Monday Motivation - Spectacular Simplicity - My 100th Blog Post!

When my husband, Jack, handed me the comics and pointed out “Monty” from a couple of weeks ago, he said, “Here’s you and your writer’s block.” Okay, but it really isn’t that bad! However, I did get a chuckle out of the comic.

Of course, the humor is really in the irony. Monty is looking around for inspiration for his future screenplay masterpiece, when behind him a very interesting situation is taking place. He looks out the window and sees a taco vendor stepping in a puddle of slosh. Isn’t it really a matter of genre though?

Monty may be missing a chance to write a science fiction thriller about an android changing his head! Is he a robot spy putting on a new disguise? There are lots of questions to answer there. On the other hand, he writes about the guy he sees through the window.

Monty Comic Strip, March 16, 2014 on GoComics.com

The beauty of stories or even memories can be found in the simplest things. I wrote about finding writing prompts in a snowflake back in December. I might have a blind spot to something seemingly amazing, but what if I see something as simple as a disheveled young woman stepping into a puddle, wearing boots that look too big? I may write something like this: Amanda didn’t care as the water sloshed up over her feet. She wiggled her toes in the dry warmth of the cast off boots she found in the dumpster. Even better, there was room for socks if they were giving them away at the homeless shelter. But if she went back there, she might run into him again. She wasn’t ready for the way his piercing blue eyes studied her from across the dark, crowded soup kitchen.

It’s not the most literary piece of writing, but you get the point. I’ve introduced a protagonist and set her in a difficult situation and planted questions. What seems small and unexciting can turn into an interesting story. The limit is only in the writer’s imagination. 

Take a few minutes to watch the simple or spectacular. Write a paragraph of your thoughts. What are some ways you recommend finding new or different ideas to write about?

This week I’m celebrating my 100^th blog post! Follow or leave a comment or both, each for a chance to win a $15 Amazon gift card. Follow and/or leave your comment by Sunday, April 13^th and leave your email addy in the form of name[at]domain[dot]com to qualify for the drawing.

Monday Motivation - Three Rs

Three Rs:

Read, Relax & Refuel

Perhaps it was the first picture book your mom read to you, an old leather bound version of The Secret Garden you found at your grandma’s or a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe you borrowed from the library which sparked your desire to write. Every fiction writer has fallen in love with real hard copy books while growing up. From the scent of fresh ink and paper in a brand new book to the softness of well-worn pages and the musty scent of being on a shelf somewhere for a long time, books speak to our longing.

The stories within help us to fall in love with words again, the power they have to create pictures in our imaginations and take us away from the pressures or boredom of daily life. To pick up a good book and read it for an hour can be like a mini-vacation.

There are days when we are discouraged or stuck, when we might even sit and stare at a prewritten outline and find every word we write a chore. While we might able to force ourselves to produce words for a deadline, there are times when we might feel empty and need to put fuel in the tank of imagination and emotion before we can write.

One day a few weeks ago, I was at the local post office, which is around the corner from the public library. So often I’ve looked up books I wanted for research online, only to reserve them and pick them up quickly to be time efficient. That day I decided to give myself the luxury of looking around the library for the fun of it, picking up books to look at . . . just because.

I may have spent only an hour and a half there, but the time relaxing and reading and soaking in the atmosphere of being around books filled me up again with new ideas, more creativity and a renewed desire to handle real books! Yes, I must confess, that I have a Kindle app on my Google pad and it’s wonderful for taking with me and for reading at night, so as not to disturb my light sleeping husband. Stopping to peruse e-book volumes and downloading new books may have the same effect as going to the library. However, that special time at the library helped me remember how I first fell in love with words and stories and books. 

When I still had children at home, taking the time to treat myself to a mocha or a caramel latte at a cafe, while writing in a notebook often gave me the time off I needed. Or I might take a book with me to read. This gave me the chance to refuel as well.  I have often felt that I can’t or shouldn’t take the time to read, relax and refuel.

The reality is that if we don’t take that time, even occasionally, the emotional energy we need to write isn’t there. Taking those needed times out can help you to become a more productive writer when you get back to your laptop.

 

What helps you to relax and refuel for your writing? Please share.

Writing Prompt: He carried the bag of garbage into the alley. Sure he was being followed, he turned and found . . . .

Write a few paragraphs and enjoy the fun of it, incorporating as many senses as you can.

Monday Motivations - Writing Prompt

Find a Writing Prompt in a Snowflake!

The snowflake images posted here are microphotographs taken by Wilson Bentley, aka “The Snowflake Man,” taken many years ago. He began perfecting his method of photographing individual snowflakes as a teen in 1885. He was the first to discover that each snowflake was an original in its design and left behind 5,381 images of them!

It’s amazing how God gave us the wonderful gift of creativity, too. Each writer has his or her own original stories to tell, even if they write about the same thing! As the snow swirls and gently collects, against the backdrop of evergreens in my backyard, I thought, what a perfect writing prompt: SNOWFLAKES! 

What do they make you think of? Childhood, when you caught the fresh, icy crystals on your tongue? Christmas time? Driving in a snowstorm? Or would you just write about its crystalline elegance? The challenge is to take five or ten minutes of free writing about what these beautiful little creations make you think of!

Please leave a comment or follow the blog for a chance to win our Christmas gift basket this month! It will be filled with coffee, tea, chocolate, books and other fun things. You have until Dec. 23^rd to enter!

(Images from Wikimedia Commons)

Monday Motivation - Think about what you see . . .

Monday Motivation - Think about what you see . . .

Well, I told you I would reveal the secret location of last week’s writing prompt photo this Monday. I took the picture next to the historic site of Tom Walker’s Grist Mill, now known as the Parshallville Cider Mill, at the millpond. Parshallville is a little town tucked between Hartland and Fenton, Michigan. If you blink, you might miss it! Here’s another photo I took, looking in the other direction the same day. 

Stories can spring from what may seem the most mundane things. I picked up a catalog I’d received from L.L. Bean the other day. On the cover, a couple sat on the back end of a pick up truck in an idyllic autumn scene. With a lake and evergreen trees in the background, as well as crisp brown leaves around their feet, they looked like the perfect couple to star in a contemporary romance novel. I started to think what conflict could come into play to start things out right.

What if they were being watched and an SUV speeds into view. The intruders kidnap the guy at gunpoint and knock the woman out. But why? What had he been involved in? What did he know? Was he in the witness protection program? And how would she ever find him again? Voila! My imagination was off and running with the beginning of a romantic suspense novel. (Either that, or  I've been watching too many Castle episodes lately.) I’m going to keep that catalog cover with a few lines about my ideas, tucked away for possible future use. Sparking the imagination is always good
exercise for the creative side of the brain!

Writers: Your challenge this week is to keep an eye out for pictures that inspire your creativity. Write down your ideas. Save the pictures.

Has a picture ever inspired you to write a story? Please share your thoughts about this week’s post or about creative inspiration in general. Or follow to be entered in this week’s drawing for a chance to win a paperback edition of Brave New Century, which includes my debut novella, The Pocket Watch, and a package of assorted Lindt Lindor Truffles.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

MONDAY MOTIVATION

The Write Prompt

From last week’s writing prompt: the last car.

The last car I had was a green Aerostar. Call it the Mom-mobile or as we sometimes referred to the car as the green bomber, which we “bombed” around town in. It was my first vehicle with a cup holder, albeit, a not very good one. Any sharp turn would send a large cup careening onto the floor mat, invariable dousing all in its path with liquid contents. Not a good thing if it was pop or a mocha, more tolerable if it was just water. That minivan saw several trips up north and one trip east, including Gettysburg. It went from containing baby seats to carrying young men, who learned to drive behind its steering wheel.

When I use a writing prompt, I usually like to include as many senses as I possible, but the above piece turned into more of a quick visual history of what went on inside my last car. However, that’s the fun thing about writing prompts. You can interpret them any way you like! The last car could be the last car you drove in, rode in, the last one your grandma bought or the last car of a train, also known as a caboose. There isn’t necessarily a right way. The prompt is just there to get you going. 

I found an interesting post on the Tweetspeak blog, a resource for writers, which likened finding writing prompts to a method of reading and responding. Isn’t that essentially what we do as writers? As we read books or articles, we often think of what our response would be to the words we’ve just taken in. The world around us is filled with writing prompts as we take in sights, hear sounds, smell scents and odors or taste the savory and sweet. The prompts surround us. We just need to take the initiative and write about them!

What’s your favorite way to find writing prompts?

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MONDAY MOTIVATION

Life and Scene Scraps

Our lives, no matter how long or how short are made up of pieces. We may relate each part of it specific events, which divide the timelines of our lifetimes. Like scenes in a story, they could also be likened to pieces of a quilt, sewn together by threads of events, relationships and places and times. Depending on the pattern, quilts are made up colorful scraps of fabric, which people have saved or chosen carefully to match.  Some scraps vary in color, others in shade, size or shape. But there’s an order the sewer uses to put them together.

Such is the life of a story, especially that of your main character(s), for the duration of your novel manuscript. While it’s easy to look at writing as linear, since that’s how we have to deal with time, there are other ways to look at your manuscript. If you’re stuck at a certain point in your story, look at your outline. Is there another section of your story you would like to write about? Is there a scene you’ve been thinking about, a place your character wants to go?

We can’t jump ahead like that in life and in a perfectionist mindset this almost feels like cheating—what? How can I write out of order? For the seat of the pants writer, this may seem even harder, but this can also help build the world of your story as you explore those scenes that have planted themselves in your mind, for future use and to build your roadmap. For the outliner, it’s easier to think about what point on your timeline has been niggling at your brain.

If you go ahead and work with what is going on in your imagination, it can help fuel your creativity and give direction for that earlier part in your story, where you were stuck. After all, what your character is doing will help build a foundation for his future. In real life, only the Lord knows what’s coming. However, the imagination can put together an original story with the scraps of scenes from anywhere in the life of your character, just as the sewer uses different scraps of fabric to craft a beautiful quilt.

Writing prompt, pulled from Mom’s sugar bowl: the last car