Month: September 2013

October 2013 Writing Prompts

London-20130928-00384Today is rainy, damp and dreary–and a perfect day for me to hunker down with the laptop and get some writing and editing done. Hope you are having a writerly day, and if you need some inspiration, here are your writing prompts for October.

1. Start a story with
• a character eating slowly
• a character cheering
• a character pushing something

2. Try one of these opening sentences:

• Yellow leaves crackled underfoot.
• Ben pulled the brim of his hat further down over his eyes.
• The cave was dark, but at least it was dry.
• The last thing Helen needed now was a crying little brother.
• “Storm’s coming.”

3. See if these snatches of dialogue spark a scene or story.

“We need to find shelter.”
“Yes, I’d figured that out.”

“I can’t take another step.”
“I know. I’m tired, too.”
“You don’t understand. I really can’t take another step.”

“Whose car is that?”
“Hal’s, I think. Why?”
“I’ve seen it before.”
“Oh. Where?”
“I’m not sure you want to know.”

4. Think of a story that might go with one of these story titles:

Rider Wrong, In the Mirror, Homecoming, Tow Away Zone, Drive By, The Last Train.

5. Use one, some or all of these words to inspire a story or poem:

  • car, leaf, blue, and, glass, chain
  • plate, stick, chair, day, ring, wall

Autumn and Accountability

Hope you’ve been Touch of Autumnenjoying a great start to autumn. We’ve had a long run of sunny days and cold nights and are starting to see the colours change in the trees. Lovely. This is my favourite time of year. There’s just something about the angle of the sun that feels right to me. I know that it’s the same angle in the spring, but spring doesn’t come with crunchy leaves and flocks of starlings and fresh apples.

The writing has been muddling along. Not every day, but bits and pieces here and there to make me feel like I’m making progress. I’ve signed up for Kristi Holl’s accountability challenge again and am committed to writing first thing in the morning for 25 days in October. Since, two days a week, I’m up before 6 AM to take my son to band and then get myself to college ready to teach an 8 o’clock class, you can see that this definitely will be a challenge. But, I have so much on my writing plate that I’m considering starting tomorrow just to get a full month of progress underway. I’ll let you know how that goes.

I had a very quiet house last week when both my son and my husband were away. I also realized that absolute silence isn’t my best working environment. I’m on the hunt for some new music to accompany my writing time. I’m really enjoying the soundtrack to Life of Pi. Instrumental music works best for my brain. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Hope you are having a creative week!

Next Week Will Be Better

Well, life decided to hand me a surprise last week. While driving along a busy and fast-moving street, the hood of my car opened and smashed into my windscreen. Fortunately, I was in the curb lane, so I could pull over quickly, while praying I wouldn’t get hit from behind by a driver surprised to see a stationary car in his lane. I was fine–but didn’t stop shaking for two hours.

This beach is going to be in a story that I’m writing.

If you’ve been through something like this, you’ll know that, the day after the event, you feel weak and unfocussed and have a brain full of nasty ‘what-ifs.’ The one that stuck in my brain was that my husband and I had traded cars the day before, so he could have the newer car for a 90-minute, nighttime drive on major highways. What if this had happened to him on the highway? Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to have a good imagination.

Until Tuesday evening and Wednesday got lifted out of my normal week, I was really enjoying working through my writing list. I had used Kristi Holl’s idea of writing down a list of 20-minute writing tasks (see previous post), and came up with a pretty good list that would help me move forward on the 3 (non-billable) projects I have underway. I finally got back at it again on Friday. It has been a great motivator for me, and as projects move along, I know I’ll be adding more to the list. I really recommend giving the idea a try. I had hoped to report a lot more on the writing front, but that’s what life handed me last week. Next week can only be better, right? Hope you have a great, creative week ahead!

Learning My Lesson–Again!

Week One of Classes: I survived. The students survived. And I’m sure we all went home on Friday night relieved that the first week was over and feeling a lot better about next Monday morning.

And the writing, Heather? Okay. Not so good there. I completely lost track of the mindset that would have helped me do some writing last week. I forgot that, in order to get any writing done when I’m busy, I have to stop thinking about writing a story, but instead think about writing in smaller pieces. Sadly, I sit down thinking that I really need to get that story written, and then I freeze because I don’t have the time or the ability or the energy to concentrate through such a complicated process. I can type, but I certainly can’t create.

Today, I finally came in for a landing and remembered the lesson I’d learned before about all this, and now, I’m ready to face another busy week that will include writing on terms I can cope with. The lesson is in this quote from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird:

“I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.”

I don’t have the time to write the story, but I can write a small part of it–one scene, one moment, one character description, one brainstorming page of scribbles to work through a plot point. I can research something, or journal to clear my head. All good. All doable. If I remember the one-inch picture frame.

I’m IMG_1563going to reread this blog by Kristi Holl, too. “Chop! Chop! Writing in 20 Minute Slices.” If you’re having trouble feeling like a writer when life gets crazy, you might want to read it, too.

Hope you have a great week and that you find the time you need, even if only  a few minutes at a time, to feel like a writer.

September 2013 Writing Prompts

IMG-20130709-00210Back-to-school mode has hit our house, though I deliberately left my school prep at home for the weekend, having plowed through many hours of it last week. I have new binders and dividers and white board markers, and, even now, I wish I could justify buying new crayons and construction paper, too. Those were a big part of going back to school when I was a child. And the crayons had to be Crayola and not Peacock because I never thought I got dark enough colours from the Peacock crayons. Pencil crayons had to be Laurentian–same reason.

The first day of school always feels like my New Year’s Day. For me, this is when new goals are set and resolutions made: edit one book; create a new edition of another, publish a third, and, by October 25th, finish 8 short stories for an anthology that I’m co-writing. Lots on my plate–and I’m looking forward to all of it! Do you set goals at one particular time of year or do you reevaluate and set new goals as the year goes a long–or a combination of both! Whichever you choose, do you find that setting goals is useful? How do you keep your focus on reaching your goals? I find that calendars and blocking out writing time and making a lot of lists are methods that I need to get to the finish line. Oh, and a healthy dose of forgiveness when things go pear-shaped and I need to regroup. After all, if we can’t be kind to ourselves …?

Here are some writing prompts to play with this September. If you’re still working on your writing goals for 2013, maybe one of these prompts will help.

Use one, some, or all of these words in a story or poem: blue, jar, post, mirror, glow. Or try these: door, sliver, label, dawn, clasp.

Here are some opening lines you might try.

  • Where’s Ralph?
  • Yesterday I would never have guessed that this could be true
  • The sword felt heavy in her hand.
  • Flight was second nature to him.
  • My best friend is a ghost.
  • My mother always said that it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission

Maybe these lines of dialogue will inspire a scene:

  • We have to go.
  • But I like it here.
  • And I like staying alive.
  • Wilson has the answer.
  • Are you sure?
  • Yes. And I’m not the only one. That’s why we need to get him out of here now.

Here are some story titles you can play with–Playing Unsafe, Nightmare Island, The Goblin’s Revenge, River of Sighs, The Final Race, The Grove, Wendy’s Wish.

Have fun!

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