Amy Guy

Raw Blog

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Forced Fiction: a definition

A quick explanation in advance of future posts.

The concept of forced fiction is well known and popular, but I've never heard it called that before.  I think it's an appropriate name.  Normally I write because I have an idea.  When I don't have many ideas, or I'm preoccupied with other things, I go for enormous stretches of time without a word of fiction leaving my pen.  Recent events have made me realise that there exists an upward spiral; writing often both improves the quality of prose, and the frequency of ideas generated.  But ideas from nowhere are a blessing, and not to be taken for granted.

Thus, forced fiction.  A minimum of every two days, if I haven't written anything idea-based, I will generate five random words using this, for example, and not move until I've written a piece of flash (or longer, if the mood takes me) containing them all.

And in a crazy and unforeseen turn of events, I'm going to post them on here.  Unless I really like them, then I'm going to keep them to myself.

So now you know.