Writing From A Different Focus
by Saladin Akara on April 13, 2009
in General Writing, Group Writing Projects, Hints and Tips
Sometimes, as a writer, it is far too easy to remain within a defined comfort zone. Whether it be a particular genre of writing, a specific style or a point of view that is essentially the same, we generally are proficient within our writing comfort zones. But as we try to grow as writers, perhaps we should try to step away from our areas of comfort.
A nice excercise in this is to change our focus. Whether this is a change from third person perspective to first or second, or perhaps moving away from scenery descriptives to more motion-orientated work. And maybe even shifting from fiction to non-fiction.
All of these things challenge us and as such make us grow as writers.
A Challenge
As a group writing project, I challenge you push yourself and give writing from a different focus a try.
- Post a new entry on your blog with your writing piece, linking back (in the spirit of community) to this post.
- Give a brief (or not so, it’s your choice) explanation of how what you wrote moved you away from your current comfort zones and a little on how it helped you to grow.
- I’ll (again, in the spirit of community) compile a list of all the entries for reference.
- Please email me a link to your entry at hayhed2k3@gmail.com so I can add you to the list.
- Entries should be received by the end of Sunday 19th April. (I’ll go by EST on this deadline).
Have Fun!
I hope that you all have fun with this little challenge and group-write; I am certainly looking forward to some brilliant reads.
Looks like an interesting challenge, Matt! I’d make two suggestions:
1) Add a deadline. Folks seem to respond better when there’s a time limit involved. You can always add entries after the deadline if you like (I do), but still…
2) Send an email to Jacob Share at http://www.groupwritingprojects.com about your project. He’ll post an announcement on his site as well. Not sure how much it helps (I don’t generally track stuff like that - but you might) but hey, it’s something!
Otherwise, it sounds like a great challenge. Now to get the word out!
As a side note, I’ve added in a deadline for the project: Midnight on Sunday 19th April (EST).
Robert, thank ye kindly for sending Matt along. And Matt, your announcement is now on the site and will be twittered out shortly as well:
Writing From A Different Focus Group Writing Project
Matt, I love the way you’re jumping into the community aspect of blogging! I’ll add another bit of advice though… the deadline needs to be about three weeks (unless you’re Robert - people know about and are ready for his WILF projects, so he can get away with a short deadline)
A lot of people have their week’s blogging planned in advance - so you need time for one or two people to notice and respond to the invitation, then their readers to notice it too - all of which takes a little bit of time. Especially when you’re jumping into it new.
Which is a bit of a long-winded way to say sorry I won’t be able to take part in this one
PS As I’m in advice giving mode - do forgive me! - you’ve got gravatars on your site which is great… make sure you add your own!