Take The WAT
The following questions help you discover a new writer, you.
1. Complete the sentence, “I write because…”
a. it’s cheaper than therapy
b. the blank page torments me
c. I can’t stop
d. I want to learn more about people I invent
Correct Answer: You write because no one else can tell your stories.
2. Complete the this sentence, “I write in…”
a. scenes
b. science
c. English
d. emotions that flow through my body like electrical surges of passion
Correct Answer: You write in any way you can to tell your story.
3. My favorite book is,
a. Moby Dick
b. the Bible
c. the dictionary
d. Huck Finn
Correct Snawer: All of them.
4. My favorite writer is,
a. Pat Conroy
b. Leo Tolstoy
c. Stephen King
Correct Answer: All of them. Check out the ones you don’t know.
5. My favorite place to write is,
a. in bed
b. at my desk
c. on paper
d. online
Correct Answer: Anyplace and everywhere.
6. My favorite genre is,
a. romance
b. war stories
c. adventure
Correct Answer: The one that serves your story.
7. My favorite hero is,
a. James Bond
b. Spider Man
c. King Arthur
d. Romeo
Correct Answer: The hero of your story.
8. My favorite heroine is,
a. Romeo’s Juliet
b. Tarzan’s Jane
d. Dorothy and Toto
Correct Answer: All of them.
9. Complete the sentence, “A good story needs…”
a. the structure you learn from Larry Brooks
b. the sort of daring you find on http://chuckpalahniuk.net/
c. a friend like Tom Spanbauer
d. a teacher like Cynthia Whitcomb
Correct Answer: A writer who won[‘t give up.
10. The best thing about being a writer is
a. Oprah
b. a basement full of overstock
c. creating the context for ordinary people to become extraordinary
d. answering the question, “so what do you write about?”
Correct Answer: Working with words until they mean more than they say.
Baby Boomers may have a different take on things, but in writing we’re all equals.
When you are finished, visit NYC on Maureen Johnson’s hopping author page.
About David Gillaspie
David you take me back to a time when my life was filled with very difficult circumstances. Doing my best at trying to hang on to my career while jumping through all of the hoops California workers comp has in store for an injured worker…
I took a simple writing class at my local junior college. My being horribly dyslexic has never been any kind of welcoming addition to my knowledgebase or skill sets in my comeupence if you will. It has always been a challenge not to totally create concern regards to testing especially if it comes down to recollection of technical terms definitions so on. Most test usually result in disaster for this kid.
Not so in this particular writing class and not even a hint from my wonderful teacher bless her heart. At the time, my undergoing so much hurt and pain rejection and failure– struggles with horrid bitterness was tearing through me like a double-edged knife slicing through my heart and soul. But this insightful instructor very close to my own age at the time opened up her writing world so as to allow me a simple glance, a demonstration of what can be. This was of course after I wrote a very emotional piece about an excessively violent event that resulted in death forever haunting my dreams.
This woman took special interest in what it was I had to say and I look back now, with her guidance she emphasized that everybody has their own style when it comes to the written word and what you write just as a well composed photograph can be considered as a work of art passing on throughout the ages. For if we do not tell our story, then who will? There is emotional release in the recollection of so many past events often times though, such recollections delay sleep for many many days making the days dreary much like this thick nasty smog that seemingly engulfs our city and all that lives within her.
I will be forever grateful to this wonderful teacher and writer extraordinaire for her patients for her guidance and her gentle way of molding and shaping me into an entirely new direction such deeply etched searing expressions that still linger into mere written words.
It has been many months since I’ve actually written much of anything lengthy. My explanation will have to come out another time as it has nothing to do with this topic.
R-72 10-7
<<>>
I heard this list of rules that might help.
1. No tears in the writing means no tears in the reading.
2. If you read to an audience, no tears. Let the audience react.
3. Writing, like most crafts, makes you get better the more you do it.