lynda barry

Seven and a half minutes worth of writing

Video | | Paul Greer

reblogging nearsightedmonkey:

“People have been looking for the timing videos for Lynda Barry’s Writing the Unthinkable excercises. Here is the one for seven and a half minutes worth of writing.

OK LET’S GO! BUT BEFORE YOU START THE VIDEO….. STEP ONE:

First write ten nouns on ten little pieces of paper. Any nouns will do! Cake! Fire! Teeth! Ticket! Etc!

Number a page from one to ten

Relax your whole body from top to bottom and say the alphabet to yourself or something else you have memorized and think back to early days in your life….

turn over one of the pieces of paper and write down the first ten images… sort of like snapshots…. that come to you from that word

Read the list over

Circle one that seems vivid or has trouble in it and write it on a clean sheet of paper like it was a title to a story and then draw a big X on the page.

NOW start the video.”

3 x notes on notes and sketch pages

Aside | | Paul Greer

Lynda Barry:


Notes on notes and sketch pages

Guillermo Del Toro:

Among Guillermo del Toro’s most prized possessions is a leather-bound journal that he carries with him at all times. It is where he sketches and writes down his ideas and muses for future films. In this particular notebook was four years worth of ruminations that would eventually become Pan’s Labyrinth. The movie almost never came to be, as del Toro had exited a London cab one evening and neglected to take with him his notebook. The cab driver found the notebook, as well as a scrap of paper with a hotel logo on it. Recognising the logo, the cab driver returned the notebook and del Toro was so elated with its return that he rewarded the cab driver $900.
Among Guillermo del Toro’s most prized possessions is a leather-bound journal that he carries with him at all times. It is where he sketches and writes down his ideas and muses for future films. In this particular notebook was four years worth of ruminations that would eventually become Pan’s Labyrinth. The movie almost never came to be, as del Toro had exited a London cab one evening and neglected to take with him his notebook. The cab driver found the notebook, as well as a scrap of paper with a hotel logo on it. Recognising the logo, the cab driver returned the notebook and del Toro was so elated with its return that he rewarded the cab driver $900. via

 

Joan Didion:


Joan Didion

 

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”