I'm enjoying my summer which includes some welcome trips. For the writer, it both a blessing and a curse. The good part is that I'm gathering stories. The bad part is that I have less time to use those impressions, details and story lines in actual writing. What to do?
Well, here's the plan.
I will be writing in the form of exercises. I have begun a 'Bits and Pieces' as my summer assignment. These may or may not become part of a larger work, but that doesn't matter. One of the first things I have done is to find sentences or paragraphs that I admire and use them as models for my own work. So far this assignment has included these things as models.
A dialogue that is both quoted and summarized.
A physical description that includes allusions to character.
A handling of time that is effective and brief.
I have found that finding these models is a valuable exercise, I'm paying close attention to sentences and their purpose within a story. I'm learning. Always a good thing.
