This year I set out to write a ‘Blurt’ – what I now think of as a ‘Wild Write’ – every week. I wasn’t very precise about what I intended, just that I wanted to make the most of a few spare minutes by writing something new (most likely fiction) that I would commit to posting on my blog.

Why?

I was looking for a creative boost.

I needed to find a way to look afresh at my collection of stories and novella. I’d been working on them for quite a while and they had become just too familiar. I was hungry to get into new stories but wasn’t prepared to commit a lot of time to new material as my priority was to finish the collection.

I was nervous! Would I be able to write something quickly that could be made public? Was I crazy to go against the advice of people far more experienced than myself?

“Don’t waste time on a blog,” I’d read. “Focus on your ‘real’ writing.”

“Don’t post stories on your blog as they will then be considered published and no journal will accept them,” was another piece of advice.

But I decided to go ahead all the same.

With just over a quarter of the year and fifteen Blurts/Wild Writes under my belt, it turns out that these stories are quite different from my regular writing – more slipstream/magic realism.

They are loads of fun to write – although they do sometimes take a little more time than I had intended.

Sometimes it’s hard to break away from working on my novella to focus on generating something totally new and I resent that – until I get caught up in the new story!

Of course I feel more satisfied with some of the Blurts than with others.

But what I’ve really been enjoying is the payoff!

• I’m far more productive;
• I feel more energized with all my writing;
• I have more fresh ideas with the stories in my collection. Constantly coming up with new material for the ‘Wild Writes’ keeps me open to all sorts of possibilities. The characters I know so well from my collection now often surprise me with their actions and reactions. We all know what fun it is when that happens!

If you’re looking for a creative boost, I’d really encourage you to try a weekly Wild Write/Blurt.