Thursday, May 1, 2014

Its May!

...and that means is short story month, thanks to A Story A Day In May. I won't be posting stories here because, assuming they don't totally suck, I'll be attempting to publish some of them. However, I will be updating my progress every few days.

I work best from a prompt so thanks to all of you who dropped by on X day to offer up some great ideas. I'll be digging into those throughout the month. I also get daily prompts from the storyaday website and have grabbed a few from other sources yesterday. (Have I mentioned my procrastination problem?) As long as I can make time to write and my brain doesn't turn to mush, I have plenty of idea fodder to work with.

That alone puts me ahead of last year. To make things even slightly more successful this year, I'm attempting to keep my stories short. To date, 1,500 words is really darn short for me. I'm going to a attempt to keep them more in the 500 to 1,000 range, even if that means just getting the bones written so I can add the meat later.

Day 1: Prompt: Fear I went for a 900 word MG (I don't write MG so this was new for me) about girls in a cemetery. One is dared by the others to steal something.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

A to Z Zombie

Welcome to the 2014  A to Z Challenge. My theme for this year is why I shouldn't be participating. Thank you to David for writing the post that got the voices in my head working against me.

Zombie is what I usually feel like at the end of the day. This is why night writing is a thing of the past for me. When I had a 9-5 job that I did my time at each day and then went home to dinner and happy play time, being productive at night was full of awesome. Then came kids and after school activities and customer support for my business and daily production that often forgets what the day in daily means.
Take last night for instance, my husband was trying to help with a job and told me a measurement three times and I still couldn't retain the knowledge for more than 3 seconds. Cue the drooling zombie sounds. Must write information down. Zombie doesn't understand pen. Zombie try pencil. Gah. Numbers are hard.

I also seem to be extra zombie at the end of this month. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Raise your brains, fellow zombies (okay, not your brains, some fresh ones from someone else). We've come a long way, like through a whole alphabet in a month. We've stumbled around blogs we've never been to before. We've found kindred souls and followed them. Now lets nom on those brains, kick back and relax. After all, tomorrow is May and that means its short story month. I'll need all the brain power I can get!
Braaaiiiiiins

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

A to Z Yawn

Welcome to the 2014  A to Z Challenge. My theme for this year is why I shouldn't be participating. Thank you to David for writing the post that got the voices in my head working against me.

Yawn: is what I find myself doing any time I find to sit in one place for more than five minutes. I used to be good at sleep. Loved sleep. Would rather sleep than be awake. And the dreams, oh they were so much fun. I'd ponder plots and characters in my half-sleep between dreams, coming up with all sorts of things to throw at them during my waking hours.

Now I wake up at 6am. I don't have to. I don't want to. But my brain has turned on and is pelting me with all the things I didn't finished yesterday and what I need to do that day. And this sudden, heart pounding moment of anxiety is usually right after dreaming that I'd been working on a job that I'd totally forgot about or that went all wrong and the customer needs it right away. It's utterly restful, I tell you. Not. There's too much going on in that mess of a brain to focus on plots or characters, which is really frustrating for someone who used to cherish the sleepy time we shared together.


Perhaps, in about twenty-some years, when I retire, sleep and I will kiss and makeup. I look forward to that day.

Monday, April 28, 2014

A to Z X

Welcome to the 2014  A to Z Challenge. My theme for this year is why I shouldn't be participating. Thank you to David for writing the post that got the voices in my head working against me.

X is a letter that I have to get pretty darn creative to use for today. So we're going roman. 10.

Due to spending the month with you, I've neglected spending time gathering prompts for A Story a Day In May. Today's challenge: gather 10 prompts.

A word, an opening line, a character name, whatever you've got. Help me out by leaving a comment.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

A to Z Writing

Welcome to the 2014  A to Z Challenge. My theme for this year is why I shouldn't be participating. Thank you to David for writing the post that got the voices in my head working against me.

Writing is what I'd usually rather be doing. While writing blog posts can be fun, it's writing stories that makes me warm and fuzzy inside. Whether is be a short or a novel, I enjoy sitting down and creating something new from nothing, pulling words together to create characters and worlds.

Usually those worlds are some place other than the one we currently inhabit, because really, I'm in that one and I need a vacation from it. Not to mention, it's so much more fun to create problems for someone else and help them solve them, creating order from the chaos than it is to pay taxes, nag kids and be overwhelmed with work (house, yard, and the kind that pays the bills).