Mindful Reading: Boice pp 59-64

I'm going to play into Boice's hand here, by expressing the same reservations about his 'Shaping Ideas into Imagination' section as his writers did. It might just be that I'm a little tired today, which makes me more skeptical and confrontational, but I shared in these two points:

1. How am I ever going to get any work done if I keep setting aside more time for Brief Daily Sessions?
2. Public scrutiny is NOT what I need right now in my process. 

As always, Boice has plenty of advice for those of us with these reservations. But what I think makes his program so workable, is that he addresses these reservations simply by going back to the advice he's been giving all along. This can be frustrating at first (I've been in class where the students were vitriolically opposed to Boice and found this to be more of an annoyance than anything. My perception was that these students weren't going to try anything aside of what had worked for them in the past, and if they had lowered their walls just a bit they could have appreciated Boice's program and maybe it could have helped them. But I digress), because it might seem like he's just repeating himself. However, there's some comfort in knowing that these practical suggestions can be augmented by simply remembering a few of Boice's key strategies: Wait, BDS, Community, Start. 

Anyway. Boice addresses these reservations with comments his writers have made. The examples he brings up of people skeptical of an additional BDS mostly show that as writing becomes more regular and fluent, it takes less time to do some of the 'warm up' activities that bog down many-a writing session. Instead of warming up for those 10-15 mins, with regular practice you're able to spend those on more imagination-supporting activities. I can see how this is true, but I still wonder how many hours are in a normal Boice-day. 

I am less resistant to the 'make your imagination phase public' advice. Advice I've gotten from a number of people of the years has to do with creating a community around yourself that you can interact with at all stages of the process. Reading groups, writing groups, coauthored pieces, etc. All of these things, I think, are useful for bringing those imagination exercises to the front, bouncing ideas off of others' ideas and seeing what makes sense together and what new realms you can enter by creating an open dialogue of imagination. 

***Listening Notes****

Yesterday I found out that my favorite radio station from back home streams live on the net. 89.3 The Current is a Minnesota Public Radio station that is unlike any of the popular radio choices out there now. They specialize in more Indy, Rock, College-type music. And the best part: No Commercials!

You can check out their live stream here: http://www.thecurrent.org/listen