One of my favorite scenes in movies of the past few years is the Frozen Park Bench scene in the first of the Jason Bourne movies—The Bourne Identity.

At 0815 hours on 5 June [1967] we gambled all we had. What for other countries would have been defeat, for us would mean extermination. It was not possible for us to lose the war and survive and each man carried this knowledge in his heart when we moved west.

I had a boss when I worked in advertising who used to call together the Creative Group (four two-person teams of copywriter and art director) just before he would submit a pitch or proposal to a client.

Forgive me if I get this story wrong; it’s probably apocryphal anyway. It’s about the great director Federico Fellini and his screenplay for La Dolce Vita (1960).

One of the reasons a community of writers and artists is important, even a virtual one like our Writing Wednesdays, is because each of us is, in our work, essentially ALONE.

Preparing to host a writing retreat got me thinking about writing prompts, i.e. the “assignment” you and I might be given if we attended a writing workshop.

Except one time—in Nashville in 2019—I’ve never taught a live class.

There’s another reason why plunging in can help us more than outlining or doing a treatment or engaging in some other prep action.