Monday, January 2nd, 2017  Happy New Year!
I wish you peace, joy, prosperity and health in 2017!
Also: I wish you fulfillment of all your goals.
Did I mention resolutions? Nope.
I don’t believe in resolutions. Resolutions are something most people make between the countdown to the new year and the champagne they drink at 12:01. Almost no one sticks to their resolutions. I gave up making them more than a decade ago.
Instead, I make goals for the new year. I plan — which is not to say that things never hit the fan and life is golden. Things do happen, and I miss goals, but I generally get more accomplished than if I’d not planned to begin with.
I’ve been planning 2017 for a few months now, both personally and professionally, and made a few decisions about what I’ll be concentrating on in 2016. If you haven’t done any planning yet, use January as your planning month and move forward from there. It’s not too late.
Begin by Reviewing Your 2016
Always review last year (last month, last week) to see what you accomplished and what you could do better. Here are some questions to think about:
– What major events happened in 2016?
– Finish a book? Publish a book? Attend a convention or writing retreat?
– What big and small goals did you accomplish?
– Learn how to self publish? Write cover copy? Use a new social media venue?
– What challenges did you overcome?
– Speak in public? Submit a story to an agent? Finish a short story?
– What could you have done better?
– Spent more time in the writing chair? Listened to your critique group or editor about something? Concentrate on area of writing: dialogue, grammar, scene setting?
– Have you become a better writer in any way?
– Finished more scenes? Wrote more words? Took a grammar or spelling class? Studied dialogue?
Even if you’re not a writer, you can use these questions to plan, just consider them outside the writing angle.
If you’re not a writer, consider:
– What big things happened in 2016?
– What large and small things did you accomplish?
– What did you overcome?
– What could you have done better?
– Have you become a better (husband/wife/co-worker/fill-in-the-blank) in any way?
Next, Decide What You Want to Do
Now, consider what you want to be. I know that’s a bit vague, but planning your goals will depend on what you want to be at the end of the year.
– Do you want to be a better writer? If so, what is your definition of “better?” Find your voice? Improve your grammar? Write more words? Accomplish more chapters? Finish more books?
– For non-writers (or, even for writers who want to tackle both professional and personal goals: do you want to spend more time with your family? Lose weight? Improve a particular skill? Etc.
Be specific here. You can’t plan effectively if you don’t have a specific goal.
For example: “Lose weight” is not a specific goal. Instead, consider, “Lose 10 pounds by March.” For writers, instead of “Write more,” try, “Write 10,000 words per month.”
Once you have a specific goal, you can break it down into smaller steps. Work on those steps daily, and you can accomplish great things.
Are you like me? There are too many goals on your list for this year? That’s where prioritizing comes in. I’ll write about that next week…
I hope you’ll plan with me this year. Some of my goals include:
– Increasing my word-count production by 10%
– Writing a non-fiction book (as well as the fiction and short stories!)
– Taking a class on marketing
What do you hope to accomplish this year? Leave me a note in the comments! =)
Friday, November 8th, 2013  The Husband of Awesome™ and I closed up the garden last weekend. We wrapped up the delicate figs with blankets, hoping to baby them over until the spring. We gave the lawn a last once over, hoping it won’t need to be cut again this year. I hacked about a bazillion volunteer Rose of Sharon bushes out of the front flower bed.
There’s more to do, fertilizing and getting empty pots back into the shed, for instance. We just ran out of time.
I love tending the garden, whether it’s spring–and the ground is ripe for rebirth–or fall, when blooms are dying off and everything is ready for sleep. I love the dirt. (And puttering is a great time to noodle over plots.)
Gardens are so full of metaphor…and wonderful inspirations for writing.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about the sending down of roots (or balling up of them -if the plant is trapped in a pot). Write about making roots of your own, or pulling up your roots and moving on. Write about severing your roots.
- Write about a character that’s been transplanted. If you journal, write about a move you made.
- Write about a garden in the spring, or the summer, or the winter, or the fall. Carefully choose imagery to depict the season. Does a tree look the same in summer as spring?
- Weeds. Write about pulling weeds in a garden, or culling the weeds from your life. Write about a character living in the weeds. Write about weed. 😉
- Is former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins correct, “The soil is full of marvels…”?
- What grows in the garden of earthly delights?
Good Luck!
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Image Copyright © Mariykaa | Dreamstime.com. Used by permission.
Friday, July 19th, 2013  We’re having a heat wave, which is no surprise, because it’s July on the East Coast.
Unfortunately, the AC decided to give out today. I’m waiting for a call back from some AC Repair companies to let me know if they can make it out anytime soon.
(This rots, because I had plans for today. Big Plans!)
Instead, we’re sitting here stewing – literally, not figuratively, because at least the basement is a cool 73 degrees. And I have iced-tea brewing – my favorite.
Hope you’re keeping cool!
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Temperature spikes usually make people uncomfortable. Write about heat. Irritable people, tensions escalating, tempers flaring. Write about:
- Tempers flaring out of control in the office, or
- Tempers flaring out of control on public transportation: a bus, in a taxi, or on an airplane.
- Write about a married couple — or a young couple living together — trapped in a sweltering apartment and no funds to get to the movies or somewhere where they might spend some time getting cool.
- Heat also brings up the possibility of passion. Write about sex on a tropical island, or in a candle lit room. Write about hot, passionate kisses. Write about forbidden sex or your deep-in-your-heart sexual fantasy. Write long, torrid sex scenes designed to make your reader squirm, where the climax is, achingly, pages and pages later.
Good luck!
Friday, June 28th, 2013  Most people work to earn a living.
So, unless you write about fabulously wealthy people all the time, I’m going to assume that your characters are working-class folk.
And even if you write fantasy, your character is going to have to make a living somehow–whether it be by herding sheep or in the castle guard–so I think you might find this useful.
For most people, work defines who they are. When you meet someone at a party, you’re inevitably asked, “What do you do?” We’re slotted into pigeonholes at first meet: he’s a computer programer, she’s a lawyer, he owns a plumbing and heating company…
This works for fabulously wealthy people who spend their time on good causes, too: She does books for a soup kitchen, he’s a doctor at a free clinic, she reads to the blind.
And like it or not, what we do for a living–or to fill the time–shapes us. We spend a huge amount of our time in pursuit of it: exposed to the politics, embroiled in projects, learning our pecking order, gaining experience both good and bad.
So knowing what your character does for a living is important–even if it’s never mentioned in the book. Because what he learned on the job is a takeaway to his life. Keep this in mind when creating new characters.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a scene or a story about an important event in a person’s life…but come at it from the perspective of work: you can only reveal things as they are happening on the job.
- Write a story about a person who keeps making the right decisions at work, but keeps landing in deeper and deeper trouble for them.
- Write the scene (or an entire story) about a bitter person who’s got the dream of a lifetime–her dream of a lifetime–and how it ruined her.
- Go large on the work idea: write a story that takes place at a business. The characters can only be seen as how they act on the job – no scenes away from the workplace.
- Write a story where your main character is having trouble keeping his job. This difficulty can be central to the story or not.
- If you Journal…
- Write about the loss of your job.
- Write about all the summer jobs you’ve had, or about your favorite summer job.
- Write about your Worst. Job. Ever. (Or worst boss!)
- Have you ever been profoundly effected by someone else’s job — or job loss? Write it.
Good Luck!
Friday, May 24th, 2013  I’m heading over to Balticon later on today, and it’s been a frenetic week preparing. Not because I’ve got such a large schedule — I deliberately don’t have much of one at all this year — but because life just got in the way.
I’m sure there’s a blog post/writing prompt for “life getting in the way” but that seemed kind of vague to me this morning. Watch for it later, I’m certain.
So, today’s prompts are rather random. Just some ideas I’ve been playing with that haven’t gone together for one huge post…and they all start with the photo.
Your options: choose the photo for the prompt, one or some of the prompts, or all of them (that might prove interesting!) and write away.
The Random Prompts
- A woman on her honeymoon is shocked to learn a major secret from her husband’s past.
- “Uncle John, I don’t like this.”
- I loved her with all my heart – but every day she became more of a leech.
- While driving to work one day, you decide to drive by the office, and just keep going.
- A woman on her honeymoon is shocked to learn a major secret from her husband’s past.
Friday, April 5th, 2013
I got inspired by doors today.
Doors are like choices, or decisions. Prompts for action: should you open it or leave it shut? Should you step through, or remain on this side?
And there are so many doors, and an equal (if not double!) amount of choices.
What’s more, the sight of a door leaves one with the impression of what might be behind it. A set of French doors with sheer white curtains might inspire a light and airy dining area. A solid wooden door on the face of a Boston brownstone might convey upper-crust society. A green door, surrounded by ivy and flowering potted plants might imply adventure.
But the frightening aspect is that the appearance could be illusion. A giant troll could live behind the fairy door. An impoverished family — self-imploding on the fracturing nature of drug addition or alcohol abuse — might live behind the brownstone door. The French doors might conceal the dark recess of a sociopath’s hideaway.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- As you drive, or walk, down the street today, take notice of doors. Choose one which inspires you and write the story of what lies behind it.
- If you’re writing a story or a novel, make a list of all the figurative doors (choices) which your character might have to walk through. Make the list long and detailed. Choose the most horrific option for your character, and write how he or she resolves the situation. Don’t just write about the scene, show the scene: let us know how the character is feeling — and thinking — about the decision. Was it the right decision to make, despite the horror of it?
- If you journal, or write memoir (or even family history) write a story about when you — or someone else — literally stepped through a door. Were your expectations met or not? Were you surprised by the situation you found behind the door? How did you feel about what happened?
- If you write poetry — make a list of doors. Describe them: their color, their surroundings, their ornamentation. Decide what lies behind each door. Write a poem about the most interesting one, or, write a poem about all of them.
Good luck!
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Photo © Colleen Coombe | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Friday, March 1st, 2013
How to use a picture prompt:
Study it.
What do you see? Pay close attention to the background as well as the foreground. What jumps out at you? Write about that, and not the obvious.
On the other hand, if the obvious tells you a story, write that. (These are guidelines, not rules.)
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Photo © Micha Fleuren | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Friday, February 15th, 2013  Question: Where do ideas come from?
Answer: They’re all around us.
But sometimes, they’re difficult to “see.” There’s a lot of visual stimulation around us, whether we’re visiting someplace new or sitting in our own writing spaces surrounded by the familiar.
Today’s writing prompt is a challenge. I want you to spend some time focusing on the objects around you and come up with a story (or a poem, or a memoir/journal entry, etc.) about one of the objects you see. Don’t let your eyes flick past the things you’ve viewed a million times a day. Instead, choose one to focus on, and think about some possibilities:
- How did you acquire it? Was it given to you by a friend? What if someone else had given it? (An enemy? A teacher? An alien? What kind of story would that make?
- How was it manufactured? What if it were made of something else? What if it had additional properties such as motion, magnetism, solubility, invisibility?
- Who owned it before you did? Your brother? Your cousin? Henry the VIII?
- Imagine this item in another location. What significance does the new location bring to the object? (Does it give you an idea for a story?)
Now…kick it up a notch by letting your imagination run wild. Start with the focus object, and continue to ask questions of it until the object of your study is no longer what you focused on. Instead of asking the “usual” questions, take a tangent… What does the color of it remind you of? How about the shape, or the texture? Maybe the gold-rimmed dinner plate which used to belong to your grandmother makes you think of the moon. Write a poem about the moon, or a story about a colony on the moon, or a fantasy about the moon’s pull on a witch’s spells.
Maybe the blue lamp is the same color of the ocean on a rainy morning. It makes you think of a secret at a beach house, a romance on an island, or a pirate shipwreck in Boston Harbor.
You get the idea.
Write that story (poem, vignette, journal entry, etc.) without the focus piece ever being mentioned in it.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Easy: Write something (a poem, a short story, a scene, etc.) using your object of choice, coupled with some of the questions outlined above (or more of your own!) Make certain that item is the focus of the piece.
- Challenging: Start with a focus object, but transform it into a solid idea. Write something which was inspired by your focus piece.
Good luck!
Friday, January 25th, 2013  I’ve probably mentioned this before: the main character in my work-in-progress is a finder. You can tell her about things you’ve lost, and she can help you find them…with a little bit of help from the universe and a little ritual she performs.
And in Blood Soup, the lead character depends on her nurse — a midwife and a witch — who ‘rolls the bones’ to determine the gender of the unborn child.
Through time and across tribes, clans and peoples we’ve had scryers and seers to whom we can turn for answers. Today, people read their horoscopes, visit palm readers, and deal tarot cards.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Develop a character who has regular appointments with a seer (a palm reader, a gypsy, a tarot card reader). Why does she have regular appointments? What answers does he seek?
- Write a believable dialogue between two people where one begins with the question, “What’s your sign?”
- Write a scene where a skeptic is forced to confront his prejudices when something everything a seer has told him has come to pass.
- Write a poem with the opening line, “The fortune teller said…”
- Write about something that happened in your former life.
- Write about rolling the bones, or scattering runes.
- Write about a lucky charm that brought bad luck.
- Write about the last dream you remember having. Afterward, find an a book or internet resource on dream interpretation and write about what it means.
Good luck!
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The image of the hand comes from the book The Woman Beautiful, page 308, by Ella Adelia Fletcher. 1901. Work is currently in the public domain since the copyright has expired.
Friday, August 31st, 2012 
Dichotomy – a division between two contradictory parts.
I took this picture out the car window one night last week after leaving a restaurant. (The Husband of Awesome™ was driving.)
When I first saw him, his robes were flapping in the wind. I’m sorry the camera didn’t catch that.
I love the idea of a man — any man — driving a Pink Barbie Scooter. He’s either entirely sure of himself as a man — or he just doesn’t give a crap what other people think. Maybe both. Or maybe he’s in some desperate situation. The fact that his florescent-orange turban clashes here, is icing on the cake.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a story, poem or essay about the man pictured above. Where is he going in such a hurry? Is he on his sister’s scooter?
- Think of another dichotomy you’ve seen — or make one up — and write about that.
Good luck!
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Writers - Maryland Writer's Assn.
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