Important work doesn’t always feel like work
There’s more to you than writing - James Chiang looks at Steven Covey’s notion of sharpening the saw, and what it means for creative people to prepare themselves. Hugh Hollowell revisits Dead Poets Society and questions feeling guilty about unproductive days. Mason Currey pulls a passage from May Sarton’s journal about refusing to see an “off day” for writing as sinful.
Exercises and study - Dave Mabe asks creatives what exercises they do for their work that mimic a pianist practicing scales. Adrienne Westenfeld asks author and teacher Rumaan Alam about the writing exercises he assigns himself. For an example of focusing deeply on one aspect of craft, watch John’s video on clarifying scene geography.
Making the moment important - Josh Ginter underlines Patrick Rhone’s call to always treat the thing you are doing as important. Brother Freedom of the Deer Park Monastery describes how to turn a meal into an opportunity to deepen your senses and your understanding of cause and effect.
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Solving Writer Emergencies in the Classroom
For every Writer Emergency XL deck a backer pledges to purchase from our Kickstarter, we’re sending a deck to a writing classroom.
Grant Faulkner from NaNoWriMo shared some thoughts with us on how the original Writer Emergency Pack works as a tool for teaching the next generation of writers:
I’ve heard so many stories. I’ve heard of teachers who weave cards into the mini-lessons they might do on things like conflict or characterization. I’ve heard of teachers who hand out cards to students who might have hit a wall and have writers’ block. I’ve heard of teachers who give the cards to groups of students and have them use the cards to collaboratively create a story together and then tell it to the class as a way to warm up to write in November.
There is one commonality, though: all teachers make the cards part of the classroom, which is important, because the classroom becomes a writing community during NaNoWriMo.
We’ll have more from Grant in a future Kickstarter update.
Because of stories like this about how well the decks from our original Kickstarter worked in classrooms, we want to make sure teachers will get copies of the new XL deck. Right now our Kickstarter backers are funding the printing of 2,044 decks, half of which are earmarked for classroom donations.
We want to bring the number of Total Decks Printed up to at least 5,000. So we’re announcing a stretch goal: Dark Mode
If we reach a total of 5,000 Total Decks Printed, we’ll unlock the ability for backers to choose a Dark Mode option. For full details, check out the latest update on our Kickstarter page!
We’re innerested in you!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link John Scalzi breaks down how making time for writing means choosing not to do something else.
Other Inneresting Things…
Noah Smith interrogates the theory that American political unrest comes from an abundance of well-educated people with diminished career options.
Autumn is here, and as our thoughts turn to When Harry Met Sally… we can read Britton Perelman’s 6 lessons from Nora Ephron’s script.
YouTube channel Brick Bending demonstrates how to build a flexible, hypnotic Lego square.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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