They never just went bang. That was the problem...

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 18, 2008

They never just went bang. That was the problem with them. They always sizzled or beeped first and that was not nearly as satisfying as a simple staccato report would have been.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, there was no need for the bang. It was just a simple little burst of sound that augmented the whole proceedure. And it was kind of scary. But mostly, it was just a bang. Disapointing.

Nobody asked after the Bang. When the bang stayed up late nights he stayed up alone. He sobbed gently into his hot green tea, served at just pre-boiling temperatures and steeped for exactly three minutes— and not a second more. HE had a special timer just for his tea, did Bang.