Writing Practice with "Beauty Contest"
Behind the Scenes at Stop Writing Alone
Are you one of the Stop Writing Alone members who looks at the calendar and says to themselves, I mean, that sounds cool, but what IS Nicole doing in these meetings really? I get it. You read brief descriptions of writing community events and you are left with questions
“Is it for me?”
”What will I get from it?”
“Shouldn’t I just spend that time on my own writing?”
No one can answer these questions but you, but I would like to give you as much information as you can get in order to make an educated decision. This week I am sharing a version of the current iteration of what happens in a Writing Practice meeting so you can run through the practice on your own to see if it is, in fact, of value to you!
Get some paper and a pen, you are about to write!
What is Writing Practice?
Based on the teachings of Natalie Goldberg, first shared with the world in Writing Down the Bones, writing practice is part meditation, part writing, and part listening. Our tools for writing are our paper, our pen, and our writer’s mind. Writing practice is what we do to reconnect with and exercise the most precious of those tools, our mind. The bare bones process is silent meditation, followed by a reading, which leads us to a timed writing on a topic inspired by the reading.
A common question from participants is, “What do I do with this writing?” or “How do I use this in my current WIP?” To answer both of these questions I wish to lean into the word “Practice” and remind you where you may have heard this before. In sports, coaches call their athletes to practice regularly. In those practices athletes perform all different aspects of their game of play — they make incredible blocks, they score goals and points, they hit speeds on the field they may never have hit before. On game day, none of these feats are calculated in the game. What are the athletes doing with all of that sport? How do they use that practice in their game?
No one would suggest that athletes should skip practice because it doesn’t “count” on game day. The value of that time spent practicing is so clear and, yet, when we are invited to practice in our writing, we are often left wondering if we are wasting our writing time. Remove that thinking from your writing life. Join us in our writing practice as we build all of our writing muscles and muscle memory so we can show up to all of our passion projects as the elite writing athletes we all can be!
Notes from the Video
An excerpt of the story "Beauty Contest" by Yoko Ogawa was read aloud in this video. It was read from the November 27, 2023 issue of THE NEW YORKER which can be found here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
"Beauty Contest" by Yoko Ogawa can be read here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
The WRITING PRACTICE discussed in this video is based on the teachings of Natalie Goldberg. For my Bookshop.org shelf of Natalie Goldberg books, use the link below (I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, so making any purchases in Bookshop.org using the links I share will result in me receiving a commission from your purchase. Bookshop.org also supports local bookshops near you!):
https://bookshop.org/lists/natalie-go...
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