Date:         Sat, 16 May 1998 11:09:30 EDT
From: give me a W! <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [WRITERS] TECH: The 10 minute novel

without trying to summarize or quote all the bits and pieces...

Off-hand, as an exercise, I think this falls into the "brainstorming"
and "creative whack attack" and so forth areas.  This kind of "take a
very short time and let the brain run without censoring" can be very
liberating.

(although don't forget to track that quivering mass of protein down
before it runs too far and gets lost...they will do that sometimes.:)

One of the exercises I put working teams through fairly often is
"instant lists".  Suppose--oh, suppose we're trying to come up with a
list of new projects.  Sit the group down and start at one person and
go around.  Within 5 seconds, what new project do you think we should
work on?  Next?  Next?

In three minutes (that's as long as I usually run this), we've
ordinarily got about 60 ideas.

And often the ones at the end are the really good ones--we've gotten
past the ones that everyone has been thinking of, we've flushed out
the "usual suspects", and because of the pace, people are letting
things fall out of their head that they might censor other times.

Part of the key has to be going back afterward and "cleaning up".  But
separating the "creative" part from the "editing" part, sometimes it
helps quiet the internal censor.

If this is viewed as the only thing that someone has to do to
write...I could see that being worrisome.  But as part of a writing
program, I think ten-minute "fast writing" everyday seems like a
reasonable thing to do.

I know some of the poets have shared "one poem a day" writings with
us.  In some ways, I think of this as a parallel for novel writers.

tink