Spark Word

Today's Spark Word is: FUZZY.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

Write about someone who is

using an unusual escape route.

Spark Word

Today's Spark Word is:

DAYBREAK.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

Write about someone

who is preparing

their favorite meal.

Use lots of flavor!

Spark Word

Today's Spark Word is:

GATHERED.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

Write about someone

who desperately wishes

to be somewhere else.

Immerse Yourself In Freewriting

Are you feeling blocked? Don't have the time or the energy or the inspiration to work on your novel right now? Do you feel guilty because you know you should be writing, but you just can't seem to commit to a large body of work?

Why not give Freewriting a go?

Freewriting is a contemporary and popular way of playing with words. You can use it to prepare for writing, to develop ideas, to build characters or setting, to work through blockages, to keep your mind engaged and your thoughts fluid, or simply to catch ideas when they're coming too fast to be taken down in a more structured form.

There are no rules for Freewriting. Freewriting, by nature, defies all rules and restrictions, allowing you to open up and let go onto the page. But there are a few guidelines to help push you in the right direction, should you choose to employ them.

1. Find a quiet place where you won't be interrupted for several minutes.

2. Clear your mind completely, and then write whatever comes into it. Try to write for a solid time period or page length. Say, 5 straight minutes or one whole page, for example.

3. Forget spelling, grammar, punctuation and logical development for now.

4. Don't organize your thoughts into sentences or paragraphs, just let the words run out onto the page.

5. Don't stop until you've reached your goal.


I'm going to go ahead and give this a go right here, right now as an example. The word that came into my head was yesterday's spark word: MURKY. Let's see where it takes me from there.

murky perky beef jerky rough and tumble mumble stumble trip and fall stall wall bricks and mortar she was shorter childhood friend with raven hair flew away came back again grin sin dark and twisted how i missed it glory days gone by i stop and sigh why i longed to feel the sun again summer days sunkissed hair shorts and tshirts barely there beaches full with passersby sunglint waters squinted eye burning sand beneath my feet friends that came and friends to meet soon i'm walking down the street rainy days and gathered clouds shrouds i lift my hands toward the skies rainsoaked happy wild and wise rise lies i realize keep them to yourself i don't want any otherwise butterflies dipping soaring feather wings songs to sing that carry them by bells that ring coins that jingle in my pocket oh happy day all my sins were washed away oh love devine give me a sign that I shall see you again someday another day when this whole world has passed away and I shall fly up to your side on feather wings my very own

Hey, that was really fun! :o)

Spark Word

Today's Spark Word is:

MURKY.

Spark Word

Today's Spark Word is:

NUZZLE.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

Write about someone who has had their privacy taken away.

Quoteworthy

Ink on paper
is as beautiful to me as
flowers on the mountains;
God composes,
why shouldn't we?
~Audra Foveo-Alba

Take A Breather

This morning, outside my window, the clear blue sky is filled with birdsong. The air is chilled, but the sun is proudly shining, warming my spirit and calling it to come out and play.

Today, find yourself a notebook and a window, or better yet, a dry patch of grass, and set your pen to paper as you set your spirit free.

Spark Words

Today's Spark Word is:

BUDDING.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

What is your innermost desire?

Write about someone whose secret wish comes true.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

Write about someone who loses their winning lottery ticket.

Spark Words

Today's Spark Word is:

RUSH.

Pretty Little Puppets

I came across an article yesterday that I found poignant and I wanted to share some excerpts. It's called "Infuse Characters With Sincere Emotion" by Faith Baldwin, from the March 2008 edition of The Writer magazine.

If the reader, literally or figuratively, can laugh or cry with the people in a story; if he can put himself in their places -- however different their type-script situations; if he can say, "That's what I would have said or done under the circumstances"; if he can leap from page to page in a fever of anxiety to see what happens, good ending or bad; and if he lays the magazine or book aside with the feeling of having lived, for a little while, a life like his own, or a life such as his might have been or might yet be, or a totally unknown life which still holds for him the sense of validity, then you've written a good story.

The touchstone is, do you believe it, as you write?

You have to believe it, you know, or no one else will. The souped-up, the dressed-up, the overwritten, the superior attitude of the godlike writer moving pretty little puppets around a pretty little stage, against a fine backgroud, is just no good.

The great books, if you will take the time to read them again, have valid emotions; they are peopled with realities; they move you, sometimes against your will, and they will endure. Any book or story worth the paper it's printed on must have genuine emotion, communicated by the writer to the character and by the character to the reader. It must have, as well as technique, a spiritual content.

Write from knowledge; learn your techniques, but remember that the great quality is not learned even by experience in writing, for it is the quality of understanding and compassion, and of objectivity as well as subjectivity, so that you can see your characters up and down and around and inside and out, and know what makes them tick ... no matter who they are or what they do. Learn to know them -- by heart.

Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

Start with this opening line:

She touched the little box in her pocket and smiled.

Spark Words

Today's Spark Word is:

WANDERLUST.

It was a dark and story night...

One of the keys to writing a great book is to have a great opening line. Here is a small sampling of my personal faves:

*It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton Paul Clifford

*There once was a boy by the name of Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

C.S. Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

*They met -- Colin and Julie --not very long before they were born.

Mildred Cram Forever

*It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

*One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.

O. Henry The Gift of the Magi

*It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

George Orwell 1984

*The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Samuel Beckett Murphy

*It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

Paul Auster City of Glass

*We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

Louise Erdrich Tracks

*I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle

What are some of your favorites?