I walked Tuesday, 4 miles, 4 markers, up into the gap again. I counted 40 or so hawks sitting in about 4 trees up in the gap, in backyards. Very strange. I don't think I've ever seen so many birds of prey in one place. Convention?
I finished reading
michaeljasper's pages and commenting so he could have it all by his Big Writing Day today. That was an interesting project because it did something in the hind brain. I ended up using my work group time last night to draft pages and pages on a new idea. I have no idea how long it is, haven't done any research for it, but I started. It went like this:
First, just write down the factual aspect of the idea. Jot down sections of it. It takes place over a long period of time and relates to evolution. Write down any rules. Rule 1: It's set in Virginia, so I'll have to research what the geologic history is. Rule 2: The different times have to have a connection to each other. I did this work in the afternoon, warming up.
Second, I just started playing with the beginning during workgroup, writing down the bare bones of the first idea/section. Then I looked at it and took what stood out as interesting and rewrote it using that as a focus. And rewrote it again. All of this was very loose, often in free verse, using phrases, ideas. Looking for emotional tags and descriptive tags. Pushing each one further out from a factual description. The idea niggling in my head was that by the time I have a decent draft, it might all be a metaphorical, emotional, poetic description.
And finally, when I was tired of playing with the first idea/section, I started to freewrite out into other sections, trying them out, seeing what ideas were coming out on the page, what evolutionary events interested me.
I wrote for about an hour and a half. By the time I stopped, I was very sleepy. Which is probably a good sign that my brain was working hard.
Frog Out
