I’d love to initiate a discussion about the “alert” we give at the end of a timed write. Depending on the length of the write, we normally give participants a heads up about how much time is left somewhere between 30 seconds to 5 minutes. (For me, the longer the write, the more heads-up I give participants. They can be involved in a much more developed idea if they’ve been writing for half an hour, so I like to give more warning).
I want to note that whenever I’m leading a workshop, I make it a point to keep the warning as brief as possible: “1 minute” or “2 minutes left”.
For my own experience, when I’m in a workshop and the facilitator breaks in at the warning time and offers several sentences of instruction, it really interferes with my writing process. I can’t handle two sets of language at the same time — my own internally generated writing process and the workshop leader giving more instruction about how we’ll be stopping soon. So if the facilitator says more than 2 or 3 words, it can kick me out of my process entirely for whatever time is left, rather than allowing me to wind things down, or say what I have to say before we stop.
How have others encountered/experienced this phenomenon?
I am a two minute warning person and also a very short sentence. I hate interrupting the flow. Then I try to ease everyone back, allowing people to write on if they need to. I try to make room for a little chat (Was it a challenging prompt, anyone have a hard time starting) so writers can refocus on their companions and then ask for a volunteer to start reading. I try to read last, but will go if there is hesitancy as we share round the table.
That’s a really interesting technique guy, to invite some reflection immediately after the write! And I appreciate the reason for it “so writers can re-focus on their companions”. And I too usually leave my own writing till the end — also in case there isn’t time left at the end.