Status Updates From Writing Fiction: A Guide to...

35/417 Write to your lowest standard. Victoria Nelson... points out that "there is an almost mathematical ratio between soaring, grandiose ambition... and severe creative block." More writers prostitute themselves "up" than "down"; more are false in the determination to write great literature than to throw off a romance. A rough draft is rough; that's its nature. Let it be rough.
Writing is easy. Not writing is hard.

32/417 There are two advantages to [writing a first draft in one sitting]. The first is that you are more likely to produce a coherent draft when you come to the desk... with a single vision of the whole, than when you write piecemeal, having altered ideas and moods. The second is that fast writing tends to make for fast pace in the story. It is always easier, later, to add and develop than it is to sharpen the pace.

30/417

Choosing a subject: list of story idea suggestions based on freewriting and experience. The dilemma/catch-22, the incongruity, the connection, the memory, the transplant, and the revenge.

25/417

Clustering: choose a word that represents your central subject, write it in the center of the page, and circle it. Then for two or three minutes free-associate by jotting down around it any word—image, action, abstraction, or part of speech—that comes to mind. Every now and again, circle the words you have written and draw lines or arrows between words that seem to connect.