Friday, February 1, 2008

Purge Starts Today

Last year, a bunch of writers from the Playwright Binge, led by Mark Harvey Levine, started a Playwright Purge group. They take the challenge of trying to write something, even just a few lines, every day for 30 days. It sounds simple, I know, and a lot easier than the write a novel in 30 days plan, but it's still a fun group and a good way to try to inject a little discipline into our writing lives. I've really been struggling to find the time lately, and I think this will help. My most basic goal is to write something every day, but ideally I want to put in at least an hour.

For one day, at least, it's worked. I spent an hour this morning working on a new start to the new novel. I actually got to use the new notebook that I bought last week--I think I'm going to switch to longhand for this draft, at least for now. Just to shake things up a bit. It's funny the kinds of tricks writers use to motivate ourselves, or to shift things just a little bit. This narrative is a double first person story, so I'm actually writing each character's section in different colored ink, to try to make me more conscious of my efforts to differentiate their voices. Sounds goofy, I know, but I'm curious to see if it'll help.

Here's hoping for a productive February.

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