Breaking the Seal

With one month until I submit my thesis, FireWall, I will no longer have anything to write on, obsessively.

It's probably time for a break from prose, and time for setting down my reactions to the art I consume. Time to write about my search for a job - any job - other than teaching High School.

I'll start my first blog post writing on what the last two years of my Master's Degree of Creative Writing has taught me.

• I can't write before 1p.m. if I have not had coffee.
• I am not a planner - as writers go. I make stuff up almost as I go, and then stop to improve it later in rewrites.
• Character is better than plot - every time. I had thought before beginning this course that writing plot would be necessary sometimes. But when I wrote plot to get a character from one place to another, the passage read like stinking offal. Write character every time.
• Make every sentence different and well-written. I mean to say I've learned I should do this, not that I have accomplished this.
• If it doesn't feel good as you write it, stop writing it and write something else.

There's more, of course. Much more, but I'd rather be brief and to-the-point than long and pedantic.