As my reward for full-time babysitting last week, I’ve had the last several days off. In a perfect world I would have sat down with my morning coffee and written all day, coming up for air at the end of the day to count the number of pages I got done with an air of smug satisfaction.
But as we know all too well, the world isn’t perfect.
Day one I couldn’t seem to find my focus, partially (but not totally) because the pool guys were in the back yard putting the finishing touches on our newly installed above ground pool. Also, the phone kept interrupting my train of thought. So I worked on the prompt stories, such as they were.
Day two I was in a funk. It was one of those funks that nothing seems to help – not a change of scenery, not shopping, not even the kittens at the kitten adoption blitz at the library – you just have to ride it out. I was so hyper focused on Wandering Wizards that I couldn’t interest myself in working on anything else. So I did six loads of laundry just so I could say I got something accomplished.
Day three I decided enough is enough and started entering the changes I made to the paper copy of Wandering Wizards into the electronic one. And that’s when I made the discovery that I had an extra “Jessica and Dominic” scene, so technically I was no longer stuck. But I finished making the changes to the electronic copy anyway. I’m pretty sure I mucked up the time-line, but that’s something I can fix when the draft is finished.
Day four I caught up to where I’d stopped to go back and add more Jessica-centric scenes, and please note that the Wandering Wizards meter in the side bar has moved from 47% to 70%. I’m hoping to get the edits finished by the end of the day so I can have my reward (a brand new Lynsay Sands book I bought and then gave to the hubby to hold onto until my edits were done) and time enough to read it before it’s back to babysitting.
So the good news is that I’ve only got 60 pages to go, but the bad news is that I’m at a place where I need to insert another Jessica and Dominic scene. But this should be the last one because Howard and Ellen’s group has just reached the Wild Woods Elven Realm so that means Jessica and Dominic need to be in Claverton.
Wish me luck!
Prompts of the Week
The friend that was helping me pick prompts has deserted me. Okay, actually she didn’t so much as desert me as move to a better place, but that better place is in another town. I have to admit, it was taking us longer and longer to find a couple of decent prompts to use each week and before she left we went through the rest of the jar and discarded all but about a dozen of them. Even at that I was hard pressed to find two I thought were doable for this week. So next week I’ll be abandoning my magical jar of prompts. But don’t worry, I’ll find something else to challenge you with. :-)
Prompt One
Write a 20-line poem where every line begins with the first letter of your first name. The only rule is that it can’t be about you.
Prompt Two
Write a story from the perspective of Harold the Armchair. What does he think about all day? Does he like being sat on? Do his parents approve of him being an armchair?
You don’t need to spend a lot of time on these, they’re just meant for fun. Take 5 minutes to think about it, then write for 10 or 15 minutes. And if it turns out you like what you’ve written, then by all means turn your exercise into an actual story. You can find these prompts, and others like them, at Writer's Digest .
No comments:
Post a Comment