Writing Prompt

The writing prompt challenge? Set a scene on the night as depicted by the picture. Free write for 10 minutes. The possibilities are endless. Just write. Share, too, if you'd like. :D Have fun.

Kicking and Screaming

...Alrighty then, it's a well known fact that I am Not a Plotter. Nope. Not me. Stymies me, mystifies me, but that doesn't mean I don't see the value in planning. But you wanna see me cross my eyes and get them stuck? Suggest I do an outline. I blame this on the librarian of the school where I attended 5th grade. Her idea of "what to do with the students during library time" was to direct us to get some weird little book and outline it for the duration of the class. Um, yeah. Gotta love those Roman numerals, et al. Joy, yippee, yay and rah! URG.

My planning involves doing a character list, because I know I do things like change the heroine's eye color from blue to hazel and green throughout the WIP. If I have it in a character list, then all I have to do, every single blessed time I wish to inform the reader of the heroine's eye color, is go look it up. Nifty, huh? I also like to keep track of family members, birthdays, secondaries, etc...To me, this constitutes Planning. (Yes, with a capital "P".).

But I'm always open to trying out New Things (or "New *To Me* Things"). Hence when I read about log lines on Edittorrent, I thought, "Yanno, this might be a good thing for us self-confessed Pansters." So I gave it a shot with my current WIP. Nifty neat-O! Next up, I'm going to try it out on with the WIP I intend to commence upon when I finish the current WIP. Oh, heckadoodle, who am I fooling? I've already started the next one somewhat. What I intend to do with the log lines is use them to help me Plot. Yes, I will be kicking and screaming the WHOLE way as I attempt to this manner of Planning, but I'm going to give it the old college try. What can it possibly hurt? I might even find it a very valuable tool.

I will now sit back, wait for Sherry to notice this particular blog post, and watch for her to faint. This should be purty durned good.

Nifty Linkie

So, why reinvent the wheel when one you've found while searching for how-to articles works just fine?

Check out Elisabeth Fairchild's Writing Tips on the topic of is your manuscript ready for submission. It's simple and straightforward, a good tool to keep in mind while revising.

What Should We Write...

So Sherry and I, in a fit of silliness, took a blogthings quiz to see what we should write.

Are you ready for the shocking, unexpected results?

Despite our differences in the way we tackle writing, we are both pleased to discover, thank you to blogthings, that we should be romance novelists.

You Should Be a Romance Novelist

You see the world as it should be, and this goes double for all matters of the heart. You can find the romance in any situation, and you would make a talented romance story writer... And while you may be a traditional romantic, you're just as likely to be drawn to quirky or dark love stories. As long as it deals with infatuation, heartbreak, and soulmates - you could write it.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Now that we've had this validated for ourselves, we should feel a tremendous relief, secure in the knowledge that we are indeed writing in the right genre for our personalities.

Perhaps next we'll take the same personality quiz, to find out if we are indeed two different people...or perhaps it will only prove our growing suspicions that we are the SAME person. Huh. If we are the same person, I wonder if half our hair is long and brown and the other half is short and red...and just perzactly how it's been halved...vertically, horizontally? Ack.

Happy Writing!

A Reminder...

Pull on those Big Girl Panties and just write.

Now That's a Good Book!

Isn't that a grand picture? Now, that's a good book. The kind of book every hopeful writer would like to pen.

This is my dream. That someday, women (and men) everywhere, will be propped up in their beds, like the graphic lady above, enthralled by a book I've written.

Mmmm...Now turn out the light and turn off the alarm. I want five more minutes with this dream. Thanks.

The "I DonWanna Blues", Part 2...

Some times pictures are good for getting the creative juices flowing when you're at a loss to write. What sorts of thoughts, feelings, ideas do these images invoke for you? I've written mine by each picture, where does your imagination take you?

Ooo, wouldn't a community barn dance be fun here? He's had his eye on her for a good long time, ever since her family arrived in town during their junior year in high school, ten years ago. After high school, she'd gone to some fancy eastern college, he'd gone to the state university on a football scholarship, now he's home between football seasons (he's gone pro), and she's back to open a badly needed medical clinic. She's not been able to get him out of her mind since high school, either, but she's too shy to approach a handsome, popular man like him. So they circle each other warily during the festive dance, until a common friend decides to take matters into his/her own hands and put on his/her matchmaker hat...


If she had to listen to one more word about how she was wasting her life by remaining unashamedly single, while all her mother's friends' daughters were marrying and reproducing like rabbits, she'd kill something. She had standards. She wasn't going to fall for the first guy who came around the bend who told her how pretty she was. No sirree, she wasn't that naive any longer. A good jog would take her mind of her mother, clear the cobwebs, maybe even work out other kinks she didn't wish to contemplate any more than she had to in her current frame of mind. Didn't help that her body agreed with her mother about needing a man. A deserted road, resplendently decorated by Mother Nature herself suit her just fine, all right. So who was that jogging down the road towards her, infringing upon her space, time and peace of mind? And why did he look familiar?

This place didn't look like it could possibly have been the site of the bloodiest one day battles of the Civil War. Some one hundred and fifty years later, there were some telltale signs, but the peacefulness belied the tragic history. He didn't stop to think about the horror the men who survived and died here witnessed, all that was on his mind was the girl he'd left at home, waiting for him to come home to her. She sure could bake an apple pie fit to make a man think he'd died and gone to heaven. What he'd give for the stingiest of slices of her pie right now. Just remembering the last time he'd had a piece made his mouth water. Oh, boy. Where had the mist come from? Who was this apple pie baker extraordinaire? What caused the gut wrenching regret that tugged on his heart and soul... And awe-some! He hadn't known there was a re-enactment scheduled for today! Something hot caught him in the middle, bringing tears to his eyes as he dropped to his knees. He clapped his hands over his stomach, shocked to encounter a warm, sticky liquid there. The cinnamon-y aroma of freshly baked apple pie overwhelmed him, and when he opened his eyes...

Ack. Now I think I've started three stories I could actually have fun writing. See how well that works? LOLOLOLOLOL.

This concludes our test of the "do a writing prompt" to counter the IDBs. Had this been an actual writing prompt session, I'd've actually named the characters. We now return you to your regularly scheduled IDBs.