First Writing Class: Part 3

In the last post I wrote that I would tell you how the ‘clinical’ writing exercise went, but before I do that I should describe the writing process because it got me thinking…

When I write descriptions in my stories, I search around in my mind for the visuals which I then translate into words. This is probably why many of my descriptions don’t contain enough details in general (which isn’t always a problem) and are especially lacking when they are needed to orient the reader. For the assignment, I had to pick a room in my house and describe it. When I wrote the description of my kitchen, I sat in the dining area and started writing what I saw. There were so many details available to me that I actually had to skip over many of them to stay within the word limits.

Back to my writing! I now understand I need to seek ‘help’ outside of my mind. Since ‘help’ is all around me in the buildings, forests and seas, why not take advantage of it? Why didn’t I take advantage of it before? This is really strange, because I have written entire drafts of flash fiction in my diary when outside, but never did I use the world around me. I only took a single element of what I saw and wanted to write about, and then just made the rest up.

New habits are forming! Within a few days I’ll let you know how my descriptive exercise was perceived by our instructor.