Power Writing

My friend Dani recently introduced me to power writing, which she learned from her professor, Goldberry Long.  Dani introduced it by saying that it sounds juvenile, but it's the most useful thing she picked up in grad school, so give it a try before judging it.

The rules go like this:

1. Write by hand.  You're not going to get the same flow, and you're going to back track too much if you're typing.
2. Set a timer.  I do 5 minutes. Dani does 16 minutes.  It doesn't really matter as long as it's not too long for you to keep it up and long enough for you to get something out of it.
3. You can't use periods.  A period ends a thought and you don't want to end a thought.  You want to keep going, just spewing ideas.  Instead of a period, you can use a comma and the word "and".
4. You cannot stop
1. You can write slow
2. No crossing things out, fixing, or editing.  You can say "That last bit should be crossed out" or "that's not the right word" or "No, no, I don't like that because..."
3. If you get stuck, you can repeat the last word or the last phrase until you know what to say next.

Power writing is not meant as a way to write your story fast.  Instead, it's an idea generator.  It's good to start with a kind of prompt.  So for example, the other day I power wrote on what my main character's job would be.  I rambled off options and wrote about the pros and cons, and by the end of five minutes, I had stumbled upon something that would work.  The next day I rambled about things that would change from one verse of a story to the next, and stumbled upon some things that were going to happen that I hadn't anticipated. 

The power write is pretty much unreadable when you're done, but there will probably be one good thing in there that's going to make it into a story.  Dani suggests chaining your power writes, so the one jewel you got out of the first one becomes the prompt that you can use for a second power write.  I've found that after a power write, I can make an action plan, or an outline of what I'm going to actually write, so I spend a few minutes doing that.  Then I'm ready to go and make the most of the time that I have.

It's pretty cool, and you might want to check it out.