Good Friday Instead of Monday: No, Not That Good Friday
Melissa’s Kirsch’s NYT newsletter, The Good List, had a piece about Dean Stephenson “sits down each morning to write a new piece from scratch. At 4 p.m., a string quartet arrives to play whatever he has written.” Kirsch ended that piece in the newsletter with “It’s fascinating to watch art come together in real time, to witness the composer and musicians wrestling with it and sit alongside them as they arrive at the final product. And to know that they’ll start all over again tomorrow. How exhilarating to be reminded that creativity is not finite, that each morning we can decide what we want to make of the time available.” (You can subscribe to The Good List here.
So I thought that might be interesting, to sit down each morning and write a scene at a random; that’s the way most of my books have started, just people talking in my head. And I have to pay more attention to my scene work anyway, I’m getting very very sloppy. And then I could post it in here and let some of the best readers (and writers) I know have at it, working on it, too. That’s balm for my ego, people paying attention to my work.
And then sanity reappeared. Every freaking day? No. No no no no. But maybe once a week. Or whenever I felt like it. Just to stretch that muscle, work on those particular skills. And then at 4PM, a string quartet (that would be you all, stretching the meaning of “quartet”) would take it out for a spin, arguing (politely as ever) what works and doesn’t, etc. Nothing at stake, just talking about this scene, scene structure and all it entails.
I think that’s a good idea. Should have thought of it on Good Monday, but I’m still having troubles with days of the week because they don’t really matter to me. Time, as Bob will tell you, is relative. And irrelevant. And I like the idea of not attaching it to any specific day, given my ineptitude with specific days.
Of course tomorrow I will think that’s a terrible idea and probably not post this at all (it’s four AM on Thursday morning, and as we all know, Thursdays are set in stone for one kind of post), but I need to get off this three-goal rat race (book, apartment, taxes) and slow done. (Somewhere Bob is screaming in his sleep.).
So if you’re reading this, I’m seriously considering doing this. Maybe.
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