The Guide and the Trail 
May 22, 2017

In her book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott suggests a writer should write a minimum
of three hundred words a day. While she doesn't come out and say it, I assume
she doesn't mean three hundred words of stream-of-consciousness free writing;
rather three hundred words of prose that moves your current fiction or
non-fiction work forward, or which improves some part of your writing craft.
Three hundred words with a definite purpose. This makes sense, because there's a
difference between wandering and making a journey. Both can be difficult or
pleasant by turns, both can be revelatory experiences; but only one has a
definite goal in mind, a definite ending place that gives a sense of
satisfaction when it's reached.

Writers are guides, taking readers through the landscapes that the writers
themselves have created. You have show them the sights, get them to feel what
you felt when that sudden plot twist happened, to ooh and aah at the same
beautiful vistas that moved you; scaring them, enraging them, getting them to
think and feel in turn. But a guide needs to have a trail--they can't just
wander aimlessly. And while the trail may never leave the woods, may never come
to a lodge or a road or a town or civilization of any kind, it still has to have
a starting and an end point and move from one to the other; and the guide has to
know how keep the audience interested and engaged in the scenery around them.

So when you sit down to write your three hundred words, make sure it's to
further a stated goal of some kind, even if the goal is just to get a
character's background straight in your mind, or to get better at writing dialog
or describing the world that you're building. But don't let it be (or become)
aimless writing. Aimless writing should only be a pleasure to be indulged in
after the hard work of cutting the trail, pounding markers along the way, and
preparing and smoothing the ground for the feet of the reader is done. Aimless
writing is for when you're back at the lodge, your feet by the fire, warmed in
your soul by the feeling of a day's work well done.

(c) 2017 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com