Thursday, June 25, 2009

fifteen minutes of fiction (but probably not fame)

A couple years back I found this writing exercise called 15 Minute Fic. There's a prompt word every week. Just a single word, something random. You sit down and look at the word, and then you immediately have 15 minutes - and only fifteen minutes - to write. It's the sort of thing that gets the words flowing, because you only have a short time to get something written. You have to think it up on-the-spot, and go with it. Take that one prompt word and turn it into something bigger, something more.

Me being me - that is, more suited to the short story or vignette form rather than the long winded novel - I was thrilled to have a concrete formula. Fifteen minutes. A prompt. An excuse to go where the words take you, instead of fighting to form a story a certain way. What can you do in fifteen minutes but take it as it comes, write as it goes?

After days and days of no writing - no paper journalling, no online journalling, nothing - I decided to take pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard) and revisit this old model that I liked so much. I wrote. It was awful. Well, maybe it wasn't. I've written worse. But it was something, and that counts, at least. I think I'm going to continue writing from at least one fifteen minute prompt once a day, when I can.

In summary: I created another blog, Scribbly Scrawls, where I'll post all my rough stuff. First post is up over there already.