Marion looked down at her hands, which were...

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 14, 2008

Marion looked down at her hands, which were dripping with blood. Maybe she’d pressed a little too hard. Yes. that was it. She pressed to hard. She just needed to get the blood cleaned up and someone would fix this for her. She just needed to get the blood cleaned up and find her phone and it would all come out ok. She just had to call.
Her heart raced and the bottom of her feet felt disconnected from her legs, almost like floating, except on pilows of panic. She felt like she could run away— she wanted to run away, but she had to try to fix this. She hadn’t meant to press so hard. Who knew? How was she supposed to know.
“I need to find my phone,” she said, absently wiping her bloody hands on her thighs. Streaking burgandy stains from kneecap to mid thigh. “So much blood,” she said. Nobody was near to listen, but her voice waiverd and cracked when she spoke. She was breatless and skittery, clinging only to her need for her phone. Get the phone. Clean the blood. Save the world. It will all be ok. We’ll get through this, she thought. It will be ok.