The time comes to the second Thursday of this month. It is the time for the book club, "Always losing book", to get together for this month. In the past, there always had some members of the club excused for not attending the book club. Surprisingly, the absent mostly follow the same excuse pattern, "I won't join the club this time because I lost my book. Since I didn't read, it will be a waste of time for me to join the club." In order to make members have no excuse of being absent, Lin Yuan, as the leader, last month assigned a short paper for everyone on the topic---process of writing. All members show up with their accomplished papers. "The Daily Writing Routines of Great Writers" by Maria Popova, "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life" by Anne Lamott, and "Zen in the Art of Writing" by Ray Bradbury.
Lin: Alright!Let's get started. So how do you start writing usually?
Anne: For me, and most of the other writers I know, writing is our rapturous, In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
Ray looks at Anne with sympathetic expression.
Ray: You stumble into it, mostly. You don't know what you're doing, and suddenly, it's done.
Anne: Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper.
Followed by Ray immediately.
Ray: You don't set out to reform a certain kind of writing. It evolves out of your own life and night scares. Suddenly you look around and see that you have done something almost ! fresh.
Lin: I use the same way to write. Whenever I don't know what to write, I just jot down whatever I think in my mind. Then somehow, at some point, I will find out an idea about what to say. So do you have any typical routines when you write?
Maria: I write in the morning and then go home about midday and take a shower, because writing, as you know, is very hard work, so you have to do a double ablution.
Anne: Firstly, I try to breath, because I'm either sitting there like a lapdog or I am intentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles. So I just sit there for a minute, breathing slowly, quietly, I let my mind wander.
Maria: I haven’t that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn’t like it at all. On the other hand, I’m able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions.
Lin: I see. You all have different routines to make yourself focus on your writings. But what you will do if you are assigned an writing assignment and you don't have any idea to write?
Ray: Those years I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.
Maria:I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down.
This was the first time in this year that all four members of the club attended. Judging through the conversation, it seems everyone likes this way of holding club rather than reading books. Lin assigned another writing assignment and promised to meet everyone of them next time.
Lin: Alright!Let's get started. So how do you start writing usually?
Anne: For me, and most of the other writers I know, writing is our rapturous, In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
Ray looks at Anne with sympathetic expression.
Ray: You stumble into it, mostly. You don't know what you're doing, and suddenly, it's done.
Anne: Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper.
Followed by Ray immediately.
Ray: You don't set out to reform a certain kind of writing. It evolves out of your own life and night scares. Suddenly you look around and see that you have done something almost ! fresh.
Lin: I use the same way to write. Whenever I don't know what to write, I just jot down whatever I think in my mind. Then somehow, at some point, I will find out an idea about what to say. So do you have any typical routines when you write?
Maria: I write in the morning and then go home about midday and take a shower, because writing, as you know, is very hard work, so you have to do a double ablution.
Anne: Firstly, I try to breath, because I'm either sitting there like a lapdog or I am intentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles. So I just sit there for a minute, breathing slowly, quietly, I let my mind wander.
Maria: I haven’t that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn’t like it at all. On the other hand, I’m able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions.
Lin: I see. You all have different routines to make yourself focus on your writings. But what you will do if you are assigned an writing assignment and you don't have any idea to write?
Ray: Those years I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.
Maria:I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down.
This was the first time in this year that all four members of the club attended. Judging through the conversation, it seems everyone likes this way of holding club rather than reading books. Lin assigned another writing assignment and promised to meet everyone of them next time.