features? What does he
believe in? What are his idiosyncrasies? What does he love
in life? What does he hate? Who loves him? Who hates him?
What secrets does he carry around within him? Who has he
betrayed? Who has betrayed him? In these sessions you can
discover what lurks in your Creative Source about this
character. You can learn things that you might never know if
you just tried to concentrate and will the character into
being.
You can do this
for each character, you can do this for plot developments,
or any points that you want to leave the reader with in this
book. Once you’ve laid out all of this you’ll have a
rich background for the development of your novel. You can
then begin actually writing the book itself. And you can do
this in the same exact way that you developed characters and
plot—writing continuously for 10-15 minutes, without
interruption, not stopping to edit or proofread, for
example. You can perform these crucial editorial functions
immediately following Spontaneous Writing if you like, or at
a different time altogether when you’re further removed
from the energy of creation. You can also use this approach
for any kind of creative project—not just novels.
The whole idea
behind the creative session, however, is for spontaneity to
rule the day, without the critical involvement of the
intellect. Your Creative Source, your Muse, if you will, is
a much better creator than your ego. I know this because I
have personally used this method to write first drafts of
two different novels. I was completely amazed at the
quantity of material that could come out in just 10 minutes.
I was also amazed at the quality of the material that would
emerge: this took the form of the writing itself, as well as
concepts and plot developments.
It Takes Discipline
If you
stick to this discipline—and who doesn’t have a measly
10-15 minutes a day?—you’ll have put in between 70
minutes and an hour and three quarters per week, or probably
about 10 pages, give or take a page or more, each week.
That’s nothing to sneeze at, especially for those who’ve
been stuck and blocked, and unable to create anything.
Spontaneous Writing is about the best way to get unstuck in
your creative venture, connect to your Muse, and come up
with some terrific pieces of creativity that you might not
have ever come up with.