Brainstorming Week Seven

Spent this sunny Saturday morning brainstorming different ways to use this week's writing challenge. 

My local Starbucks is usually packed to the gills with writerlies and artsy types, but it turns out that there's seating a-plenty around 9am.

(There's also a lot of conversation to tune out. Earbuds are key.)

I think my original intent for the idea, when I wrote it, was to be an absurd take on the sort of documentary profiles we were watching at that time in Dr. Corea's psychology class. I just thought it would be really funny to have the voiceover narration casually declare that today was the day he kills this man. (Let us not speculate on my mental state at the time... it was college and I probably hadn't slept much.)

So I started thinking about whether it had to be a voiceover, or should it be the actual interviewer who declares this? (In which case the interviewee would have to react...) And then I thought about whether it had to be a documentary—it could just be an interview. An interview for a job, perhaps? And then I started thinking of the worst job I ever had, and how the interview for it would have gone if the guy I worked for had presented himself then as he would later act toward me...

It may continue to evolve in the writing of it, but so far, so promising!

Loving the craft when we tire of the writing

A short feel-good piece from Writer... Interrupted:

Let’s face it, every writer everywhere has known his (her) fair share of tough times. The words won’t come, the story dries up, or we grow weary from the process.

It doesn’t mean we no longer love what we do. It does mean that we can still love the craft of writing, but be exhausted from effort expended. Especially when life happens.

Read the rest here!

Probably everyone suffers from this, but I especially have a hard time distinguishing between a bad writing day and my overall attitude about my writerly aspirations—if it truly is my passion, then I really ought to, like, enjoy it, right? Always?

Something this blog is teaching me is that you have to trust in the process. If you can't write, write about why you can't write. Whatever you have to do to keep the pen moving, even if the words are unusable. The story will come.

Week Seven: "...and today, I am going to kill him."

So this one's kinda weird.

I think it was an idea I had for a comedic short film. A documentary or interview that's actually just a deranged person hunting down someone else, but treating it as if he's doing something very normal.

As you may have surmised by now, my interests were then and still are today all over the map. Short plays, short stories, prose poems, nonfiction, children's books, and now a short film... Pick a format! Well, it's all part of the process of discovery. (Or something.)

Anyway, uncertain how to dig in to this one. Could be that senseless murder seems less funny to me now that I'm older. 

With luck, maybe I can find a fun/unexpected angle to make it a little less... this...

The writerly identity

From the Republic of Brown, a great essay from Kamala Nair about the long haul between "writer" and "author":

The Girl in the Garden was not a business venture or a job, it was a project of pure passion, a quest upon whose outcome my core sense of identity depended. I sometimes felt, on monotonous days spent photocopying and fetching coffee for my boss, or as I stood crammed in a crowded subway car with my cheek crushed against the glass, that if I didn’t have my book, I wouldn’t know who I was. My sentiments may have been extreme, but they were also necessary. That flickering filament of hope in my art and in myself, that confidence in the face of the doubts and disappointments of the world around me, allowed me to continue.

Read the rest here.

Kamala is my hero—she's a fantastic writer and she works hard. (I previously excerpted one of her blog entries here, too.)

Reflections on Week Six

[Read the completed story here!]

It's kind of illuminating that the only way I'm able to break these silly prompts into actual stories is to stretch the meaning far enough that it becomes an almost new idea. There's a reason (apart from a near-chronic case of procrastination) that I didn't turn any of these ideas into stories when I first jotted them down nearly 12 years ago.

(...12 years...?! Eff.)

Anyway, if they didn't quite work for me then, the inertia of not having touched these ideas in over a decade makes all of them seem that much more stale. So really how else could this work? I understand now that part of the process of each week's challenge is that I have to make the idea fresh and exciting again—otherwise, this is just homework. (And I have always excelled at not doing homework.)

So that's a useful revelation.

For this particular challenge, I thought I would attempt science fiction or fantasy, but that felt like too much of an investment right now. I do eventually want to write a series of sci-fi/fantasy-ish books, but I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet.

(Possibly I'm just building it up so much that I'll never start. I've also been known to do this...)

Anyway, this challenge involved some brainstorming, a bit of freewriting, some procrastination, and finally an hour of freewriting one day (mopey rambling about why video games are a lot more fun than writing—I will spare you the agony of this) followed by outlining, writing, and revision over several hours the next day.

Overly observant readers will notice that I named the siblings after the siblings in Week Two's challenge. I just liked the names, okay? And I've always thought that Blake would be an awesome girl's name. Blake knows what's up. She's extremely likeable, sure, but you do not mess with Blake.

For the longest time I struggled with the bones of the story—single child or sibling? is the boy or girl older? does the older sibling trick the younger into going down into the basement? or accidentally lock him/her down there? Knowing that it was going to be a children's picture book with 16 pages of text forced me to narrow the scope of the story to its bare essentials, which is good for me, since I tend to get verbose.

The final result is cute, I think, and has a moment of two that makes me smile, but I don't think it's an instant classic. Let me know what you think in the comments. Don't be shy—constructive criticism is always welcome!

Week Six: In which novella = "picture book" and psyche = "basement"

 

Week Six's completed challenge can be found here!

As I mentioned in a previous post, this prompt eventually germinated into something a bit different than the original idea I had for it. 

Basically, I ended up writing a children's picture book that would, I think, scare the piss out of anyone under the age of, let's say, eight. 

Anyone with kids care to give it a try...? (Mwah ha ha.)

Will post reflections as well as Week Seven's challenge soon!

Freewriting: An endorsement

I've always been a hungry consumer of advice about how to write but a reluctant practicioner of the same. Reading other writers' accounts of how they write was like writing except much, much easier. Those books are like candy to me: sweet, easy, and kind of addictive. (Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing remain my favorites, but I recently read a Kindle Single by Ann Patchett called The Getaway Car that was very good as well—I must have highlighed 60% of it.)

Anyway, most writers recommend freewriting as a way to get into your story, but until Week Five's challenge I had never done it. The thought of writing without a plan as to what I'm writing is terrifying for some reason, even though everyone and their third cousin agrees that it's so very productive.

Well, I thought Week Five turned out really well, so I finally strong-armed myself into trying this again for Week Six:

A journey into the psyche...

Could be a few things. Literal journey: kids' book or YA novel?

Or an exploratory essay/story about some aspect of the mind as it impacts one's life over the years: fear of the basement.

Could combine the two: child is terrified of basement, confronts colorful fears, finally embraces imagination. 

Translation: For Week Six I had been considering two different approaches—an actual journey where the threats/rewards of the tangled psyche are literal (at least to the character), or a more real life exploration of how a certain fear/predjudice carries forward through the years.

And then I realized, not ten minutes into this exercise, that these ideas could be one: a children's book where the character must, metaphorically and literally, confront his or her fear of the basement. 

(Though it is interesting that my "freewriting" is still, basically, planning. It takes time to unclench, okay?)

So this is the plan. I hope to have it finished by Sunday if not sooner!

Written? Kitten!

If you're someone who really needs small, measurable goals to get your writing written, you might find something like 750 Words or Write or Die to be a lifesaver. Then again, neither of these feature adorable, fluffy kittens as incentive to keep writing.

Enter Written? Kitten!

Yes. You write, and then every 100, 200, 500, or 1000 words (you can select which), you will be rewarded with a random image of a cute kitten.

I am, in fact, composing this post within Written? Kitten! right now. I am somewhat skeptical of the effectiveness of this. I mean, kittens are adorable, but do

...

Fantasyitis!

From Nathan Bransford:

Fantasy Overload:

“We are hearty warriors! Let us share a hearty chuckle! Ha ha ha!” Pentrarch said.
There was a glint in Lentwendon’s eye as he took a swill from a mighty cistern of ale. He bellowed a deep laugh and clapped his friend on the back.
“I say,” Pentrarch said, “What is it about fantasy novels that lends itself to such stilted, manly camaraderie? Do we not have normal interactions?”
“We do not,” Lentwendon said, his voice suddenly grave. “We do not. We prefer to express our friendship with great noise and clapping of shoulders and brood quietly but stoically when matters turn serious. It is the same with our women.”
“Oh yes,” Pentrarch said “Our women are quietly supportive that we must do battle in far off lands, and they always have weary, knowing eyes. In truth they are the strong ones.”
Lentwendon nodded as he stared quietly at his cistern. “And ale, always ale.”

Check out the others here!

I get what he's going for here, but surely I'm not the only one who would happily read this book?

Brainstorming Week Six, continued

In addition to the fantasy-collides-with-real-life trope, I also love stories where a ragtag band of friends/people thrown together by circumstance have to find a way to survive and even thrive in their new reality: the Harry Potter series, the Belgariad series, The Chronicles of Prydain, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Chronicles of Narnia (again)... probably scads of others I can't remember at the moment. The Dragonlance Chronicles. Oh—and the Lord of the Rings, of course.

What I love about these is how the adventure not only shapes the characters but also their relationships with one another. I would gleefully read these books/watch these shows for as long as the story continued, so long as the saga maintains that same level of urgency and discovery.

How about you? Why do you enjoy these kinds of stories?