Brainstorming Week Twelve, the last

• So is it one person alone or is the “home office” at the dining table? Probably the latter.
• The entire play could be a microcosm of a single day.
• Blah. I kind of hate this.
• Not a microcosm. I don’t know. I keep trying to figure out the play’s punchline and I hate all of them. He’s really just carving out “him time”? He’s uncomfortable with down time?
• What’s a completely different direction you could go with this?
• Poem? God no.
• Kind of a “how to” guide? Ah ha. There it is. “How to Burn a Candle at Both Ends.” Let’s try that...

Brainstorming Week Twelve, continued

• DO NOT MAKE THIS STORY ABOUT A WRITER. Too easy. No one cares.
• What are some other professions that you have to “earn” your way into while making ends meet doing something else?
• Photographer, visual artist, online business owner, entrepreneur, musician, screenwriting (SCREENWRITERS ARE ALSO WRITERS!; you fool)...
• Musician as main character would work well on stage. Hmm.
• Entrepreneur could be interesting too. Like a scene from Glengarry Glen Ross except one person alone in their home office.
• Probably that’s more interesting than the struggling musician.

Brainstorming Week Twelve

• Someone is exhausted, clearly. Mentally and physically.
• They needed to accomplish something specific by a certain date?
• Succeeding in (or committing to) this has come at some cost.
• Workaholism?
• Procrastination?
• OCD?
• The costs of ambition.
• That THING that won’t ever let you be content with a normal life.
• What is that thing? Where does it come from?
• When can you stop chasing it?
• Can you ever?
• You eventually succeed because you make it your life’s work; you never relent.
• But what kind of life is that?
• And when you do finally succeed, how will you continue without the need for urgency?
• Will the work still be vital to you when it’s banal?
• “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Does success?
• Once the work isn’t everything, how will you learn balance?
• Maybe this is a story about someone who unknowingly (or knowingly) self-sabotages so that the chase is always the single most urgent thing—in this way, they will never have to contend with themselves.

Week Twelve: When I decided to burn the candle at both ends...

 

Well, I have no idea what to do with this, but it turns out to be an eerily relevant prompt for me right now!

Thank you for sticking with the blog through my haitus (and if you didn't, well... screw you). I was neck deep in the research and writing of a nonfiction book for Hallmark. I've done a few of these before (here's one; they presently go from 40 to 70) but never when I also had a full-time job, a part-time job, a girlfriend, and a blog.

"Roasting the candle" would perhaps be an apt description of the experience. But I survived! The rough draft is with my editor, I gave my two-week notice at my part-time job, and now I'm yours all yours. (My girlfriend may have some claim... I will check and then get back to you.) 

I'm still buzzing from the surprise of one of my short plays being chosen for this summer's Hovey Summer Shorts Festival. I was truly overwhelmed by the response I got from Week Five's story, but this felt like I must really be on to something with the blog.

And so I'm going to start making it a priority not only to churn through one of these prompts every week, but also to be constantly revising and submitting the work as we go. Stay tuned...!

But for now, we return to the blank page. What to write?

Spring 2001

With Fall 2000 at my back and my winter break survived, I was more than ready to throw myself back into my life at Emerson. By this point I was, I believe, majoring in Writing, Literature, and Publishing (this is a more employable way of saying "Creative Writing") and still had some prerequisites to chew through: 

• Fundamentals of Speech Communication
• Intro to Creative Writing: Fiction
• History of the U.S. Constitution and History of the Bible
• Minds and Machines

...but I finally got to take a fiction writing class! My workshop instructor was Alden Jones, who was in her second semester at Emerson, but clearly knew her stuff. We focused at first on short experiments like writing with all five senses and trying to craft a story with literal dialogue (complete with the "ums" and "likes" that pepper actual speech), and I felt like a fraud every single day, but persevered. Looking back, I credit this class with being the most influential to my malleable writerly brain. It was work, but the good kind.

History of the U.S. Constitution and History of the Bible were also influential, but mostly for their teacher: the Reverend John Coffee, who was an institution at Emerson College for 35 years. Many considered taking a class with him to be a prequisite for graduation, he was that popular. I'll talk more about him in future posts.

But for now, we continue on to Week Twelve...

Week Seven: Live on Stage!

Just a quick post to let y'all know that a revised version of Week Seven's short play will be appearing in this year's Hovey Summer Shorts Festival! [Here's an article about last year's show.] 

As I wrote in Week Seven's reflections, growing up a bit has helped my writing quite a lot. Being accepted into a festival such as this was my holy grail toward the end of college, but in truth I wasn't ready. At that time, writing was about the end result, not the process. Hence the procrastination. Hence the reluctance to start something new when the last thing I wrote didn't earn the accolates I craved.

Now it's all (okay, mostly all) about the process. Which is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Huge thanks to everyone who read and enjoyed Week Seven or any of these weekly challenges—your continued interest is the reason I received the exciting email I did this morning.

The Unwritten Word turns one year old today!

Of course there are 52 weeks in a year, not 11, but who's counting? (Well, besides me. And now you.)

Some first-year stats:

Best month: August 2012, with 531 unique visitors and 1,249 total page views

Average unique visitors per month: 185

Average page views per month: 718

Most "Liked" post: How to Honor Your Absent Father

Post most often discovered via search engine: Week Six: In which novella = "picture book" and psyche = "basement" (I think it has something to do with the graphic I used... fear of the basement? basement cat? That's the only thing I can think of. I'm also going to tag this post "basement cat" and see what happens.)

Honorable mention: I get at least 2–3 clicks a month from various Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic forums and websites. Someone who called him/herself "unwrittenword" used to be pretty active in that community, and so people mistakenly come here looking for his/her stories. For the record, I adore that show, and hope any and all of you wayward clickers find something herein you also enjoy. Perhaps a dark tale of a baddass heroine and how she got her start?

Thanks so much to everyone who's visited, "Liked," commented upon, or otherwise enjoyed my little project. My writing discipline and confidence have come a long way in one year, and it wouldn't have happened without you.

Let's make Year Two awesome.

An expletive-infused adrenaline shot of writerly can-do from Chuck Wendig

I'm taking a quick break from my paid writing to share this with you:

Life’s getting in the way? I’m sorry, that’s how life works. Life is a series of obstructions — it’s speedbumps all the way down. You’re depressed? Get in line. You’re depressed. So’s that woman over there and she wrote 1000 words today, and yesterday, and the day before. You think I don’t deal with depression? Of course I do. We writers are tailor-made for that. I know, I sound unsympathetic — trust me, it’s the opposite. I’m completely sympathetic. I’ve been there. I’m sometimes there still. It doesn’t change the cold, hard fact that all the power lies with you. In your brain. In your hands. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Did you want it to be easy? What fun is easy? Easy is a value of zero. And surely you want more than nothing? Writing makes you pay. In blood and tears and frustration. You do it because you love it. Not because it’s a warm bed at your back but because it’s sharp stones under your feet spurring you forward.

[...]

Fuck it. Shut up! Write. You get your years and you get no more. These are your days. No Muse is going to breathe a hot sigh of inspiration up your hiney-hole. I’m not going to come to your house and crawl inside your skin and bind my bones to yours with the purpose of forcing you to crap out all your big bad story-words. Oh, you have writer’s block? Boo-hoo! Writer’s Block has as much power as you give it — it’s a Weeping Angel, so bind it to the earth with your gaze.

This is creation!

If you liked this, definitely read the whole thing here! I found it both funny and inspiring. PERHAPS YOU WILL TOO.

Winter break

So technically winter break is something like 12 to 14 weeks into the school year, but I have to take mine early (or late, I guess... it being February and not December; shut up!). 

I'm on deadline for a paid writing project, and so that needs my full writerly might at the moment. The weekly challenges will resume as soon as I turn that around. 

In the meantime, what a great opportunity for newer readers to catch up on the archive! 

Where it all began.

So, it turns out that writing is hard.

...Really hard.

The best thing I have yet written.

A revelation.

The longest (and most violent) thing I have yet written.

The easiest thing I have yet written and exactly how I wrote it.

And of course I'll continue to share inspiring/informative tidbits as well as any writing opportunies I stumble across on a semiregular basis. Stay tuned, and see you on the other side!

Reflections on Week Eleven

 

[Photo copyright gregcookland.com]

This one had the potential to overwhelm me with feelings of Oh God, all the research!, as in Week Two, but in just trying to get it down ("it" being "anything at all"), my own musings about what we owe to those who suffered so that we can be here today turned into a description of a pair of statues that stands in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston. 

I saw an opportunity to turn this into something compatible with a contest that intrigued me, so I created the "voicemail" framing device and blammo now it's a very short story.

I've been doing a lot of geneological research and considered going in that direction instead, but I'm not quite there yet. Someday, precious...

Anyway, read the completed story here! I'm planning to submit it by Sunday, so if you have thoughts now would be the time.