My seventh grade English students started every class period the same way: Drop Everything And Read (D.E.A.R.). Chat subsided, and everyone settled into a book. After ten minutes of quiet, feeding on someone else's work, they had to Drop Reading And Write (D.R.A.W.). The coaching I did as I wandered the classroom all applies now to me, as I have the rest of my life to read and write.
- Set aside time, place, and materials. Make start and end times consistent. Place electronic media out of reach, out of sight, out of earshot.
- Until you've written a lot, don't type. Use a pen with a notepad or composition book to write, doodle, draw, diagram. Never erase; never tear a page out; only add alternatives.
- Keep a bank of topics at the back of your notepad: things, people, and places that cause you wonder -- in the sense both of thinking them wonderful and of wondering something about them. Give each item a different area on the page; cluster items that relate; use arrows to connect the clusters.
- Write down opposites and exceptions: the most interesting part is always what happens after "but."
- Think in sets: not one poem / story / essay / vignette but a set of two or three relating to the same subject. Advice from my composition teacher Dr. James Sclater (11/2015).
- When it's time (8:30), quit, and don't come back to work on that piece again until the next day. After breakfast, walk the dog, ride your bike, and save the rest of the day for revisions, answering emails, reading. (Advice from prodigiously productive composer Philip Glass (04/2015).
- [See Photo] Set bird seed and peanuts out on the deck so that you can focus on your work; Brandy will focus on squirrels beyond the doggy door.
- If all you write is a list, that's still writing.
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