Friday, November 25th, 2011 This idea will work if you’re blocked, or if you want to write, but don’t have any idea what you want to say.
It can work with a short story, a novel or a poem; anything, in fact.
I believe I first heard this method from author Bruce Holland Rogers, though I can’t be 100% certain. (Bruce, if you’re listening, please set me straight.)
What to do:
Take a book off your shelf and crack it open to the first page, or the first page of a chapter, or a poem at random.
Read the sentence, then write one very similar to it, changing the nouns and verbs and setting, etc. Then move on to the second and third, or as many will help you as a jumping off point. Then, continue on your own.
So, for example, from Chapter 2 of Anne Ursu’s book, Shadow Thieves, the second chapter begins:
Charlotte was one month into the school year at Hartnett Prepatory School, and thus far the year had proved to be just like all other years, except more so.
I might write something like this:
Mark had been in the sanitarium for eight weeks now. And it wasn’t quite living up to the standard of nuthouses he’d formed in his mind. It was worse.
We could go on…
Anne’s opening paragraph (in C2) continues:
Eight of the other girls in her class, whose names all begin with A, had left for the summer as brunettes and had come back as blonds.
So I write:
Three of the others in his “we see dead people” ward, had been treated to brain stimulation therapy that left them near comatose, until their bodies seemed to heal the damage. (And then, they didn’t see their dead relatives anymore.)
Mark sighed, glad he’d seen the first two come back looking like zombies after their treatment. He never would have known how to act otherwise. The treatment left him giddy, feeling free, and his Uncle Bob sounded even more clear than before. And if he wasn’t mistaken, his dead sister, Melissa, had something really important to tell to him.
He simply had to act like the others, so the docs wouldn’t catch on. Soon, he’d be out of here, too.
Didn’t take me long to go off on a tangent, eh? And I took an interesting YA sentence, and waltzed off into something supernatural. It doesn’t matter what you start with, your brain will engage with what you want to write.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Take a book off the shelf and open it to the beginning, the beginning of a random chapter, or anywhere, if it’s a poetry book.
Read the first few lines to see if the content is interesting to you. (If not, choose another spot.)
Write the first line exactly as written, skip a few lines on your page, and then start your own writing.
See where it leads you!
Thursday, November 24th, 2011 
Once again I’m headed north for Thanksgiving.
Looking forward to turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing, and this fantastic vegetable medley that my aunt makes with Velveeta cheese.
(Yeah, I know it’s not real cheese, but it’s fabulous!)
I’m also looking forward to a tryptophan (and carb) induced torpor.
And seconds on those vegetables.
We’ll also probably have venison and sauerkraut and pies…many, many pies.
This year, I’ve candied jack-be-little pumpkins and carnival squash and made pudding (lots and lots of pudding…because, who knew cooked pudding wasn’t supposed to be boiled?)
I’m looking forward to complaining about work, and hearing everyone else complain, and getting advice about everything, and hauling out the family photo albums, and talking about Thanksgivings past. I’ll groan the loudest when Mom tells me she’s finished her Christmas shopping, and admit that I haven’t started yet.
(Except that’s not exactly true. I have: I’ve bought one gift for my sister. I’ll admit that, too.)
I’ll ask my Uncle how his fig tree did this year (he swore he was giving up on it, and maybe he has…) And I’ll tell them I’m experimenting with mine: trying to winter them over in my harsh climate just like my great-grandad Spina did, by roping them down to the ground and burying them until Spring.
The kids will fight. (Someone might get hurt.) The dog will bark. Loudly.
One or two will slip from the table to watch the game while the rest of us talk about ‘all that boring stuff.’
It’s the same recipe every year…and just like those vegetables, I can’t get enough.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
And thank you to everyone who reads my blog, and for all the wonderful comments. Thank you for the emails, and the advice when I’ve asked for help, and for reading my stories. You guys are the best!
Sunday, November 20th, 2011  I’m thinking about buying this ‘Expedit’ bookcase from Ikea.
(Since I had to take everything out of my office and do it over, I thought I’d treat myself to some new bookshelves.)
It won’t quite fit in my space, so I’ll probably wind up buying three of the single stacks which are five cubes high, and create a 3 x 5 cubed shelf by smooshing them together.
I have a short bookcase on another wall that I might replace with a taller bookcase from Ikea in the same line.
I like the cubes because I can use some of the space for things other than books, like photos or art.
On the box-opening front, I’ve opened about 20 boxes and put the items back in the closets they came out of. I’ve weeded out nearly four boxes of items to get rid of. (That’s 20% of my junk, for you statistics-minded people.)
I’m happy with 20% at this stage of the game. I knew it would be difficult to toss out a lot of the items in the closet because the bookcase in there contains mostly genealogical materials: binders full of census data, photos, city directories, cemetery and military information. There’s not much “junk” that could have been tossed.
Unfortunately, a few of the boxes for the closet area were my own…full of old family photos and letters which haven’t gotten into binders. I’m putting going through those boxes on my “to do” list for next year.
(Next year’s to-do list is starting to look REALLY ambitious.)
The big disappointment today is that when I was filing some of those boxed papers back into the file cabinet, I realized that the movers dented up my file cabinet. It’s really bad, too. I can’t open the third drawer…. I hope they’ll replace it.
So…what do you think of the shelves? Yea or nay?
Friday, November 18th, 2011  As part of the entire roof debacle, I had all the carpet replaced in the upstairs of the house. In order to carpet the closets, everything had to come up off the floor in each one.
Inside my closet, I found this brown, paper grocery bag.
I’ve no idea what’s inside it. The top’s turned down, and stapled, and I haven’t opened it. I’m having too much fun trying to decide what’s inside to peek right now.
(Incidentally, it’s not my style to store something like this. It sounds like a certain parent I know… On the other hand, I may have learned it from her. But, still, I’m usually good at labeling. I can’t believe I’m at fault.)
Here’s Your Prompt:
Tell me what’s in the bag.
Where did it come from? Who was it given to? What happens if the wrong person looks inside?
Is it a gift? A memory stored away out of sight? An embarrassing impulse buy?
Don’t just make a guess….write the background, then the story.
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 The Fire and Flood Company brought my furniture back today!
I’ve found the boxes with the laptop docking station, keyboard and large-screen monitor, as well as a few other desk items: speakers, telephone, electric pencil sharpener.
::: EXCITED!! :::
I can’t wait to get back to working in my space. Working at the kitchen table since September has been a real bummer. Distracting, too. I’m hoping that getting back to my own space will be freeing, creatively.
This is what the front half of my office looks like right now:
The thing I’m amazed at: the last box I looked at was numbered “70.”
Really?
And I packed 12 additional boxes from my doll cabinet. (I wouldn’t let them take those away for fear of something getting damaged or lost.)
So that means I’ve got at least 82 boxes of junk in just two rooms of my house.
I’m hoping that a great many of these boxes are books…because if they’re not, I’ve got a ton of stuff that has no place being here.
I’ve already told the Husband of Awesome™ that I anticipate that at least a third (I hope more) of what’s in these boxes is not going back on the shelves.
I believe this means parting with a great many books, and possibly some (published) manuscripts that have been lying around. I’ve been advised to scan them and toss the originals.
 Here’s a picture of my double closets. Note the filing cabinet in one. I have a bookshelf in the other closet. I love the option of putting furniture in closets. It makes the space so much more useable.
Notice the non-brown boxes, devoid of pink labels? Those are my own. They’re numbered, too, but not in any scheme I can figure out. And, now that I’m looking, they don’t appear to be counted in the 70 (82).
Now, there’s a mystery I’m going to have to solve. The Secret Math Junkie™ inside of me is starting to wonder: How many total boxes? How many brown ones? How many are the 3 cubic feet version? How many are the smaller? How many contain books? How many contain paper? Etc.
It might take me a few weeks to get through it all, but in the end, you’ll have your report. 🙂
In the meantime, I find myself already with a plethora of packing supplies on hand. Anyone need any bubble wrap?
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