Writing In Retirement Blog

It’s hard to believe that October is here. With all the storms, fires, and bad luck the country seems to be having, it is difficult to believe that soon Halloween will be here and after that November! Ah November – that means it will soon be NaNoWriMo time! Not familiar with NaNoWriMo? Well if you have ever thought about writing a book of novel length NaNoWriMo is for you. Everybody has a story, so why not try and write yours?

“National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.” The challenge was begun in 1999 in California. It was spearheaded by Chris Baty with 21 people and has grown to be a huge annual event all around the world with hundreds of thousands of participants. There have been many published novels that have come from this crazy sounding challenge.

I first participated in NaNoWriMo in 2009 and was pleased to actually have written 50,000 words – not exactly a novel, more like a soap opera with no end! However, I was hooked and have since tried each year to make that 50,000-word goal. My first book  The Peacock’s Tale was conceived during the 2011 NaNoWriMo. There were a few lean years and then in 2015 I again won the certificate for writing 50,000 words. I liked the novel but life’s little bumps slowed me down, so it took a while before I could whip it into shape, but having edited and re-edited the work now, I am seeking an agent for the novel tentatively titled The Baby’s Tale.

I have been thinking all October about what I would like to write about next. I have become excited about a character I featured in a short story I wrote recently for the Winter Garden Ink & Quill writing group. Time to set about deciding on the theme of the story as well as the plot.  Time to get brainstorming!

Won’t you give it a try? Skip on over to the National Novel Writing Month website and find out what it’s all about. Join me! I’d love to hear about your efforts.

It’s time again to write something new. You pull up a new document in WORD, and there it is – the dreaded blank page. There are times you gleefully look at that page and dive into writing because you have had the mother of all ideas and can’t wait to write about it. However at other times, you stare at the blank page and have no idea what to put on it, or you may have an idea but don’t know where to start. When that happens what do you do?

Well here are some helpful hints:

1. Brainstorm – now you can do this many ways; make lists, make a pro/con list, or just randomly write ideas. Your lists can focus on the plot, the characters, or even the setting. The idea is to get down as many ideas as you can.
2. Outline what you want to write.
3. Mindmap an idea. It is similar to brainstorming but in a more methodical way. (Here’s a bit of a tutorial on Mind mapping < http://www.mindmapping.com/ > )
4. Do a bit of research on the subject about which you are thinking.

Then there is the ‘seat of the pants’ way of dealing with a blank page – just start writing what’s on your mind. Once you have some words down on the page, you will be surprised how a story begins to form. You can always go back and edit away until the story has a beginning, a conflict, and an end. Or you can write a poem, like this:

Butterfly Ideas by Marie Staight

Thoughts like leaves float through my mind

Swinging down to the very depths

They soon are whisked away with the wind,

Leaving only flecks

That break apart and flutter away like butterflies

I reach out to catch

But they morph into lies.

 

I so want to catch those fellows

But they skitter away

Butterfly ideas of blue and yellow

I do not know why on this day

They do not land on my paper mellow

A big net I need to catch so they will stay.

 

Comments are welcome!

When I was a working person, I drove across town, twice a day, five days a week. It was a boring drive, especially when I was tired and just wanted to get home. It was forty-five minutes of trying to stay alert and focused – not on the day that was to come or that went by, but on the actual drive. Out of that boredom came a time when I devised a game that I have played ever since to keep my mind busy, awake and creative. It’s called the “License Game.”

I noticed that Florida license plates had at least three letters preceding the three numbers on the plate. This seems to be the case on many state automobile license plates. Sometimes the plates had three letters, two numbers, and another letter. There were many combinations of numbers and letters over the 50 state license plates I saw over the years.

While in a creative mood one day, I began to look at those three letters on the plates of the cars ahead of me: “CBT.” Hmm, I challenged myself to devise a sentence or phrase that would be a great story starter. Here are some ideas from that plate:

1. “Come back, Terry!”
2. “Catherine, beat Tony!”
3. Crawling by (the) tower…
4. Creepy, biting tarantulas …

I could go on, but you get the idea. I decided that if there was an “X” on the plate, one could either use a word beginning with “X” – like X-Ray or change it to “cross, crossing or crossed.” Thus “RXJ” could be “Ray’s X-ray journal …” or “Ray crossed (the) junkyard.” Sometimes the entire number/letter sequence was too tempting: CBT 29L became, “Crawling by (the) tower, (came) twenty-nine liberators.” As you see, I added a few words to help the sentence make sense.  Nonetheless, the challenge was to use only the letters/numbers on the plate and not add those extra words!

Sometimes the game was very easy, but at other times I would give up and seek out another plate to try. Some of the phrases or sentences were so good I would memorize them to write down later and use as prompts for writing stories or poems.

Here’s an example of  a story written from such a prompt: License Plate: CBT.

My First Love

“Come back, Terry. I was only kidding”. I yelled as Terry ran towards the cabin. “I promise, I didn’t see a snake.”

Her freckled face was as red as her hair as she turned on me, eyes blazing. Her voice was shaky and high-pitched as she said, “Don’t you ever kid about snakes! I am terrified of them.” She then began to hit me on my arm hard enough to make bruises. For a petite girl, she was strong!

“Stop!” I swung myself around, so her hardest blows hit me on the back. “Honest, I won’t do it again. I promise. Just stop!”

Her anger spent, she confronted me with her arms entwined in front of her. She was breathing hard. A look of terror still shadowed on her face. “I swear I will never talk to you again, if you ever do that again.” Her foot stomped on the ground three times in rhythm to her next words, “Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, I understand.” I realized then I had really made a mess of things. I had spotted Terry the very first time she climbed out of the Camp Tribune Bus. I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Thinking she would never want to talk to me, a gangly fourteen-year-old country boy, I figured I would do what I did with my older sister – tease her about all the indigent wildlife around here. First thing I said to her was to not stand under the trees as you had to watch out for the jumping spiders. Well, she took off and stood vibrating with fear, hugging herself, in the one open space that had no trees around it. It took two counselors to talk her into moving into her cabin. They glared at me for the remainder of the day for that stunt.

Over the next few days, I apologized repeatedly and tried hard to make amends for my prank about the spiders. Then today a whole group of us went down to the lake to kayak. Terry stood back as the counselor teamed everyone in two-man kayaks. I saw my chance and also waited until it was just the two of us left. Reluctantly, Terry stepped into the front of the kayak and listened as the counselor told her how to paddle. I loved to kayak, so I knew as the stronger person, I could paddle the kayak even without Terry’s help. It took us a few minutes to figure out how to paddle in unison, but once we got the rhythm going, we were the fastest tandem team on the lake. I could tell Terry was relaxing and enjoying the ride, by how her shoulders had fallen from her ears.

“Terry,” I said, “If you want to take a break I can paddle.”

“Okay, if you don’t mind…”

“No, I’m fine.” It slowed us down a little, but we were soon at the opposite shore. “Terry, we need to turn around. You need to paddle on the right while I reverse paddle back here.”

“Okay,” she replied.

Well, I guess I didn’t realize how much stronger I was because the kayak spun around in a circle about three times before we had control of it. Terry let out a scream when she thought the kayak was going to tip, but I quickly righted it. “It’s Okay,” I said. “I guess we need to practice that.”

“No, I think we should just paddle for the dock.” She said stiffly. I could see her sitting ramrod straight in front of me. The anger at me seemed to radiate off her. I think she thought I did that on purpose.

She didn’t say anything more as we smoothly paddled for the camp dock. I was fuming. What had I done wrong? Nothing. I had gotten us out of trouble. Why should she make me feel guilty for that?

We trudged back to the camp carrying our life vests and the paddles. That’s when I made the mistake of pointing out there was a snake on the side of the path. It was just the root of a tree, but in the dimness of the trees, it looked like a snake. Well, she took off like a scared deer. And I was accosted by her for that prank. I had bruises all over my arm from her beating on me.

Strangely, I had a funny, pleasant feeling in my stomach as she used me as a punching bag. It confused me that I thought she was so cute as she stood there, stomping her foot into the ground, her freckles shining on her face like stars in the night sky, as she told me off. At that very moment, I realized I really cared that she was angry with me. I wanted her to like me. I wanted to hold her and tell her it was alright. But I had blown the whole deal.

I stood on the tree-lined path and kept saying over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to do.” She ran to her cabin. I stood alone watching her go, not having the faintest idea what to do.

The last day at camp it rained all day. She stayed in her cabin. I glimpsed at her in the dining hall, but her girlfriends surrounded her, and I had no idea how to permeate that wall. I didn’t even see her when I left because my parents had come to pick me up early. As we pulled away from the camp, I looked mournfully for Terry, but she as nowhere to be seen.

“Did you enjoy camp, David?” My mother innocently asked.

With my long legs cramped in the backseat and my heart physically aching as I mourned for my first love, I could only mumble in response, “Sure.”

Why don’t you give the License game a try. It’s fun! Go ahead – comment below

 

‘Where do you find your ideas?” is perhaps the most asked question of authors. The second most asked questions might be ‘How do you make your ideas into stories?’ The answer to the first question is “Ideas are everywhere!” The process of capturing those ideas is an important and necessary task for a writer.  So how do you capture ideas? Perhaps the easiest way is a notebook that you keep near – in your pocket or purse, and when you hear or think or dream about a possible idea, you write it down. Some writers keep a file either on their computers or a physical one that houses ideas. I use tiny notes – they litter my desk, and at some point, I gather them up and put them in an idea jar as loose notes. The point is to stockpile them somewhere other than the sieve that is your senior mind!

The ideas you collect don’t have to be fully formed. They are instead something to jog your imagination to generate a story idea – a story prompt.  It could be a phrase like, ‘then she fell down the stairs’; or a title idea such as, “The Ghost of a Promise”; or perhaps a character idea, ‘shoes that talk.’ Photos, letters, and physical prompts can also be a starting point for story construction.

These collected ideas are wonderful, but when you look at them, you must consider the elements that could propel the idea into a story. One way to do that is to play the “What if” ? or the “And then” games to see how the story might develop. Looking for a theme or genre for the story might also help to solidify the idea into a story. Bouncing the story ideas off others is also a great way to build a story. Some writers look at an idea and then write a one or two sentence ‘hook’ that defines the story.  Jane Austin’s beginning sentence of Pride and Prejudice Is such a hook, “It is the truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It tells us exactly what the story is about. Let your imagination run wild as you build a story behind your idea.

The trick is to Write and Write and Write! Because the more you write, the better you become in your writing process. Good luck to you all!

I’d love to hear from you! How do you generate and store your story ideas?

Author’s Note: Due to Hurricane Irma I was unable to post until now. All is well but for some shingles off my roof. I hope you enjoy the following post. I invite you to click the Follow Me button on the right-hand bottom of the page. Thanks to all.

How can eavesdropping be a listening skill for writers? You have to be kidding, right? Just listen to what the American playwright, Thornton Wilder said: “There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.”

Writers need to hone their eavesdropping skills. Now if you have visions of shoving your seat backward so you can get closer to listening to juicy gossip, that’s rude and certainly runs afoul to the rules of the road.  That said, in the new age of mobile phones, people seem to have no qualms about having a loud conversation, mostly one-sided, for all to hear.  Obviously, while in close proximity to people having a conversation, such as in line, or sitting on a bus next to chatty people, one cannot help but overhear what is said. For a writer, all this free chatter is great research!

To write good characters that act and talk like real people, you need to know how real folks act and talk. People watching and listening to conversations is a useful way to learn how people look and sound during conversations. What do they do with their hands? Gesture wildly? Smooth their brow or pull their ear? Dribble their food while talking? What does a real conversation sound like? Uhs and Ums scattered throughout, or expletives? Are they calm, excited, fearful, or agitated? Jotting all this down into your notebooks is fair game and useful in future writings.

Yes, an entire conversation might have wonderful possibilities for a future story,  but don’t overlook little snippets of conversations. They can be just what the muse needed to start your imagination roaring. It is up to the writer to call upon their imagination as to how they can blend those overheard snippets or full conversations into a story. So don’t be afraid to listen in discreetly, you never know when that will spark a fantastic idea for a story, a character, or a scene.

My favorite overheard snippet? “Don’t spit your peas in my shoes!”

I would love to hear from you as to what interesting bits of conversations you have used in your writing? Comment below.