The dust was blowing in streaks across the...

It used to be about something... I can't remember what.

Good Advice.

Ten Minutes! Go!

Here are the essential rules that are often formulated for the beginners or students, often a paraphrase of Natalie Goldberg’s “Rules for Free Writing.”

* Give yourself a time limit. Write for one or ten or twenty minutes, and then stop.
* Keep your hand moving until the time is up. Do not pause to stare into space or to read what you’ve written. Write quickly but not in a hurry.
* Pay no attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, or style. Nobody else needs to read what you produce here. The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
* If you get off the topic or run out of ideas, keep writing anyway. If necessary, write nonsense or whatever comes into your head, or simply scribble: anything to keep the hand moving.
* If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you’re writing, ask yourself what’s bothering you—and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.
* When the time is up, look over what you’ve written, and mark passages that contain ideas or phrases that might be worth keeping or elaborating on in a subsequent free-writing session.
Via Wikipedia

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July 4, 2008

The dust was blowing in streaks across the dissheveled blocks of cement that served as sidewalks along the pow-wow bowl. A man and a little girl stepped out; her hand reached up and grabbed his finger, and they walked along. Across the street, and over the field of crushed and mangled white clovers, a set of girls watched them cross the street. Nobody smiled. Nobody laughed. Everyone loitered. More dust blew.