EXERCISE: The Dare to Be Bad Challenge

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Original Posting 21 August 1993, reposted 26 August 2008

I've been going over old postings, and one of the pieces from long ago struck me as still useful. So - here it is.

Original Posting: Sat, 21 Aug 1993 18:00:06 JST

The Dare to Be Bad Challenge (thanks to Ken for the good words)

The Dare to be Bad challenge is a writing strategy designed to help beginners get published. It requires that you write a new story every week, and send them all out to magazines. When they come back, send them out again. And again, and again. In the meantime, keep writing.

The reason it's called Dare to be Bad is that some weeks your writing is going to be pretty awful, and you have to dare yourself to finish it, and mail it out, anyway.

Note that we aren't talking about spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors here. You must prepare your manuscript to the best of your ability each week; you just have to be willing to live with the fact that you aren't going to be writing Hugo-winning fiction for quite a while.

The original group of writers who started the Dare (among them is Kris Rusch, the editor of F&SF) claim that every person who has followed the Dare for over two years has become published. No exceptions.

Kousen's Corollary to the Dare to be Bad challenge: If you do decide to participate, for gosh sakes don't tell any other writers about it, except those already in the Dare. Otherwise you'll waste all your time defending yourself, and still be accused of being a "hack."

Go for it!

FILL: A Quote

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Original posting 3 September 2008

"What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?" Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What then?

Tell as about that heavenly bloom.  What kind of a stem was it on?  And was its aroma half as sweet as its shape?

What did you think, waking to find this bloom at hand?  And what did you do with your morning blessing?

Was that morning flower concrete, metaphoric, or some wondrous crossing the two?

go ahead, let your words flow, and tell us what happened then.

And a little blossom shall please them?

EXERCISE: Rub Two Quotations Together

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Original posting 3 September 2008

. . . and call me when you have a fire?

"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." William Dement

"Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey." Cynthia Ozick

Dreaming lets us be quietly insane at night, while writing allows us that same freedom in our daily life. Daydreams, imagination, role playing -- being more than we can be any other way. What's writing to you?

Now add in that notion of awesome unfamiliarity. At the end of a journey, when we look around, even the well-worn bits and pieces of our home often seem brand-new and surprising. And maybe sometimes in the morning, after we've been insane all night?

Go ahead. How does that license for freedom and the awesome unfamiliarity at journey's end go together?

Write?