Writing Camp Day 5
Here we go!
Gooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you happen to be!
This is it! It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Day 5 of Writing Camp!
*yippee* / *sob*
There’s a song that’s been stuck in my head since Day 1, and which I’ve decided to make today’s theme song: ‘The Final Countdown’ (Europe).
So blast it through your headphones, enjoy the big hair and pyrotechnics of the official music video, or—if you need a little more absurdity in your life—watch one of the clips from Arrested Development that feature the song, because, folks: this is the final countdown.
What Day 5 is all about
The purpose of Day 5 is threefold: (1) finish our 5-day writing streak; (2) achieve some sense of closure; (3) and figure out how to keep the fun of Writing Camp going after camp ends.
Where do we go from here?
First of all, thank you. Thank you for signing up, and thank you for showing up. Thank you for sharing glimpses of the progress you’ve made and the challenges you’ve faced during Writing Camp. As Vinnie Jones would say, ‘It’s been emotional’.
(That reminds me: I really need to rewatch Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels sometime soon.)
Secondly, I just want to say that it’s been incredible to read about your work, and to learn about all the innovative spins you’ve each put on your own writing goals and routines for this week! Because I’m keen to keep that going until the very end of Writing Camp, I’ve kept the gist of today’s prompts in familiar territory. But because I also hope that you’ve made enough progress by now to have a sense of the shape and direction of what you’re writing, today’s prompts are also geared towards getting a birds’-eye view of what you’ve produced.
As most of you probably know, it’s not unusual for a writer not to know exactly what they’re writing until, well, they’ve written it. As David Lodge once put it, ‘You may formulate your intentions before you write it, but you always discover what you have to say in the process of saying it.’ For this very reason, I often feel like my own writing is a form of archaeology (or, at least, how I imagine archaeology to be): I start out by digging into my topic or argument with larger, blunt instruments, but as I near the end I switch those out for more delicate tools that can help me better excavate all the details of my piece—tiny pointed devices and gentle brushes.
The thing is, even if I don’t know exactly what I’m going to find, some part of me almost always knows that there’s something there. There’s some unspoken direction to DIG HERE that first brings me to whatever I’m writing, and that helps me dig for what I want to say. And even if I still very occasionally come up empty, it’s a sense that seems to have gotten more finely tuned over years of writing. (
has written about this writer’s sense in his post ‘Seeing the Dolphins’.)I hope very much that Writing Camp has helped you to develop some of your writing senses, as well as your writing routine. If you’ve found it helpful, you can repeat the experience on your own whenever you like, or you can even organise a Writing Camp of your own using the prompts I’ve provided—I’ll be making all the Writing Camp prompts freely available to all for the foreseeable future, and only ask that you give PBP a little shout-out if sharing them with others!
Day 5 Writing Prompts
Pick whichever one feels right for you today. If you’ve found something that’s worked well for you over the past four days and you want to stick with it, great! You can even repeat one of the prompts from Days 1-4. If, on the other hand, you want to try to get a better sense of the shape and direction of your piece, try out one of the options below.
Option 1: Freewriting
Skim through what you’ve produced over this past week. Then freewrite for 5 minutes on any aspect of what you’ve read. Remember: Do not stop. Do not look back. Do not worry at all about using perfect punctuation or sentence structure.
If that’s all the time and brain you’ve got for today, that’s fine (and congratulations on getting through Day 5 of Writing Camp!). Just take a moment to assess where you stand, and leave yourself a couple of breadcrumbs so you can pick up where you left off when you next return to your piece. As ever, these breadcrumbs could take the form of explicit instructions (‘Pick up on this idea and expand on it’) or a tiny description of what comes next (‘Next I want to set the scene for X by doing Y’).
If you feel like you could keep going, you can (a) revisit a prompt from Days 1-4 and/or (b) try out Options 2 or 3 below.
Option 2: Directed prompts
Skim through what you’ve produced over this past week. Then take 10 minutes and write about any one of the following:
How your sense of your piece has changed
How your sense of your piece hasn’t changed
Something about where your piece is now going that surprises you
What you’ll need to do to finish your piece
If your piece is a chapter or section, how it fits into the larger work it’s a part of
If that’s all you’ve got time/energy for today, that’s fine! If, on the other hand, you’ve got energy or ideas to spare, you can also try aiming to write for 20 minutes or until you have 200 more words.
Option 3: You do you
If you’re at Writing Camp for the camaraderie and accountability rather than the prompts, that’s great! Do your own thing, and let us know about it in the chat!
And if you’re a bit sad at the thought of Writing Camp coming to an end, please let me know if you’d like to find a way to keep it going! Would it help, for example, to have a weekly ‘check-in’ via the PBP Chat? Would you like to have ‘live’ write-along sessions on Zoom sometime? Or would you like to work one-on-one with me on your writing? Please get in touch and let me know, whether in the comments, the PBP Chat, or via email (mary [[at]] marycflannery.com).
As ever, thanks for reading. This is a reader-supported publication, and the best way to support it is to become a paid subscriber (either at $5 per month or $50 per year).
To celebrate my birthday month, I’m running another 2-for-1 deal on paid Page by Page subscriptions!
If you’re a free subscriber who’d like access to everything in the PBP archive (plus new paid subscriber posts), or if you’re someone who’s been waiting for an even more affordable way to support my work, this is your chance!
To take advantage of this deal:
Find a buddy who’ll reimburse you for half the normal subscription cost.
Sign up for a paid annual subscription.
Send me your buddy’s email (to mary [[at]] marycflannery.com) so you both get a paid annual subscription at 50% off!
If you’re already a paid subscriber and want to take advantage of this deal: no problem. Just follow the steps above!
If you’re feeling really generous, and you’d like access to everything on PBP and regular feedback on your own writing whenever you need it, you can become a Founding Member ($150).
VB,
M