I really love the “research for fiction writing” idea and wonder about keeping a list of exercises to accompany research, or a personal archive. Exercises rather than finished stories interest me, but this is from the point of view of not writing much fiction. By exercises I mean things like generation senarios or prompts based off of a list of 3 sources one has browsed over the course of two weeks.
On a separate note, I wish all my classes had given me time estimates along with reading assignments. We all read at different rates but it’s important to set limits sometimes and say, this is as deeply as I’ll be able to read this right now, and that’s okay. It may be revisited in the future. So I would like a class like this to have strict prompts for how much time to spend at different research stages: finding sources in the first place, organizing one’s sources into an easily retrievable method, playing around with methods of record keeping for future writing, and then the actual note taking and invention parts.
There’s a lot of ways the personal record keeping can be augmented or applied with different technology. For example, say you keep clippings and quotes from your research on a given topic as a document file. This isn’t as useful (though CTRL F is useful indeed) as keeping these digital notes organized by topics and themes, a personal set of cataloging or tags.
Hi William, I'm curious what your thoughts are on getting feedback on your fiction short stories now that you have a degree. I have a BA in journalism, but that's rolling near 25 years ago, and very few of my classes were focused on creative writing. Needless to say, it was a very different time and experience. So, what I would have preferred in an education and how I like to get feedback likely varies considerably. We've mentioned mentoring/feedback/writing groups on Fictionistas before as well, but I'm not sure it went anywhere. I would like to get your take on what feedback helps you best.
I really love the “research for fiction writing” idea and wonder about keeping a list of exercises to accompany research, or a personal archive. Exercises rather than finished stories interest me, but this is from the point of view of not writing much fiction. By exercises I mean things like generation senarios or prompts based off of a list of 3 sources one has browsed over the course of two weeks.
On a separate note, I wish all my classes had given me time estimates along with reading assignments. We all read at different rates but it’s important to set limits sometimes and say, this is as deeply as I’ll be able to read this right now, and that’s okay. It may be revisited in the future. So I would like a class like this to have strict prompts for how much time to spend at different research stages: finding sources in the first place, organizing one’s sources into an easily retrievable method, playing around with methods of record keeping for future writing, and then the actual note taking and invention parts.
There’s a lot of ways the personal record keeping can be augmented or applied with different technology. For example, say you keep clippings and quotes from your research on a given topic as a document file. This isn’t as useful (though CTRL F is useful indeed) as keeping these digital notes organized by topics and themes, a personal set of cataloging or tags.
Hi William, I'm curious what your thoughts are on getting feedback on your fiction short stories now that you have a degree. I have a BA in journalism, but that's rolling near 25 years ago, and very few of my classes were focused on creative writing. Needless to say, it was a very different time and experience. So, what I would have preferred in an education and how I like to get feedback likely varies considerably. We've mentioned mentoring/feedback/writing groups on Fictionistas before as well, but I'm not sure it went anywhere. I would like to get your take on what feedback helps you best.