Having never made a concerted effort to write a short story before, I found this book very enlightening. Whenever I’ve tried to make up a story, I’d always get to “that place” where, as the writer puts it, I needed to get some coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker, but the metaphor still holds.
“Staying in the room” is continuing to write when you are at that point where you are not sure where the story should go next. By keeping track of the “inventory” of the environment and characters you are creating, you can keep searching for the story through those creations and let it lead you to where you are trying to get the story to go (or maybe even somewhere you had no plans of going).
When we did our first freewriting exercise for this course, I found myself quickly needing lots of coffee. I knew the premise of what I wanted to write, but I couldn’t get myself there. I had a couple false starts where I did go “get coffee”, and finally forced myself to stay in the room and get it done. Without realizing it, I had used my inventory to get me through the exercise… The “paper” in the first sentence I had decided to use. I used it to get myself from the first sentence to the story I wanted to tell.
The three biggest things I think I pulled from reading this exercise were:
1. Build up your inventory from the beginning of the story, and use it to get you through from “scene” to “scene”.
2. Don’t stop just because you are stuck! Fight! Look for that next sentence. Walking away to distract yourself from it for a while will just break your concentration.
3. Don’t get hung up on proper names of characters, locations, streets, etc. when you are pounding out your first draft. If the name doesn’t come to you immediately, just grab a suitable placeholder out of the ether (a “Mickey” or “Doris”), and run with it. You can always search-and-replace a better name into your story later.
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