What a prompt will do...

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
***

If you’ve been to WVU or have taken f2k, you know that somewhere along the line, you’re going to run into a prompt. What is a prompt? Well a writing prompt is just that, it is used to get your muse flowing and start writing.

Some days, as writers, we get blocked for things to write about. Our story closet has been picked dry and so we need to dig into that storage bin and find something, ANYTHING to give our muse a lift.

Does an old smelly sock do it for you? No, What about a shoe? Aha an old shoe you haven’t worn in years. An old faithful shoe that has memories tied to it. Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere. What kind of memories? Good or bad? Oh I think I went digging and struck gold!

Do you realize there is a prompt waiting for you around every corner? Just walking out the door, the odor in the air can elicit a writing prompt, as well as the sights of a barren street or empty parking lot, slamming doors, bouncing balls on a basket ball court? All of these sights and sounds can trigger a writing prompt.

Julie likes to dish out the ‘Three Word’ prompts. Name three random things, tie those three things together in a story. It takes a little practice but sometimes you get some of the best unblocked writing ever. Why? Because you were not really thinking about writing, you subconsciously had those three things in your mind, you wrote about them and tied them all into a nice little ball of yarn and you shared it with your writing friends.

Some will look at you, (not knowing what the three things were) and think, “What is this story about?” A writer will give them a clear picture hopefully and they won’t have to ask that question.

Now some writing prompts are Picture Prompts. This is the one where you look at a picture and from what you see, you write a story. This one is tough because you have to dig into your memory pool and pull out some really creative writing. A picture is worth a thousand words, literally.

Then there is the Sentence Prompt. This is where a partial sentence is given and you finish it and spin it into a webfully woven tale. Take for example: “Clarice walked into the store and could not believe her eyes. What did she see?” Just something as simple as that can help you unblock the block and have you writing until your fingers pop off your hand.

As you journey down the writing road, always remember that there is a prompt that will bring in the shovel and start digging you out of the slump that you might be in. Don’t take writing for granted, use it to your advantage of being the healer that it is meant to be.

Quotation Saturday

 Luke 12: 7 But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.
***
FOCUS  ~

“To do two things at once is to do neither.”
~Publilius Syrus

“Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
~Buddha

“What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.”
~Alexander Graham Bell

    
CREATIVITY ~

“Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people’s lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.”
 ~Stephen R. Covey

“It is wonderful to be in on the creation of something, see it used, and then walk away and smile at it.”
~Lady Bird Johnson

VALUES ~

Who you are, what your values are, what you stand for...they are your anchor, your north star. You won't find them in a book. You'll find them in your soul.
~Anne M. Mulcahy


Values are where the hard stuff and the soft stuff come together.
~Robert Haas

I value your friendship, I treasure you heart. My values are high standard, never to part! ~Joni Zipp

 
WORDS ~

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
~ John Rushkin  (1819 - 1900)

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. ~Ernest Hemingway

Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth.
~Madeleine L'Engle

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones...

I’m always telling my writing students that if they can’t handle harsh feedback then they are in the wrong business.

As new writer’s you need to develop a thick skin towards criticism so that you can learn and grow. When someone says, “Oh this is perfect.” They are lying. You read it right, they are lying. No one is perfect and only when we realize we’re not perfect will we learn that we always have room for more growth and understanding.

Newer students to the writing world are the hardest people to critique. You need to put on kid gloves and pamper them so they don’t break and run for the hills crying, “I’ll never write again!” Why? Because you were told that you need work?

The new writer knows that he needs work that is why he is taking so many writing courses, buying every writing book on the market, and plowing away at writing, because he knows he needs writing techniques that he hasn’t acquired yet.

I like to think myself an old shoe at writing but I am always looking for a new technique. I’m always digging for a new way to tell a story, a refined way in displaying my work. BUT if someone says, this didn’t work for me, well BRAVO! You caught something in my writing that I didn’t see and I thank them kindly for heading me in the right direction.

I try to be tough in my feedback of new writer’s. Why? Because they need to be guided in the right direction and if I don’t tell them, someone else will and they will become the better writer because of the critique.

When I say ‘tough’ I don’t mean that I am verbally mean to them. I point out what didn’t work for me, I tell them what I saw wrong and head them into the right direction by pointing out what would work better.

I notice more in new writers that they like to ‘tell’ a story. Every sentence tells a story. And you may ask, “Isn’t that what writer’s do? Tell a story?” No, we don’t. We never merely tell a story, we show sentence by sentence the accumulation of words that convey a story. Through descriptive words, we are going to show you a story.

A librarian reading a book might be telling you a story but the author that wrote the book is SHOWING you a story. Believe me, the author behind every story has taken harsh and brutal criticism about his work before it ever made it to print.

Allow me to say this too, editor’s are not going to be sweet and cajoling in their response to your work. They are going to take a knife and slice into your work like a side of beef. It is best for the both of you, author/editor that you form a bond, so that both are willing to compromise.

You may post your work to a hundred critique sites and each and every one will say something different. Not always what you like to hear, but with each critique it will be revised and perfected and ready for the editor. Then his/her knife will come down.

It’s the writer’s life and one that I love!

The Dark Side

The Dark Side of Writing will grab hold of you on the night you sit alone contemplating all there is to feed off of as you wriggle in fear and write...the as the dark side of creativity comes alive.

It will happen writers. You’ll be sitting there tapping on the keys when a dark cloud passes over your window. Falling from the cloud are the spirits from the past, drifting through the air like sheets of silk.They come tiptoeing across the field to peek into your window and before you know it, you find, you’re writing turns dark.

Well it won’t exactly happen like that but you will be writing a story in happy mode, and suddenly feel the pull of the dark side wanting to come out. You may want to write about vulgar adultery, or bloody murder, or a bank-robbing bandit. All of which you’ve never experienced before, but are willing to compromise for your readers sake.

We as writers often find ourselves writing what we know and oftentimes we need to step out of the box and write about things we would never in a million years do or say or try. Through our writing we can become the hero and the antagonist, the child or the dog. We’re writers so we can truly go places we’ve never gone before.

Writing through pure eyes is good but what kind of antagonist will you have? Have you ever seen a good bad guy? Sometimes the bad guy turns out to be a good guy in the end but those stories usually wind up boring and on the back of bookshelves or in some attic or worse yet in the dank basement being used to sop up moisture.

Haven’t you ever wanted to climb into a schizophrenic’s head, or an unstable killer on the loose? Have you ever dreamed of the ghosts that haunt those old Victorian mansions, Irish Castles?
Whatever the case may be, don’t be afraid to write about the bad things, the dark abyss that lingers in this world. Being a writer gives you the free blank page to bring some of the scariest, creepiest and soulless vile beings into existence.

I know of many writers that are afraid of crossing those boundaries of the different realms. They feel that those dark forces will lay claim to their soul or something. Don’t be afraid. Fear is the dark force that wants to grip you. If you don’t fear, you’ll be surprised at what comes out of your non-wicked mind.

Don’t tell me as a kid that you didn’t fantasize about space aliens, ghosts, space travel, or haunted houses. The bogeyman was a part of every child’s growing up phase. But as adult writers we can bring the bogeyman back to life.

Were you afraid of the dark? Maybe you feared walking alone in a park past midnight. Did you ever think these could be the seeds of a story brewing? Make mincemeat of all your fears through writing. Make Stephen King shiver in his boots! Watch Dean Koontz sleep with his light on at night!

Give the horror genre something to be proud of. Turn all your white light romantic fan fiction into the DARK. Let your inner evil loose on the writing world, just to see what you come up with.

Little writing exercises can help in this area. Your antagonist will thank you for it. *wink*wink*

Monday Funday Word day!
obfuscation - ob·fus·cate --
–verb (used with object), -cat·ed, -cat·ing.

1.to confuse, bewilder or stupefy
2.to make obscure or unclear:
3.to darken

turpitude - tur·pi·tude

1.vile, shameful, or base character; depravity
2.a vile or depraved act