Fallen

This week’s prompt came courtesy of RanGen and consisted of three words: Grace, Confusion, and Brilliance.

Honestly, this was a little too easy. When I started playing around with these words I was able to get all three in a single sentence. I toyed with the idea of doing a series of sentences using all three words, but ended up looking for different meanings for the words.

His fall was a lengthy one and he landed hard on the grass-covered dirt of the earthly realm. At first he looked around in confusion, not really understanding what had happened.

The realization of what he’d lost came as a shock. He had been cast out, no longer one of the Chosen. He had gambled with his brilliance and lost everything.

Unused to corporeal form he rose slowly to his feet, dusting off his wings and folding them to his back out of sight. He was at a crossroads, both literally and figuratively.

Glancing upwards he saw nothing but blue sky. Determination filled him as he picked a direction at random and began to walk. He’d be back. If it was the last thing he ever did he would return and once more bathe in the light of the Grace. No matter what.

Time In a Bottle

Wouldn’t it be great if we could save time in a bottle, like the song says?

Actually, this song came out just after Jim lost his life in a plane crash. How ironic is that? And the sad part is, it was written for his wife just after they found out she was pregnant.

But imagine if we could save time in a bottle. No more time wasted waiting in line, or waiting for a ride, or waiting in a doctor’s office. Instead, you could just save that time to be used later when you need five more minutes to finish something, or just a half an hour of peace and quiet to save your sanity.

One of my guilty pleasures on Sunday mornings is to watch Top Chef Canada. For those of you who don’t indulge, this is a show that pits amateur chefs against each other for a modest cash prize and bragging rights. They may be home cooks, but they sure know their stuff! I’m more of a throw-things-in-a-pot-and-see-if-it-works chef myself. But I can’t help thinking that if some of these chefs had just a few more minutes . . .

Last week, and especially on the weekend, I found myself with a lot of extra minutes. There weren’t enough to actually do anything with them, but it was enough I felt like it was wasted time. It would have been great to be able to save all those five minutes here, ten minutes there, and then put them all together for a nice little chunk of freed up time.

Yup, Jim Croce had the right idea.

Prompts of the Week

You might have noticed that I did nothing with either prompt last week. Part of it was lack of energy, part of it was lack of time. I really wanted to do something steampunkish with the prompt from The Story Shack (even before I saw the booth with the steampunk hats at Fan Expo in Toronto) but the weekend kind of got away from me.

So let’s change things up and try a different prompt generator this week.

I checked out one called RanGen, which gave me these three words:
Grace, Confusion and Brilliance.

They have all kinds of cool stuff here, including generators for creating characters or world building. A writer could have a lot of fun do a lot of procrastinating find some useful resources here. But I’ll stick to my writing prompt for now.

Chocolate Weather

You’re probably wondering what I mean by chocolate weather, aren’t you? Well, I’ll tell you (as you knew I would).

Chocolate weather is the overcast, depressing weather – sometimes with rain, sometimes with just the promise of rain – that makes you crave chocolate. Chocolate is the only thing that makes life worth living on a day like this.

As you recall, I’m a diabetic, which means the only kind of chocolate I’m supposed to have is dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is okay, I mean it’s better than no chocolate at all and one of the benefits is that it’s so strong tasting you can only eat a little at a time, so no overindulging.

But that’s not the kind of chocolate I crave during chocolate weather. Nope, the only kind of chocolate to combat chocolate weather is milk chocolate. Pure milk chocolate. Lindt or Cadbury or Belgian or Godiva – decadent, creamy, smooth milk chocolate. And if it has hazelnuts in it, that’s okay too.

Unfortunately, even indulging in my chocolate fix wasn’t enough to motivate me into a whole lot of writing. I got the prompt story done (eventually), and a couple of thousand words added to Wandering Wizards, but the word counts weren’t nearly as good as last week.

Keep the faith though, despite the slow pace my characters are moving forward and I figured out a new threat to throw at them that’s also going to solve the problem of how one of them gets kidnapped.

I can’t wait!

Prompts of the Week

Seeing as I waffled so much last week, I decided to just go ahead and get prompts from both The Story Shack and The Plot Generator.

Your random plot points from The Story Shack are:

Word count: 550
Genre: Fantasy
Character: A healer
Material: A steam boat
Sentence: "You don't have to love me."
Bonus: Your character is loved by everyone.

And this week I chose the “Smelly Trolls” option from The Plot Generator to get this:

Your hero –Matthew Parker
The child's age in years - 5
The town where it all takes place – Bogstaple
An evil troll – Maud Speckledtongue
A good troll – Flappy Suzanne Boglewax
Two meals, plural – chips, lasagnes
A type of vegetable, plural – turnips
Something yucky, plural – dustbins
A part of the body, singular – elbow

Feel free to play along, or visit one of the sites to create your own prompt.

Moving Out

I had an idea for the prompt from the Story Shack first, but there was no way I could stretch it to make 600 words. So I went with the one from The Plot Generator instead:

Your main character –name – Elizabeth Chan
An adjective to describe him or her - adorable
Somebody who might try to help your main character – Sarah Gloop
His or her relationship to the main character - sister
Jobs – doctor, gardener, fishmonger
An object - book
An adjective that could describe an object - crumpled
A number between 2 and 400 - 3
A location - Devon
Three more adjectives – feathery, backward, worrying
Three animals, singular – frog, fox, badger
Something a ghost might appear when photographed – skeletal
Two body parts, plural – fingers, legs
A type of accident – dancing
An adjective that could be used to describe a place – noisy

This time I’m just going to bold the words I included – I don’t know about you, but I found the changing colour really annoying. :-D

“I thought Devon was in England,” Sarah Gloop said to her sister.

“You’re thinking of Devonshire,” Elizabeth replied, then frowned. “At least I think you are. At any rate, this Devon is in Alberta.”

“I still don’t know why you and Henry have to move there,” Sarah grumbled, an adorable frown on her face.

“They need a new doctor,” Elizabeth told her patiently, trying to fit the book she was holding into the box of crumpled paper. “There. Seven down, three to go.”

“You should have married Larry the fishmonger. At least then you’d be Elizabeth Smith.”

“Sarah! I thought you liked Henry!”

“I do, it’s just . . . he’s like one of those dancing figures we put up at Halloween, all long fingers and clacking legs – he’s positively skeletal. It’s as though one of these days he’ll just fly apart.”

“What utter nonsense! And there’s nothing wrong with my name. Elizabeth Chan is perfectly respectable.”

Sarah blew out a noisy breath, blowing the feathery bangs out of her face. “Oh, don’t mind me,” she said apologetically. “I think I’m just a little jealous. You’ve found your true love and the closest I’ve come is that fling with the gardener last year.”

“You’re forgiven, of course,” Elizabeth told her. “Now help me take these boxes out to the truck.”

Sarah’s attitude was worrying, but Elizabeth was sure it was something they’d be able to overcome in the future. After all, it only took one bite from Henry to convince her. Closing the door behind her, she left her old life behind without so much as a backward glance, and hurried towards her future.

What I Did On My Vacation

I had the week off from babysitting last week, and even though I didn’t go anywhere, it was still pretty darn nice.

I spent more time in my office than I normally do, although some days it got rather steamy in there, and I don’t mean what I was writing – there’s no a/c in my office. It was kind of a pain because I’d have to carry all my stuff out to the living/dining room area, and find a new place to plug in the lap top. It wasn’t so bad going from the dining room to the office or back again, but it’s a big pain when I relocate to my chair in the living room.

As you may recall from a previous post, last year I replaced my recliner with a cuddle chair. A cuddle chair I bought online from Costco so I didn’t realize how truly big it was until it was delivered.

See that light at the back? That’s where the power bar is, which means I have to crawl over the chair and hang off the back to plug the lap top in. I knew there was a reason why I meant to go for the lap top with the super big battery instead of the one with the pretty lit up keyboard. ;-)

But I digress . . .

The writing got off to a very slow start – I kept finding other stuff that I had to do first. Sadly, it took me until Friday to run out of distractions. But then I sat myself down in my reading chair in my office, whipped out my Alphasmart Neo, and pretended it was NaNo time. I didn’t quite get 1667 words (which is what you need to write daily for the NaNo challenge) but it was well over 1,000 – and I got more writing done on something else that evening.

Saturday the grandbaby came over for the day but surprisingly I still managed to get a fair amount of writing done. If you’re able to see the side bar on the right, you’ll see that the word count for Wandering Wizards jumped by a little over 5,000 words last week, and most of that was written on Friday and Saturday.

All in all, I’d say my vacation was a pretty good one!

Prompt of the Week

Woot! The Story Shack is back! Well, I guess technically it never left, but the security glitch seems to be resolved and I’m able to access it again. And here’s my prompt:

Word count: 600
Genre: Magical Realism Character: An art therapist
Material: A very old sofa
Sentence: "We can repair this."
Bonus: The story takes place two-hundred years from now.

While I do love that it gives me a word count and a little more leeway for creating, I kind of liked all the detail from The Plot Generator. So . . . I decided to give it a whirl as well. This time I clicked on Story Idea and then Horror:

Your main character –name – Elizabeth Chan
An adjective to describe him or her - adorable
Somebody who might try to help your main character – Sarah Gloop
His or her relationship to the main character - sister
Jobs – doctor, gardener, fishmonger
An object - book
An adjective that could describe an object - crumpled
A number between 2 and 400 - 3
A location - Devon
Three more adjectives – feathery, backward, worrying
Three animals, singular – frog, fox, badger
Something a ghost might appear when photographed – skeletal
Two body parts, plural – fingers, legs
A type of accident – dancing
An adjective that could be used to describe a place – noisy

Hopefully if I don’t come up with something for one of the prompts I’ll come up with something for the other. Guess you’ll have to come back Saturday to see which.

In the meantime, why don’t you play along?

Aardvarks and Hedgehogs

Okay. I know what you’re thinking. What the heck does “aardvark” have to do with any of the prompts I got from Seventh Sanctum? Well, nothing really. Nothing, as in the five prompts I generated did nothing for me. LOL

When I was busy generating prompts Monday night and Tuesday morning, I copied down a couple of the earlier attempts but thought I could do better and continued on. This prompt actually came from The Plot Generator. Unfortunately I didn’t write down what options I clicked on, so your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, here are the plot particulars that were generated for me.

Your main character: Phil DeVito, male
An adjective to describe him or her: intelligent
Secondary character: Graham Bond, male
His or her relationship to the main character: uncle
Jobs: navigator, gardener, homemaker
An object: piano
An adjective that could describe an object: peculiar
A number between 2 and 400: 32
A location: Scotland
Three more adjectives: windy, cursed, ample
Three animals, singular: aardvark, rabbit, tortoise
Something a ghost might appear when photographed: distorted
Two body parts, plural: elbows, fingers
A type of accident: boating
An adjective that could be used to describe a place: chilly

That’s a lot to include, when you think about it, but it was also a lot of fun. Just to help you keep track, I’ll highlight the specifics I include in green.

Aardvarks and Hedgehogs

Phil DeVito had to admit, Uncle Graham had outdone himself this time. He regarded the piano through the glass of scotch he was holding, the distorted image making the aardvark shape look like it was melting.

“Why an aardvark?” he asked. “Why not a rabbit, say, or a tortoise?

Uncle Graham shifted his ample form in his chair and rested his elbows on the table. Fingers steepled, he looked at his highly intelligent 32 year old nephew and grinned.

“Amos MacIntyre was my best friend back in Scotland - Mac and Bond, that was us. He was a navigator by trade, until that terrible boating accident on the North Sea. Chilly, that.”

“What’s chilly?” Phil asked, having a bit of trouble following his uncle’s train of thought.

“The North Sea.” Graham took a sip of his drink. “Windy too.”

“But where does the aardvark fit into all this?”

“Yes, well. After the accident Amos though he was cursed so he became a gardener.” He lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Phil took a sip of his drink as he waited patiently for his uncle to answer his question.

“He moved to America. I can’t remember the name of the place…I know it was hot there, and he took up with a housewife or a homemaker or someone like that.” He shook his head. “At any rate, the place was just lousy with aardvarks and he developed a fondness for them.”

“I still don’t understand why you painted a piano to look like an aardvark,” Phil said.

“He saved my life, don’t you know.” Graham looked at him seriously. “I was on that boat that sank too. The piano is my gift to him.”

“I didn’t know you were in the navy Uncle.”

“I wasn’t.” He finished his drink. “I was a stowaway.”

Phil looked at him in astonishment.

“Maybe it wasn’t aardvarks,” Graham mused. “Maybe it was hedgehogs.”

Revisiting Goals

Summer’s half over and it got me to thinking that the year is half over as well. And I think it’s high time I checked out the goals I set out at the beginning of the year to see how I’m doing.

First up, a reminder of those goals:

Publishing: Wandering Wizards and an anthology; start submitting poetry and stories.
Organizing and indexing
Writing every day
Less gaming & social media, more exercising and eating healthy

Doesn’t look bad, does it? Because technically there are only four goals. But three of them are multi-part goals so it’s not as simple as it looks.

Publishing — utter fail
Wandering Wizards has been moving forward at a snail’s pace and the anthology is still nothing but an idea. And I definitely haven’t been submitting anything to any kind of publications.

Organizing and indexing — utter fail
I did get the rest of my files pulled off of my old lap top, but they’re still scattered amongst various USB sticks. And I think I’ve pretty much figured out how I’m going organize my poetry, but haven’t made any effort to do so.

Write every day — sort of fail
It’s kind of feast or famine with me, especially lately. The spirit is willing my but mind is weak, and the distractions are many.

Less gaming & social media, more exercising and eating healthy — semi-win
The gaming and social media are kind of hit or miss – some days are more successful than others. It’s an ongoing process that I’m still working on, especially the games. But the more exercising and eating healthy is going well. I haven’t lost any weight yet, but my A1C (I’m diabetic) has gone down 1.4 points.

So . . . it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m to reach my goals by the end of the year. But the grandbaby starts kindergarten in the fall, which means I have my days to myself again. So if I can’t reach at least one of my writing goals by the end of the year then maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer.

Prompt of the Week

The Story Shack still won’t let me in, so this week I used the Seventh Sanctum writing challenge generator, which came up with the following:

The story takes place in the early morning. A character will send a letter.
A character will prepare for a religious ceremony. A character becomes attracted to someone during the story.
A character writes a book, but the action goes terribly wrong. A character becomes happy during the story. During the story, there is a sudden change in weather.
The story must have a giant at the beginning. The story must involve a pendant at the end.
A character is misunderstood throughout most of the story. During the story, a character drinks something that disagrees with them. The story is set during a day off. The story takes place at noon exactly. During the story, someone is mistaken for someone famous.

Last week I spent way too much time thinking about my story and doing research, but to be perfectly honest it just wasn’t happening for me. Hopefully this week I’ll have better luck with one of the prompts from above.