Writing Prompts Wednesday – #1

For starters, I’ll be using two sources for my writing prompts:

Writer Igniter – this is a fantastic random generator that chooses Character, Situation, Prop, and Setting.

What If? – a book written by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter and published in 1990. It’s a book full of writing exercises I think you’ll enjoy.

This first prompt is from Writer Igniter

Apothecary – Character

Stands Up To A Bully – Situation

Filthy Shirt – Prop

Fishing Dock – Setting

Please post your own writing in the comments below as I’d love to see what you came up with.

Jean Paul didn’t much care for his job as an Apothecary when he had to leave his shop. He much preferred its quiet and orderly environs to the noise and chaos of the outside world. Still, once a month he ventured forth to the fishing docks of Himys Bay to deliver medicine to a very old sea captain who lived on one of the boats.

“Ho the ship!” Jean Paul called out to the boat even as he eyed the seagulls circling overhead.

Nasty buggers are just waiting to take a shite on me, he thought, covering his satchel of medicine as best he could.

“Ho the visitor!” came a muffled reply from the mess on the deck.

Jean Paul frowned.

“Captain Bilak?” he asked.

“Aye and who else might it be ye daft son of a he goat!” came the retort. “Come aboard and give me a hand!”

Jean Paul swallowed nervously even as he looked around for a way to board the boat. Captain Bilak was an old and well respected client whose wishes were carried out as best as could be done.

“Lily livered land lubber that one be!” came a laughing roar, and Jean Paul jumped before hunching his shoulders in shame.”Where ye be tryin to go eh Jean Paul?”

Jean Paul’s nerves jangled and turned to face the new speaker. The man wasn’t very big, but he was all muscle. He was also unkempt, always in a filthy shirt and pants. He was a drunk and a bully, and he looked in the mood to be both just then.

“I’m tending to my business Pierre, something you are not,” Jean Paul said, squaring his shoulders and tightening the strap on his satchel.

“What did you say to me!”Pierre roared, his blood shot eyes narrowing with anger.

“You heard me perfectly well though I’m sure your wits are befuddled by your drink. I’ll bid you good day,” the apothecary said.

The sober man turned and stepped over to the side of the boat where it was tied up to the dock. Peering over the side, he saw Captain Bilak was tangled in some rope and not looking his best.

“Ware that Pierre!” Captain Bilak called out to him.

Jean Paul half turned and ducked as Pierre swung a bottle at him.

“Now see here!” Jean Paul was scared of Pierre, but he was even more afraid of something happening to good Captain Bilak, a man of finer character than anyone Jean Paul knew. “Leave off or else!”

“Or else what?” Pierre sneered at him.

Before the smaller man could reply, Pierre rushed at him. Jean Paul grabbed up some fishing net and threw it at him. The drunk man swore and crashed about trying to get the net off of him. He ran headfirst into one ofthe mooring posts and knocked himself out cold.

Straightening his clothes, Jean Paul carefully boarded Captain Bilak’s boat and set the old man to rights once more.

“Well done young Jean Paul!” the old man said, smiling and patting his rescuer. “You finally stood up for yourself!”

“You needed help, and he wasn’t helping,” Jean Paul explained.”Here is your medicine.”

Making a wide berth around the loudly snoring Pierre, Jean Paul made his way back to his shop once again.

There you have it. A short scene using all of the elements of the prompt. 🙂

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 8

I didn’t do as well with today’s word count. Every word count is a chapter in my book by the way. At this point, I am developing the main part of the story. Today’s chapter isn’t one I’m completely happy with so, at the end of the event, I’ll be working on it until I am happy with it.

Today’s word count was 2,931. That brings my total word count to 31,286. This is the best year I’ve had since starting NaNoWriMo years ago! 🙂

I’ve been seeing people in the chats for the write-ins as well as the discord channel I host for my writing buddies talking about not”feeling it” about working on their projects. Some are very far behind, some not so far behind and some, burning out early.

I’ve been counseling not to stop writing; stop writing on your project. Just for today or just for a few minutes – whatever you need – just don’t stop writing. Writing every day needs to be a habit. It also doesn’t have to be project related. It could be a poem, song lyrics, a list of things you need to do – things of that nature. As long as you scribble something down every day, it’s a win-win situation.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and screwdriver!!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 6

Today was a good day to write! I got 3,881 words written in a little over an hour. I only work on my novel for an hour a day to keep from stressing out. Stress is bad for a writer and can cause us to write nothing but junk that we’ll have to waste time deleting later. My total is now up to 23,989 🙂

At 3pm Central Time, NaNoWriMo is hosting a virtual write-in using YouTube and Facebook Watch. I’ll be on YouTube. I’ll post an update on my writer’s page on Facebook tomorrow. I’m only posting there on a weekly basis so I don’t get distracted. There will be virtual write-in events tomorrow and Sunday as well. 🙂 I look forward to them to join in the conversations and to see if I can get a new idea or two. 🙂

I hope those of you who are participating along with me are meeting your goals or, at the least, are still enjoying the event! Drop me a comment below and let me know!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 5

Today was a really good day! I got 3,833 words done bring my total up to 20,108!! The general goal is 50,000 words, and my personal goal is 60,000. I see myself hitting both goals by the end of the month even with me being away from home for 12 hrs a day due to my new job starting on 16 Nov. It’s in a town 2 hours away from me, and I will commute until I can afford to move.

Ever since I began this event, I’ve been attending the virtual write-ins hosted by the staff of NaNoWriMo. As I have, I’ve noticed other videos about writing I hadn’t seen before. One video that reached out to me was done by two members of AutoCrit. AutoCrit is an online editing service with an app that has limited services for free. It’s like Grammarly in that regard but more geared towards novel writers than Grammarly is.

I watched the entire video and now, I want to watch more of the videos put out by them. Deciding to do NaNoWriMo this year has been beneficial to me thus far. I’ve found a couple of new writing resources that are greatly helping my writing now and will help on future projects.

Check out NaNoWriMo yourself! Also, check out AutoCrit to see how it can help your own writing.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 4

Today wasn’t as productive as the last couple of days have been. I did 3,668 words and brought my total up to about 16,200. This is far ahead of what the site has so I’m pretty pleased about it.

Thing is, I’m a bit worried I’m not filling the scenes out enough even though “telling” isn’t as good as “showing”. The way I set a scene right now is pretty minimal, and I’m not sure if I need to add more. I want to try to leave a lot to a reader’s imagination, but not leave them guessing. It’s a conundrum.

Good thing is, once the event is over, I can do more work and have a beta reader or two check things out before I move forward with my plans to publish.

I can say that despite my small issues with my own writing, I’m enjoying the event immensly. We have several virtual write-ins scheduled for Friday through Sunday coming up , and there are more for the rest of the weekends of this month. We kicked off with two webinars featuring staff of the NaNoWriMo organization as well as a couple of published authors. They were all fantastic, and I can’t wait for the next one!!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 3

I’m still going strong!! I added 3,721 words and brought my total up to just over 12,000 words!!

I just completed Chapter 3 of the novel, The Inbetween, and it’s coming along nicely. I am checking and double checking formatting to make sure every chapter, every line, matches. I am hoping for a better result the first time than I had with Crimson Knight.

I am writing between 8am and 9 am Central U.S. Time for now. When I start work, I’ll have to shift to late afternoon because of my day shift at work. I’m sure I can keep up the momentum, for the most part.

Right now, I’m doing some light beefing up and editing work on the chapters. As I go on, I may be adding more and changing more. It depends on how the story moves me. I am not even sure of the ending yet. lol

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll see you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 2

Today was another fantastic day!! I manged to get 4,800 words done!! Woot!!

At this rate, I’ll have the 50,000 word goal reached long before the end of the month. I’m actually aiming for 60,000 words myself. I’m confident I can hit that goal before the end of the month as well.

Now, I’m starting a new job which will keep me away from home for about 12 hours a day. I’m going to do my best not to let this keep me from writing on a daily basis. It’s a habit I desperately need to cultivate. Practice makes permanent, and I really need to keep practicing.

I plan to self publish the novel I’m working on too. It’s in its final stage so it won’t take much to do the final tweaking and get it published with the Kindle platform. Yes, I’m going to use Amazon again even though the book creator is a bit of a pain to work with. I need cover art before I do anything so I may go with someone else eventually, I don’t know yet. I need to focus on getting the novel done first.

I hope everyone has a great day and see you on the flipside; don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

30 Days of NaNoWriMo – Day 1

NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writer’s Month is an event held every November and goes on the entire month. The goal is to help writers reach the goal of their choice in one month‘s time. The default goal is a 50,000 word novel. Writers can choose to begin a new novel or work on the novel they’ve already begun. Writers can also choose to write a book of poetry, a group of short stories, or whatever else they want. There’s no real limit to what can be written as long as it’s completed by the end of November.

This year, I was going to use this event to help me finish Vice’s part of the story in Golden Knave, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, I’m finishing up the final draft for The Inbetween. I plan to have it published in December.

This is Day One of the event, and I’ve already written 4,026 words!! 🙂 I’m confident I’ll surpass the site goal of 50,000 words and hit my personal goal of 60,000 before the end of the month. If I hit it in time, I may reach for 75,000 words. We’ll see how it goes.

WRITERS!!! I encourage you to join this event!! It’s free, and there are tons of resources to help you reach your goal, even for newbies. Writing buddies are the best for support and encouragement, and this year, we’re using Discord to help with virtual write-ins and get-togethers!! Join me on NaNoWriMo!!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Golden Knave Update

I am up to 10 handwritten pages so far on Vice’s side of the story. I am planning to write another two pages in a bit. I have a new surge of energy on this project, and I’m not going to stop again until it’s complete this time! I have DIY MFA to thank for that!

For the next two weeks, I’m planning to write four pages a day on weekdays and six to eight pages on the weekend. If I do this successfully, I’ll work my way up to six pages during the week and ten on weekends. I have to make sure I can work this around my work schedule during the week. I don’t want to get stressed out and end up with a mess instead of a good story.

I am making changes since I began my second draft. I’ve come to realize I was afraid to write Vice’s side of the story. The first draft is more on Rajinstorm than on Vice, and Vice is the main character. I made the POV more from her than from him because I wasn’t comfortable writing him. I had created him, and it had taken me three times to get him to be happy with what I was doing with his personality and style. Now, I’m making a conscious effort to change the POV to him where it’s supposed to be. This means developing him further, letting him become more three dimensional like Kitya is. Writing from the female perspective is easy since I’m female. Writing from the male perspective is proving to be a bit harder.

Still, I think I’m off to a good start and will keep working on it. I’ll have to find at least one male beta reader to make sure Vice is believable, but I’m sure I’ll be able to when the time comes.

That’s it for now. I’ll post another update next week.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

DIY MFA Sprint

This was a two day event held this weekend. I did Day One after noon because I had errands to run in the morning. Today, I just finished. I wanted to get an early start because I have house cleaning to do, and I did’t want to be too tired to write. It’s happened before.

I used this sprint as a way to get back to working on Golden Knave. Vice’s story is still in the first draft stage, and I need to get a move on with it. I already missed my personal deadline of having the entire piece published by my birthday. My new goal is Christmas so I need to pull out the stops.

Encouragingly enough, the first three handwritten pages of the first draft have become eight handwritten pages in the second draft. 🙂 I feel really good about this, and I plan to do mini sprints every day to keep my momentum going.

During this event, I spent only an hour at a time at each session, and there were two sessions a day. I plan to do a one hour session every day of the week and at least two sessions of the same length on the weekends for the first two weeks. I’ll up my game from there once I see how well, or not, I’m doing. I don’t want to stress myself out and stop writing again.

Wish me luck, and I’ll see you on the flipside. Don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!