writing prompts

Blogging from Prompts Day 5: Wrap-Up

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I have a teeny, tiny confession. As you probably know by now, this week I’ve been blogging from writing prompts, and I was going to use one more today and wrap up next week.

But.

I just couldn’t find an inspirational one today. Which I suppose says much about this little experiment, right? When it takes longer to find a prompt worth writing about than to come up with an idea, it seems a little counterproductive.

There’s definitely a value in prompts, and I didn’t use any fiction ones this week. Those could be fun if you have the urge to write but no inspiration. But inspiration is rarely where it unravels for me. I’m steeped in inspiration.

Wading through the sites and then each one’s prompts felt more like procrastination for me than blogging efficiency. Overall, I feel it took longer than a regular post.

Some do make for good writing exercises, so if the point is to work on a skill rather than get some words on a page, have at it.

But I went into this week thinking prompts would make blogging all the easier. Turns out it didn’t. Every experience has a lesson.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

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Blogging from Prompts Day 4: What I Do When…

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Still blogging from prompts this week, and today’s site has an air of mystery about it. When you visit, it’s nothing but a page of numbers, but hover your mouse over any of the numbers and a prompt appears.

Tipsy Elves rainbow magic irish magician GIF

So my prompt today: Listing 10 things I do when I procrastinate. No idea why this one spoke to me. No idea at all. It’s a puzzler.

mystery detective scooby doo clues GIF

So what 10 things do I do when I procrastinate?

  1. Find gifs, paying very close attention to the slightest details in the gif to make sure it is the most perfect gif in all of gifdom. Because that’s important. And time-consuming.
  2. Check twitter.
  3.  Dishes. Sometimes the desire not to do dishes is much greater than the pull of procrastination, and BOOM, procrastination over.
  4. Empty the dishwasher. Because ditto.
  5. Get up, go to the kitchen for something to eat, check the cupboards, check the fridge, decide I’m not hungry and return to my blinking cursor.
  6. Repeat 5 minutes later.
  7. Check twitter.
  8. Play solitaire on my phone. For the nontechnical among us, this is called “brainstorming.” Which is followed by “frustration,” and forgetting what I was “brainstorming” because I just have to get the cards to ruffle, darn it.
  9. Hold my cup and stare poignantly out of the window, waiting for the Big Thought to arrive, certain I look poetic while doing so.
  10. Make lists.

Gotta say, that was a fun one. How about you? What do you do to procrastinate?

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Blogging from Prompts Day 3: Grab Bag!

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So this week I’m I’m embarking on the adventure of writing blog posts with prompts.  Today’s site is fun, it’s a “grab bag” of random words and phrases. You can chose any number of them from 1-10. I chose six, and I’ll tell you which they were at the end of the post.

It’s a bit like a puzzle, really, to look at this list of words and decisively choose how to arrange them, where to stack them so they feel clean and unforced. To craft sentences not only around the words themselves, but so that they lock together in a harmony of waves, rather than a tempestuous sea of trying too hard.

You know what I mean. Where the word sticks out in the sentence, a child woken too early, his hair in all directions, not yet ready to be where he is, and he’ll only respond to his first name in grunts or whines.

No one wants a whiny word. Not wedged in a the middle of a sentence where it doesn’t belong.

And I’ve done it! They’re all in here. Any guesses before you check the list?

The words/phrases were:

decisively
woken
clean
tempestuous
embark
first name

 

Blogging from Prompts Day 2: I am…

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This week I’m blogging using writing prompts. Today’s prompt comes from this site, and the prompt is “I am surprised by.”

Well, let me be frank. I am surprised by the blandness of many of the writing prompts I looked at this morning. Maybe it’s me; maybe they’d spark something amazing in someone else, but I rotated through suggestion after suggestion.

Nothing.

I did find one for a story but unfortunately the prompt reloaded and there was no way to get the original one back. I wrote down what I could remember, though, and I might still use it at some point.

I am also surprised by the feeling that there’s something the air today. I don’t think I’m the only one off-kilter, people seem grumpier than usual, fuses shorter than usual. Or maybe it’s the gray sky, which I’m not surprised by.

It’s August, after all.

I am surprised by how fast the summer goes, how it just becomes warm and then suddenly the shelves of the stores are packed with school supplies. I’m surprised I miss the idea of a fresh new school year.

That’s probably nostalgia.

And I’m surprised by how, even after fits and starts, once again here’s a blog post, newly minted.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Blogging from Prompts Day 1: What Have You…

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Happy Monday, friends! It arrives no matter how we feel about it, so we might as well greet it nicely, and maybe it will be nice to us.

Maybe.

So this week I’m going to blog from random writing prompts, because, well, why not? Today I’ve used this website and here’s the prompt:

“What have you stolen?”

Hmm.

This is a tough prompt for me, as I am one of those painfully, painfully honest people who goes back if I get too much change. The other day, I parked on a Chicago street with metered parking. Here, instead of a meter per spot, we have pay boxes. Well, a woman was leaving and she offered me her printed receipt so I would get free time.

And I didn’t take it.

It felt….weird.

Once, though, when I was a child, I went to the hardware store with my Dad, one of those locally-owned ones with dead-end corners and fascinating bits in bins. I needed a combination lock for school or something, so I picked one up and carried it around, looking at everything.

Well, my Dad didn’t find what he needed, and out we went. And then I realized I was still holding the lock. I’d completely forgotten it was in my hand.

That’s right. I was a thief.

I panicked. I told my Dad. I wondered how I could recover from this moral turpitude, though at that stage I doubt I knew the phrase moral turpitude, but I got the idea.

He told me to put it back.

Embarrassed and feeling every inch the criminal I was, I slunk in and put it down, and slunk back out again.

Crime spree complete.

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

Characters are Everywhere (Writing Prompt)

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IMG_0995You might remember this stingray from yesterday’s post of photos from the Shedd Aquarium. At least I think that’s the same lovable dork.

S/he got me thinking about inspiration, and, more specifically, inspiration as it applies to characters. I can’t tell you whether the personality I see in this photo is simply a product of my human experience anthropomorphizing a stingray, or if it’s just an animal who loves his/her gig.

I’ve got to say, I think s/he loves her/his gig.

That aside, it really doesn’t matter, because the inspiration exists no matter what the objective reality. This stingray is a character.

I’ve got an edge in converting him/her to character status, as I write science-fiction, and alien species can abound. But even if I wanted to take the essence of the spirit I see, I could work that energy into a cozy, for example, or a fantasy, or even a romance (though probably not a main character. Then again, why create limits?).

Inspiration for your characters is absolutely everywhere. You don’t even need a human to spark you into bringing someone fictional to life.

Which gets me to the point of this post (yes, yes, hypothetical reader, I love to meander).

Writing Prompt: Use this photo to create a character, and write about the character in any form you choose. 

If it’s short enough, feel free to post your results in the comments (and I know I have some microfiction visitors 🙂 ). If you think it’s too long, go ahead and post a link. We’ll visit.

Have fun!

Oh, and if this stingray doesn’t do it for you, feel free to use any of the photos from yesterday to grab a character. We’re not picky, are we hypothetical reader?

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Check out  my full-length novels,  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only), and the sequel, Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) which is now available!

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

 Sign up for my spamless newsletter!

 

 

 

#1LineWed Fun!

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So I recently discovered the #1linwed game, where, following a theme, you tweet a line. It’s a lot of fun, not only as a prompt, but to see what others are writing. So I’m going to post some of my favorites so far today.

There is a theme (I didn’t realize it the first time), which, today, is “late.” Come play on twitter! I’ll post my own at the bottom.

I reserve the right to update this post as the day goes on, so feel free to check back, if you are not twitter inclined. If you want to find me on twitter, I’m right here: @IsaLeeWolf. Some of these might not fit the theme, but I still enjoyed them. I also discovered how easy it is to add tweets to a post.

And here we go!

And mine, in order (thus far):

Check out  my full-length novels,  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only), and the sequel, Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) which is now available!

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

 Sign up for my spamless newsletter!