Wisdom Tree Writers Retreat Fall 2010: Assignment #1

Greetings, retreat participants! Let's get started.

You first assigment

Act: imagine the book you would like to write. Even if you don't intend to write a book, have a little fantasy right now. If you could write any book you wanted, what would it be? What's the title? What does the cover look like? When a person opens up the book, what's on the Table of Contents? Write quickly and don't think about this too much.

Reflect: What have you discovered--or reaffirmed, or refuted--through this exercise? Do you know something about your desires you didn't know before? Reflect to yourself, in writing, what this act of imagining was like for you.

Respond: In light of this little exercise and what you've learned from it, what should you do now?

Feel free to use the comment feature of this blog to share what this experience was like.

Tomorrow comes assignement #2!

 

Comments

[Cindy Crosby]

Thank you for kick-starting my week with these exercises, Vinita!

[Trinity Wilbourn]

In light of this little exercise, I need to come up with some better titles :)
I tend to hit hard with a very moralistic title, and when I think of the books I am drawn to, they are not titled things like "Stalled: How to Jump start your Life." (this is not my working title. This is just an example). I am drawn to memoir right now but it's hard to have perspective on my own life. I don't have a title and I don't have an image although I appreciate good design and am aware of how often I pick up a book based on the cover art.

[MC]

I found that the topic I chose was so personal it caused hesitancy on my part. When I finished the exercise, I had taken ownership of the topic and felt ready to write more!

[carol hiestand]

The assignment to imagine a book i would like to write - i could have done the assignment a lot easier if the assignment had been to imagine what i would like to right about. the critic in me says that will never happen, so why even try to imagine it in the context of a book. i actually did the exercise, had some interesting thoughts and then while doing the reflecting, the inner critic said "this is such a waste of time." so not sure where i go from here...to complicate things i have had a computer crash and have only done the first assignment. i'll catch up hopefully . . . . .

[vinita]

If all you learned from that exercise was that you should approach titles differently, that is HUGE progress! Congratulations on allowing the exercises to work on you.

[vinita]

Wow, MC, to take ownership is a great step in the right direction. See, the retreat paid off for you in just this exercise. Thanks for joining us.

[vinita]

One way to get rid of the critic is simply to write, write, write, and allow your imagination to carry you off. You're not worried about doing it right, just getting it started. I asked people to think about the book they would like to write, just to stimulate the imagination. Thanks for being part of this.