writing tip: description…

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Great tip: Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Toon: toonpool.com

Doing?  It’s almost 10 pm here,  I can hear crickets outside, feel a warm breeze across my shoulders, and hear the clacking of the blind string against the window sill.  I can see the distant flash of light, but hear no thunder. The ceiling fan is going, and my pillow is awfully inviting.   But, I’m a little uneasy.

A little known Inky fact – when it’s warm like this, I usually have nightmares.

So the questions this evening are:  Will it rain, or no?  Should I go to sleep, or no? And finally, should I pull the wine out of the fridge, and have a go at it before bed?

returned…

It is your destiny to return to the world.

Quote: Rick Riordan
Image: Thefotoartist

Inky: And I have, returned that is.   Much seafood, sunshine, fresh air, blue waters, and lively discussions later.  I feel refreshed.   Not sure about that destiny part, though.

Although it is raining.  Suppose to all week…

I reckon that’s destiny’s way of saying, ‘I let you play, now you need to sit your butt down and work.’

stay loose…

Toon: Charles Schultz

Inky:  It’s Saturday, my lovelies,  of a holiday weekend.  I’m going out, and a bit of advice,  don’t wait up.  I’ll be back at some point before Tuesday.   So…  See ya later alligator? Bye bye butterfly? How’s this?  Be sweet parakeet!

I know. I know.  Just leave.

I’m out the door, dinosaur!

Doing?  Grabbing a backpack, keys,  a bevy of sandwiches, a thermos of hot coffee and heading out the door.

 

all days are equal…

 

Although I understand that all days are equal with 24 hours each, most of us agree that Friday is the longest day of the week and Sunday the shortest!

Observation: DS Mixell
Image: hiveminer

Did you know?  In the 1930’s the US was very close to adopting a 32 hour work week, but the US Government decided instead to follow other countries who were instilling 40 hour work weeks.   That guy?  The one who persuaded our folk to make that rather momentous decision?  I’d like to meet him.   Why?  So I can kick him in both shins!

Doing? listening to Pandora Radio – Lights by Journey – drinking coffee, enjoying the part of each day that is just mine with the exception of today.    Today, I’m sharing with you.

The sun is already up and golden.  The porch swing is creaking as I push it back and forth with one foot.  The other is crooked beneath me, as I lean back and draw deep of the breeze coming through the yard from offshore.   Somewhere an owl is singing a lullabye, and the displaced cats who call the abandoned house next door home, are beginning to slink out from under the fence eyeing me in unrealistic hope.  Not now.   This is my time.

The fire trucks from the nearby station are waking, and moving out for their morning ritual.  Soon bells, whistles and siren tests will sound signaling my moment is over and I will have to head in to shower.  But for right this second, a bee is buzzing lazily near my roses and the warmth of my coffee mug is filling my hand.   It is still my time.

writing tip: plot

Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic.

So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers, body, blood, and heart do.

Teacher: Ray Bradbury
Photo: found at free-movie-downloads

Doing?  Today is Thursday. I have a major report due by 10 AM.  Said report is due weekly on the same day at the same time.  Do I have it ready?  No.   So suffice to say, I am the perfect embodiment of creative scrambling at the moment.  All those footprints in the snow, those in the above picture?  Are mine.

from the inside…

Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.

Truism: Audre Lorde
Image: Pxleyes.com

Doing?  Just settling at my desk, one hand clutching a steaming cup of coffee, the other a resting place for my chin as I watch today’s bevy of hamsters mumbling about revolt as they take their places on the various rusty computer wheels.

Me?  I’m sipping that coffee and wishing so freaking hard that I had called out sick today as I watch a hamster tumble to the desktop, pick itself up and waddle back to it’s place.

<sighs> I am so over this adult thing.

cure?

Nothing’s a better cure for writer’s block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

Cure: Don Roff
Image: Lepher

writing tip: that perfect time…

If you are waiting for that perfect moment to sit down and write the novel you know you have in you, here are three bits of advice you should pay heed to:

1 – Writing is a High-Resistance Activity –  If you are waiting for when the forces are with you to begin your novel you should know there is never going to be a perfect time to write.   Writing take mental, and emotional energy it is a thinking process and there are going to be a lot of things that feel so much easier than writing.

2 – Writing Requires Concentration & Privacy –   Not only contending with finding the time, location turns out to be as important.   A place where you can concentrate and focus is right up there with timing.

3 – Writing is important but not urgent.  To every one but you.  Even if no one else thinks so your writing is important.   It’s part of who you are, happiest when you are writing, miserable when you are not.

Stop waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect place.  Make a commitment to find that time in each day to write.

Writing Coach: Ali Hale
Toon: Charles Schultz

writing prompt 17.5.19

Snake pulled out a silk hankerchief and wiped the droplets of blood from his face.

“…bu… but… you’re the bad guy?”

Stuffing the piece of cloth in his pocket, the soiled knife in his boot he crooked a smile at the small boy shaking in sorrow next to the body of what had been their hero.  “The universe is a gambler, kid” he straightened tugging his coat lapels closed, “a pair of dice, a dog’s throw, and today,” Snake stepped over the cooling body “the bad guy wins.”

please begin…

“Please [write] a story about a girl who gets away.”

I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. “Gets away from what, though?”

“From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn’t really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like ‘happy’ and ‘good’ will never find her.”

“You don’t want her to be happy and good?”

“I’m not sure what’s really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free.  Now.

Please begin.”

 

Plea: White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi
Image: found at Indulgy