Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Entry # 156 - "Intentional Writing"

Photo Credit - Jan Bowman - April 2013
Starting on July 1 – my intention is to write a complete new draft story with a beginning, middle and end each month. It doesn’t have to be finished or perfect, but it does need the structure of three basic parts. In particular, I intend to draw from many partially developed stories from my dream notebooks, and as I think about the beginning and ending, perhaps I will be able in the subsequent meditations to seek a way to organically end with an image or gesture that somehow touches upon the internal and external conflicts. I intend to dedicate at least 10 hours each week for the first draft.  So at the end of a month, what will a story look like after 40 hours?  I don’t know yet, but I am willing to explore this and report back.

At the end of the month, I hope to use the same process for the first round of revision. Then I plan to leave it for a while and let it cook slowly at low heat until it is ready for another round of revision or perhaps a peer review/feedback session with another trusted writer friend.  While that story is in the slow cooker, I intend to work on another one.
Photo Credit - Jan Bowman - October 2012
I hope to continue work on revising older stories at the intervals over each week when I am not working on the new story.  Yes. This is an ambitious plan and likely to unravel a bit – since life has a way of interrupting even the best of plans, but I intend to try.

“It is the time that you’ve wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”  from  The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

About Jan Bowman

Jan Bowman’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others. Glimmer Train named a recent story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New Writers. Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, her stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short Stories, a Pen/O’Henry award and a recent story was a finalist in the 2013 Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers.   Learn more at www.janbowmanwriter.com or

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