Rules for a Great Rough Draft

1.  Keep your hand moving.  If you stop your hand, you stop the creator's flow and give the editor in you an opportunity to interrupt.
2.  Lose control.  Just say what you want no matter how inappropriate.  Just go for it.
3.  Be specific.  Don't write flower, write narcissus.
4.  Don't think.  Stay with the first thing that flashes into your mind.
5.  Don't worry about punctuation, spelling, and grammar.
6.  You are free to write the worst junk in America.  (Or, in your case, it could be anywhere in the world!)
7.  Go for the jugular.  Whatever comes up, no matter how frightening or disturbing, write it down.

Sadly, I don't remember the source for this list.  I was blog hopping one day, found it, and printed it out.  I love it though, and I wanted to share it with other writers.  If you are the author, please let me know so I can give you credit!

Query, Query, Quite Contrary

No, I'm not thinking of querying my 36,000 skeletal rough draft of my first novel just yet.  I'm not quite there.  However, I do have friends that are in the thick of things, and The Query Letter looms greater than Godzilla for them.  Here's a great site I found for learning what to do and what not to do with a query letter.

Janet Reid's Query Shark

I will be eating up this information, hopefully preparing myself for the Big Day when I, too, will have a query letter ready to send.

Funny

All right, people, don't get your hopes up.  I am not going to start blogging daily.  But this was just too dang funny not to share, especially if you're a writer.

I Yam What I Yam

"A monk asked Koyo Seijo, 'Daitsu Chisho Buddha sat in zazen for ten kalpas and could not attain Buddhahood. He did not become a Buddha. How could this be?' Seijo said, 'Your question is quite self-explanatory.' The monk asked, 'He meditates so long, why could he not attain Buddhahood?' Seijo said, 'Because he did not become a Buddha.'"

"Daitsu Chisho Buddha is the Buddha of Great Penetration and Perfect Wisdom. Kalpa is a measure of time, hundreds of thousands of years long. It stretches between the creation and recreation of a universe. Sitting in zazen for ten kalpas is a metaphor to show that in the state of absolute samadhi there is no time. In the state of samdhi there is no enlightenment, no realization, no Buddhahood; there is just this samadhi. Therefore, Daitsu Chisho Buddha did not become a Buddha because he was a Buddha from the beginning." -- From the Little Book of Zen

Surfacing

Koan 15 -- Tozan's Sixty Blows

Tozan came to study with Ummon. Ummon asked, "Where are you from?" "From Sato," Tozan replied. "Where were you during the summer?" "Well, I was at the monastery of Hozu, south of the lake." "When did you leave there?" Ummon asked. "On August 25," was Tozan's reply. "I spare you sixty blows," Ummon said.

The next day Tozan came to Ummon and said, "Yesterday you said you spared me sixty blows. I beg to ask you, where was I at fault?" "Oh, you rice bag!" shouted Ummon. "What makes you wander about, now west of the river, now south of the lake?" Tozan thereupon came to a mighty enlightenment experience.

Ummon (d.949) was the founder of one of the five major schools of Zen. Tozan (910-990) was one of the four most distinguished disciples of Ummon. To spare blows to a disciple is a great insult. The disciple is not even worth the punishment of the master. When Ummon asks Tozan what good his wandering from one monastery to another is, the master is revealing that what the disciple is seeking he already possesses. He should concentrate upon bringing it to the surface, rather than wandering here, there, and everywhere. At this realization Tozan attained enlightenment.