Anthony-Ryan
New writing regimen
As soon as I wake up, I go to my desk and open a new document.
I set a timer on my phone for 4 hours.
Every day, I complete this list:
Read 3 poems - read each poem twice, then the third time, type it.
Type a page from any book.
Do 2 minutes stream of consciousness - do an additional 2 if the first didn't feel good enough.
Write 3 to 5 lines minimum each on expanding perspectives, whatever comes to mind:
- Mind
- Body
- Room
- Building
- Street
- City
- State
- Country
- Planet
- Galaxy
- Universe
Look up a writing prompt and engage (for me, today it was "write about the loss of a loved one.")
Read a chapter of any book, type up any interesting thoughts or quotes.
Write a poem of any length on any subject.
Write a character sketch (look up prompts if necessary). Expand into a story if a direction emerges.
Write a letter/email to someone you haven’t talked to in years.
Write a 1 page story.
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If I still have time after I do the whole list, then I read everything I wrote and embellish what I sort of glided through, and then expand on whatever I happened to write that felt especially good. If I have time after that, I repeat whichever exercise sounds good. (usually I do another character sketch or type another letter).
By doing this, I am at least writing something everyday. And the more I do it, the more I find myself writing throughout the rest of the day.
It gathers momentum.
Most importantly, it propels me into the day as a writer instead of someone who wants to write.
Inflectionist Review
The Once and Future King
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six.”
–Merlyn