Tense Moments

The first thing I noticed while hand writing the voice blocks (see yesterday) is that it requires reading and repeating every word very carefully.  You want the repetition to be accurate or it won't work as well.

Then I noticed my first voice block is written in past tense.  Janet Evanovich.  She writes in first person, but in past tense.  I like to write in first person present tense.  I didn't notice that before.

I thought the point of the exercise is to write them fast and get the style into your blood.  But now I see it's better to write them at a normal speed.  You notice more that way.

I think I'm mixing this up with morning pages from The Artist's Way.  There you want to pour it all out.  At least I think it is.  Maybe I need to go read about morning pages more carefully.

I still think voice blocks are a kind of magical absorption process.  But I can see they definitely are a way of analyzing and using the experience of other writers to improve one's own writing.

More later.