Write pages of dialogue and mail them to each other? Why? What are we learning from this creative writing assignment?
Dialogue Writing Assignment Update
First, what did we do with the envelopes of our dialogue pages? (Read the assignment requirements here, and my reaction as I wrote here.) We passed them to someone else, wrote our address on the packet we got, and then mailed them down the hall. When we get them, we are to put a rubber band around them and bring them back to class without opening them! Seems pointless, but Dan (the prof) is the boss.
And this week’s dialogue exercise is to do the same, but with three characters instead of two!
Strange Thoughts About Writing
The odd thing was where my mind went on the way home and into the next morning. I would think, “Oh – she’s going to read that!” And then I reminded myself that she was bringing my pages back unopened. Followed immediately by, “I wonder if she’ll know the type of people my voices are.” Followed by, “Duh! She’s NOT opening them.”
The back-and-forth in my head kept going, and I spent the entire next day fascinated by my reaction.
Letting the Internal Editor Go
I knew I had written for publication, structured and planned, for a long time. But I never realized how hard it would be for me to let go of any purpose or future readership. I can actually see a purpose in this. It was fun to let myself have fun the next day, but the second writing got tedious again. We’ll see if I can get back to fun and truly free writing for the next set.
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