This week in the Daily Writer

Mr. White started off the week with a discussion on the topic of honesty and authenticity and assigned the writer to read through a draft of a work in progress (WIP) criticiquing it for authenticity. I had actually already been doing that with a short story/novella/novel that is the journal entries of a pioneer woman telling about her experience in early Sheridan County Nebraska. Since that was where I spent the majority of my childhood there were somethings that I already knew but was somewhat foggy on the exact dates so I went back through it after I did some research on the internet.
Monday's entry was about the fact that writers creat worlds. Some of the worlds actually exist, or existed while others are modeled after real places but are fictional and there there is the true fantasy and science fiction writings that are not real places. Mr. White suggests to make the world you are writing about more realistic you need to sit and actually visualize the setting and using words as pigments paint the scene and scenery along with other elements experienced by the senses. That is what I did when I created the novella/novel that I wrote for my NaNoWriMo assignment. I created a fictional town modelled after a real town close to where I live. Some of the features are real and others are purely fiction.
Tuesday's entry was on confession and Mr. White extolled the benefits of personal confession for writers. Wednesday's entry was about writing adventure. Not some much as relates to say an action adventure story but what the writer would see as something adventurous to them. They also need to be aware of what the character(s) they are portraying would consider an adventure.
Thursday's entry was about developing an authentic writer's voice. He shared that in trying to be natural some writers try to hard and end up sounding fake. He then gave an assignment to help the beginning writer develop an authentic writer's voice. Friday's reading had to deal with symbols and reality. He stated that "symbols codify human reality, and in a spiritual sense become reality". He also discussed how symbols "render the abstract concrete". He then assigned the task to take common household items and free-associate possible symbolic meanings.
Today's reading was about dealing with writer'sblock. He listed five types of blocks and offered suggestions to cope with each. So far the ones I have experienced the most have been: psychological blocks (my inner crictic tells me that I'm not good enough, that my writing will never amount to anything), and distraction blocks (other things in my life distract me from writing). I have also experienced at times the creativity block that stricks some, if not all writers. Unlike his particular suggestion of keeping on writing one sentence at a time, I find that if I'll put that story aside and pick up a different one that I am working on, the block on the original story ends by the time I pick it back up. That is the reason I currently have six WIPs and suggestions for about a dozen more in my composition book.
I am finding that writing daily is a real problem but I can find time one the weekend to get caught up so for awhile until my schedule slows down I will make this a weekly blog instead of a daily one.