Saturday, January 03, 2009

20 Minutes

I made it to my first meeting of the writer's group I signed up with three months ago. Finally! I got to meet some cool women, listened to their work as they read it out to the group, and got a sense for some of the issues they were dealing with as they tried to shepherd their writing towards publishing.

I also got 20 minutes. Of pure silence. On a weekend. In the middle of the day. To write.

That alone made my scrambling to get to the meeting, and dragging myself in late, worthwhile. Each one of us wrote to one writing prompt for 10 minutes and passed the prompt on to the person to our left and wrote another 10 minutes on the second prompt.

This was the first time I'd done anything like that. It was fun as it was revealing. I was surprised at the little nuggets of memories that popped into my head in that short duration. It was fun to read how differently we'd all reacted to the same prompts. And it was amazing to see how much work can get done in 20 minutes with no distractions.

13 comments:

Cindy/Snid said...

What a wonderful idea! I hope that your writing continues to go well.

Tharini said...

That's really cool Suj! I hope you will continue writing about these workshops, and whenever possible...do share a tip or 2. Its pretty motivating.

Kavi said...

I think thats a real cool idea. Sets me thinking if we can do something like this here...

Sujatha Bagal said...

Cindy, thanks! How's Bangalore treating you?

Kavi, Tharini, let me know if you guys want to do something along those lines!

Nino's Mum said...

20 minutes - seem so possible and yet, so inconceivable. What prompts did you jot upon?

Anonymous said...

Tips, tips!

Tharini said...

I'm interested Suj. What does it entail??

Inspired by your 20 minutes, I tried one of my own at the temple yday during Winkie's religion class and it really loosened my fingers quite a bit...the writing. I am really motivated now, and this is exactly what my writing course calls for too.

Sujatha Bagal said...

Nino's Mum, I'll post the two prompts and what they resulted in on the blog.

Tharini, Kavi, Nino's Mum, Ra, the way this would work is I'll post the prompts on the blog. Just make sure you have the 10 minutes before you actually read the prompts. Then go off and write on your blogs for the next 10 minutes. Time yourself. What comes, comes. We should all resolve not to read the others' posts until we respond to our own prompts. Then we comment and discuss as usual. Sound OK?

Ra, I'll be sure to post whatever tips I glean. One of the points we discussed was the importance of drafting a good proposal - usually before you start writing your book for non-fiction pieces and after for fiction.

Tharini said...

ooooo. *rubbing hands in glee*. I love this. Am in.

Anonymous said...

Wow! This reminds me of the group we'd in Ohio (that was sometime back, before the mayhem;-)

Sujatha Bagal said...

Napervillemom, ok, you've got me intrigued. What was the mayhem all about??

Anonymous said...

Kids...suj!

Sujatha Bagal said...

Oh, man! This one DOES NOT have kids. That's why it's been around for a while! That's the main reason for me to go to a group. If I had to take the kids along it would not be worth it at all.