START TO WRITE with YVONNE CULLEN

 

CONTRACT

I ________________________________ sign up to the following:

 

This season, I’ll make space for myself to create in words.

 

I will buy my writing decent stationary.

 

I will get the blinders of habit off, daily, in the following ways:

 

I will make creative space in my home as follows:

 

I will accept that I will have less TV time, less Internet time, a little less social time while I am doing this.

 

I sign up to banishing the word WRITING from my vocabulary, written and spoken for the duration of the course. I will talk about note taking and jotting in its place, and tidying by notes.

 

In re OUTPUT: I will do the brief exercises set for own-time each week. I will, also get down a minimum of one further sentence of thought or observation that interests me, 4 times a day in a CREATIVE JOURNAL.

 

I will read for 20 minutes a day and write to myself about what I have read

 

I will lock my inner critic in a wardrobe till the course ends.

 

I will feed my creative self in the following ways:

 

I will sign up to making messes in language, to being gloriously scrappy and incoherent as I find out what I really

want to say.

 

I will do, and celebrate, nonsensical first drafts. I will never panic because a first draft isn’t clear (Tutor’s note: I don’t think anything good or fresh ever comes out of a clear first draft). I will drop the bar to the ground and let myself write WOEFULLY.

 

I will do this with patience and with faith.

 

I will remember that I am doing this because I believe it could add to my life.

 

I will remember how I do not judge the skill or cleverness of my breathing or my walking. I will get creative in words  (and in every other way I long to) in a similar way.

 

I will remember Ira Glass’s words:  “What closes the gap between your taste and what you write yourself is a volume of work Do a volume of work!”

 

I will go to ONE creative and one literary event this season. I will take photos and dig out old ones. I will maintain or restart a journal and an ADMIRATION BOOK (Commonplace book, they used to be called), and collect , in it, pieces of other peoples’ writing that I love.

 

I will not talk to pals or family about any of this work. I will not talk about the ideas that might make stories or poems or other written work. I will keep the lid on things till they have to be written down.

 

Without panic, pressure, or preciousness (as a student of mine last year brilliantly put it), calmly and happily I’ll make space for myself to create in words, this season.

 

And you can sign this!

 

© Yvonne Cullen’s Writing Train 2018.