Friday, August 26th, 2011  Kids in my county go back to school on Tuesday. Others started back last week.
(I only realized that when the traffic got bad again on the way to work in the a.m….)
This summer just blew right by me.
I haven’t been fishing once. [That is a truly sad statement.]
In honor of this occasion of summer ending and school beginning, I figured we should have a back to school prompt (starting with the inevitable, groan inspiring … wait for it…)
Here’s Your Prompt:
Choose one or several items below to write about. Don’t just answer the question. Give some thought to the whys and wherefores. Write for 5, 10 or fifteen minutes. Or, write until you’re done. Hammer our a rough draft and leave it. Or, polish it up for publication. Turn these into memoir-type essays, letters to your family members, genealogical vignettes, or whatever you wish!
- What did you do on your summer vacation? (Okay, now you can groan.)
- Best. Vacation. Ever. (This one is pure fiction. If you could do anything, go anywhere, what would it be?)
- Where did the summer go?
- If it were summer every day…
- August is the only month of the year without a (U.S.-observed) holiday. Make one up! How would you celebrate it?
- I’m looking forward to __________ this school year…
- Five things I like about school.
- How I’m going to make this the best school year ever!
- What is the most significant memory (bad or good!) from each year of elementary school, high school, university or technical school?
Friday, August 19th, 2011  I was emptying out the pockets of my favorite jacket this week before I’d tossed it into the washer when I pulled out a note I’d apparently written to myself.
I say “apparently” because I have no recollection of making the note. I also have no idea what it means.
16,491.
Why would I jot down a number, without context, on a scrap of paper napkin? Didn’t this note deserve an entire napkin? This number must have been important…and yet, it’s meaningless now. I can’t even begin to think about how much time has passed since I wrote it.
What could it have meant?
All kinds of possibilities flood my mind: it’s a pin number for a bank account, it’s the amount of money in my bank account, it’s how much money I owe someone…
(Why does my mind think of money, just because it’s a number?)
Maybe it’s a measurement: in feet, or miles, or minutes. What if it’s the number of something my character desperately needs to complete her quest? Get on with his life? End her journey?
What if my character never figures this out?
Here’s Your Prompt:
Go dig through your pockets looking for cryptic notes!
I realize that won’t work for everyone, so here are some alternatives:
- Open the book nearest to your dominant hand, turn to a random page, and write down a few words, or perhaps the sentence, smack in the middle of the page.
- Do the same with a magazine, a newspaper, or some junk mail from today’s pile.
- Pick up a dictionary or thesaurus, turn to any page, close your eyes and point to a word. Do this five or six times to come up with a completely random phrase.
- If you’re feeling plucky, see if you can find a scribbled note tossed in a trash can at the local coffee shop or deli. (A list of someone else’s errands or grocery wants might be fascinating!)
- Do the same from a co-worker’s trash can… don’t get caught!
- This could work: Explain the task, then ask someone to write the (brief) cryptic note for you.
Now that you’ve got your note…
Write a story or poem (or song, etc.)…
The story could be about someone who finds a cryptic note (in a pocket, on the ground, in a sibling’s locked diary…), or about the ideas engendered by the words (or numbers…)
Maybe the note is a code. Maybe someone else put the note in the protagonist’s pocket. Maybe the note was written by an Alzheimer’s patient to her son, and found by him after her last will and testament is read.
The possibilities are endless….
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If you enjoy these prompts, please let me know by telling me so in the comments. Feel free to share a snippet or two of what you come up with, as well!
Friday, August 5th, 2011  Hot summer days always make me think of cooling off in the ocean. I love racing through the shifting sand, and the sound of my slapping feet on the hard-packed grains by the water. That first dive over a rolling breaker into the ocean is the best.
I prefer the ocean over a swimming pool because it feels alive. The texture of the water is different, the smell, the sound. I especially love it on a windy day, when you can hear the blown grains of sand hissing as they slide over each other, propelled by the gusts.
I love writing by the ocean. It’s inspiring, even if what I’m writing has nothing to do with water or the beach. There’s just something about the atmosphere that sends my muse into overdrive.
It’s hot today, and I’m thinking about the ocean…but I know a lot of folks don’t get supercharged like I do about it. So, today’s prompt is about water. I’ve listed several ideas to get your started…
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about the ocean. Write about high tide, or low tide, or neap tide. Tell us about when the water reached your thighs, or your waist, or your neck. Write about something that washed up onto the shore.(Well, I had to at least list it, right?)
- Write about a river, a pool, a stream, a swamp. Write about river rocks, uneven footing, slipping into a deep hole, diving into the deep end, learning to swim, the smell of the bog, or swamp people.
- Write about being in a safe harbor, in hot water, a mile above sea level, or something that won’t hold water.
- Write about singing in the rain, taking a bath, or rubber-de-duckies.
- What if you found you could suddenly hold your breath for long periods of time underwater? What if you found you could breath water?
- Perhaps you’re more inspired by quotations…
- “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” (From Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
- “As water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.” (From The Old Testament: 2 Samuel Chapter xiv. Verse 14.)
- “For water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow…” (From Of the Training of Children, Plutarch)
- “Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.” (From Lamia. Part ii., John Keats)
Friday, July 29th, 2011  I was driving into town this afternoon, Husband of Awesome™ at the wheel of the vehicle, when a huge bird swooped down low and fast across the front of the pickup and landed on a fence post.
“Pullover!” I yelled, reaching for the camera, thinking I would have a prime shot at a hawk.
I was even more elated to see it was Barred Owl (Strix varia). Who cares if it’s the most common owl in the US? How often do you see a crepuscular* animal in broad daylight? And sitting so calmly it appeared to want to have it’s picture taken?
To my utter disappointment, I’d forgotten the camera.
Missed opportunity.
Still, the bird sat waiting. We watched until another car drove by, scaring it from its perch.
I’ve been kicking myself all afternoon. What a great shot that would have been!
Here’s Your Prompt:
Write about a missed opportunity. If you’re writing memoir, this could be a personal experience. If you’re writing fiction, it could be about someone else’s personal experience, or completely made up.
What kind of opportunity was it? A new job? Travel? Love? A big fish? How meaningful to you is this lost thing? Something you’ve wanted all your life? Something that’s only recently made it onto your bucket list? Or was it simply a momentary deal?
How was the opportunity presented? Were you schmoozing at a party? In a meeting at work? Walking down the street? Set the scene to enhance the tension.
What were the stakes? Maybe the opportunity was missed because an alternative seemed better at the time…was their anxiety associated with this choice? Calmness? Logic? Maybe, the opportunity was complete serendipity.
Has a missed opportunity turned out to be for the better? Maybe you turned down your dream job to stay close to home, and the company folded six months later. Perhaps you declined a free week at the beach and Hurricane Agnes blew in for 10 days. Maybe turning down the offer of a lifetime saved your life.
How so?
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* Crepuscular animals hunt only at dawn and dusk.
(I’ve been dying to use that word since I learned it. I did not miss this opportunity!)
I did, however, miss the opportunity with the bird. The photo above was taken by Frank Kovalchek from Anchorage, Alaska. See Mr. Kovalchek’s flicker stream for more great photos.
Friday, July 22nd, 2011  I’ve been in training for the last three days – two in Virginia, and one in Washington, DC, for my day job. It’s geek stuff – and I’m about geeked out.
Between the travel and the all-day tech classes, I am wiped out. (And I’ve got one more day of training tomorrow in DC…)
I can’t wait to slip between the sheets tonight.
Sleep is very much on my mind right now.
And yet, so much goes on when we sleep: we dream, we kick, we toss and turn. We speak. We sleep walk. There”s so much activity! It’s a wonder we get any rest at all.
Here’s Your Prompt: Today, write about sleeping. Write about your sleep habits, or your character’s sleep habits. Write about when you can’t sleep: what triggers your insomnia? How do solve the problem? Write about the dream realm: what kind of place is it? Can you get there even if you’re not asleep?
Friday, July 15th, 2011  I once punched a horse right on the nose.
I don’t remember this incident at all. But my Mom tells me it happened, and she wouldn’t lie.
The story goes that we were out…somewhere… (I can’t even remember what she’s told me several times), probably a petting zoo or something like that. It was hot, and I was wearing a straw hat in deference to the sun. Out of nowhere, a horse walked up to me and started eating my hat.
So, I punched it. Hard. And got my hat back.
There were some repercussions. I don’t remember these either.
But this hole in my memory is a pretty interesting thing. What I don’t know, I can imagine. And this non-knowledge is free for me to take and build upon. It’s wonderful fodder for a story or poem or a single scene in a larger work.
Thinking about what we don’t know exercises the brain in a way completely different than what we’re often admonished to do. (Write what you know, eh?)
Consider this: how about not remembering something that’s absent in your life? I don’t remember ever having a family reunion. I don’t remember being in the “in” crowd in high school. I don’t remember ever being chased by zombies…
This is just another way to exercise your brain and consider something from an unfamiliar angle.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Write or type, “I Don’t Remember…” at the top of a sheet of paper and start writing. You must fill the page. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to do it: 20 minutes or all day. The point is to not just come up with a single item, but to think hard about the situation and include all the details.
If you get stuck, write the phrase, “I don’t remember” and continue to do so until your brain catches up. It’s important to write this phrase, rather than think it over and over.
It doesn’t matter if what you write about is a real memory or a non-memory. It could even be the memory of one of your characters.
Do you see a pattern emerging from your thoughts? Do you recognize old themes that permeate your writing? Have you found something new?
Friday, July 8th, 2011 He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. ~ Sigmund Freud
Have you ever been in a room full of people and watched one person bend toward another and whisper something secret ?
(Maybe it wasn’t a secret at all. Maybe one friend was telling another very quietly that she had broccoli stuck in her teeth from lunch. Well, it certainly didn’t look that way! They have secrets, those two!)
There’s something about even the perception of a secret that charges the atmosphere in a room.
Who’s got the secret? What is it? Who will it affect? What does it mean to me?
As soon as some bit of information is perceived as “secret,” it becomes more desirous to know.
People act differently when they have a secret: they’re guarded and their body language mimics this closed fortress, arms crossed across the chest, legs crossed over knees or shoulders hunched in protection against the middle. Some folks are smug, wearing that “cat that ate the canary” smile and lording it over others. Some act frightened of what they know. Some are just full of energy, bursting to tell someone else what they’ve learned.
Secrets are a wonderful plot device. They can be uncovered, confessed, or created. They can be non-existent, with that fact known to all but the major characters. They can be a thing of joy, of horror, of shame, or any other feeling. They can control.
Here’s Your Prompt: Write about a secret. It can be one of yours, or one of your characters. It could be something pragmatic: the secret to making the tastiest fried chicken, or, the secret to brushing your teeth well.
Write about the secret you: the person you are when no one’s around. The person you secretly want to be. The person you are, but no one realizes…
Thursday, July 7th, 2011 I have an ambitious list of resolutions for 2011, if you recall.
So how am I doing? As usual, I’m happy with my progress on some goals and not so happy with my progress on others.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about epublishing and the state of ‘the writing business’ in general, and some of the goals I had in January don’t line up with where my current thinking is. I’m beginning to steer myself toward longer works, rather than shorter, and doggedly pursuing some of these items will take me further away from where I currently want to be.
With that in mind, I’ll probably strike a few of these goals off the list.
Here’s the nitty gritty:
- Write 302 out of 365 days in 2011.
Fail! Even if I write every single day for the rest of the year, I won’t hit this mark. Something tells me I should have aimed a little lower with this one. I haven’t updated my spreadsheet for the last week or so, so my numbers are a bit off. However, it looks like I might make about 80% if I write nearly every day for the rest of the year.
Triple last year’s fiction output.
On target. Even with not hitting the daily writing mark I’ve set, I’ve managed to double last year’s fiction goal. This irritates me a bit because if I were writing nearly every day like I want to, I’d really see the numbers climbing.
Finish the two short stories that have plagued me since the beginning of 2010….or trunk them.
Fail! Or maybe, Complete!! I wrote this goal poorly. Can you tell? I haven’t even looked at these two stories, so I will probably trunk them. That means Complete! Right? (This is the first goal I’m going to discard.)
Finish the first draft of my current work-in-progress novel.
- On Target. I’ve written 25,000 additional words since January.
Write and submit 6 non-fiction articles.
- Fail! I’ve written 0 articles this year, although three I wrote last year were finally published. (I could probably still meet this goal, but it doesn’t line up with my “longer works” goals. So, I’ll probably abandon this goal, too, before the year is out.)
Write at least three blog posts per week for a total of 156 blog posts for 2011.
Fifty-two of the above mentioned blog posts must be writing prompts.
On Target: I’ve created a Writing Prompt every Friday since the beginning of the year.
Make 30 fiction submissions this year, only 1/3 (or less!) of which can be flash or micro-fiction.
Fail! (But not by much.) I’ve only submitted 10 stories this year. I can probably make this up by the end of the year, provided I have some additional short fiction finished…and, well, we know where my goals lie, so I’m not sure I can do this.
Finish reading Sol Stein’s ‘How to Grow a Novel.’
- COMPLETE!! Finally! Excellent book, though a tad dated for today’s market. Expect a full review sometime “soon.”
Send 25 query letters to agents.
- I’m not hopeful about this. Early on I decided that the anticipated novel I was going to shop needed one more ‘read through’ and I found a section I want to completely re-write, so I haven’t moved on this. It’s late in the novel, so there’s an opportunity for me to send out the queries and fix the section before some agent (or editor) asks for a full, but I really want it “all done” before I send anything out.
So…that’s it for me. How about you? If you’re over-exceeding your goals, will you be raising them? Are you abandoning any ill-made resolutions, like I am? Inquiring minds want to know!
Friday, July 1st, 2011  Sometimes when we write, the words won’t come.
Or, they’re boring.
Or, they’re average, common or trite.
It could be the subject matter. Or that we’re trying to hard. Or we’re afraid to write the words.
It could also be a thousand other things. Unrelated to writing things. We’re tired. We’re fried from a long work week. The commute sucked. It’s too noisy. We just can’t concentrate.
Many times, we’re dancing around the point.
Here’s Your Prompt:
When you’re stuck with your writing, and the words won’t come, just draw a line on the page (or skip a few lines on the screen) and write:
What I’m really trying to say is…
… and then write for 10 minutes about what’s really on your mind. It may or may not fix the scene or the poem or the passage you’re working on. But it may open avenues to other pieces. It might be the kernel of the next book or poem or essay you want to begin.
Or, it might be just getting something off your mind. It might clear the path for getting back to what you were doing.
It might be exactly what you want to write about.
Either way, it’s deeper thinking, food for thought….something to be considered when next you write again.
Friday, June 24th, 2011  I venture to say that I’m not the only woman whose little-girl dreams included getting married and moving into a castle.
(Though I was never into that pink, sugar-coated, cotton candy and ice cream Disneyfied version that always gets pimped to little girls.)
Show me dark stone masonry, moats and oubliettes, a crypt in the cellar (and a dungeon) and you’ve got my attention.
I still haven’t outgrown the idea.
I’ve whiled away endless hours on the internet looking at castles for sale (and castles for rent) searching for both inspiration, and, well, the perfect opportunity.
It’s amazing how many castles are actually affordable. What stops me is the whole ‘packing up and moving to another country’ thing. That’s too much hassle.
So, if I had my wish? Yeah, I’d move into a big scary castle on scads of acreage. I want cool stone floors, vaulted ceilings in the dining room, hidden staircases, secret passage ways, crypts to explore…I’d take a torch and my laptop and spend the afternoon writing. Now there’s some stimulating atmosphere!
My favorite room would be the huge, fully-equipped library: leather bound books ceiling to floor, large crackling fireplace, thick pile rugs covering the stone (and of course a tastefully designed technology center where I can surf the net and write…)
And at least one craggy turret of the castle must overlook the ocean, so that on breezy days I can throw open a lead-paned window to catch both the ocean breeze and the noise of the breakers hitting the shore. (This turret room will contain the second, fully-equipped library, etc. etc. because being surrounded by books while writing is simply euphoric.)
Here’s Your Prompt: What’s your dream home? Where’s it located? How would you trick it out? What’s your motivation for this location? This style? Would you decorate it yourself or call in a designer? Where would it be? Your home town? Where you currently reside? Or across the ocean on another continent?
If you’ve got the time, sketch your home and the surrounding property. Then, map the layout inside: add all the details that you can to illustrate your dreams.
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Writers - Maryland Writer's Assn.
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