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The head, heart, life, and career lines on your palm.
Drawing by Elizabeth Toth. |
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Automatic Writing: Your Inner Voice |
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Those of us who make a career of writing will tell you that automatic writing happens any time you're on a roll. The characters take over and your book, paper, or whatever seems to write itself while you just take it down. Unfortunately, those rolls don't happen all that often; most of the time writing requires a lot of hard work. |
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Automatic writing is similar to what happens to a writer on a roll, we suspect. Lisa's even assigned writing exercises to her students that don't allow them to stop writing. If they can't think of anything, they're to just keep on going. This forces the subconscious to take over, and that's when a writer gets on a roll. |
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If you'd like to try your hand at automatic writing, you don't need a writing class. Just try this exercise: |
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Set a timer for ten minutes and have a pen and enough paper to fill that time without stopping. When the timer starts, so do you. Write whatever's in your head. Don't worry about spelling or grammar, don't worry about sentences, and don't worry about making any sense. Don't stop. Don't even pause. If you feel yourself hesitating, write the same word over and over again until you're going again. Lisa assigns a word, such as potatobug, to her students to write over and over again when they stall. You can do this too if you want. Soon you'll be writing potatobug, potatobug squash crunch ugh or whateverbut you'll be rolling again. |
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