Keep On Keeping On

I almost skipped this post today. Not because I haven’t been getting any writing done, but because other than in my writing I’m finding I don’t have a lot to say these days. The weather has been cold and grey more often than not, which puts me in a cold and grey mood.

I think one of the worst parts about this age of pandemic social isolation is the uncertainty. We have no idea how long this is going to last. The government sets a time-line and constantly changes it. The spring events were the first to go, then the summer events were cancelled, now the fall events are starting to drop like flies. The question on everyone’s mind is, how much longer?

And humans, even chronically introverted ones like me, are social animals. You have to wonder about the psychological ramifications of this prolonged social isolation. Personally I’m finding the longer I’m holed up in my house, the more I want to stay that way. I’m even starting to resent having to go out to grocery shop – but I don’t trust someone else to pick out my produce, so . . .

It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it? And trying not to think about it doesn’t help either because every time you turn around it’s staring you in the face. I guess we just have to keep on keeping on, and hope for the best.

Like I said, I did get some writing done last week. No prompt story, but I got a few words done on Wandering Wizards and a couple of medium length poems. And I’ve been keeping up my journals, which is saying something.

Since there’s no story this week, I thought I’d share an excerpt of Wandering Wizards. My heroes escaped the clutches of the dark elves, who’d taken over the Wildwoods Elven Realm, and are on their way to meet Jessica’s grandmother, the elven Lady Aracelia. Now that they are out of immediate danger, it’s given Ellen some time to think.

“Well, there it is,” Kaelan said, relief evident in his voice. Even he’d been wondering if they were ever going to reach the Sirene Sea.

The water stretched from one edge of the horizon to the other, with the shadow of hills or low mountains on the other side. The island with the Shrine of Dorian on it was a mere speck on the water.

“We might as well camp here tonight,” Dominic said, dismounting. “The sun’s too close to setting – there’s no point stumbling around in the dark.”

Jessica sat on her steed a moment longer than everyone else, staring at the sea from her higher vantage point. Why was Aracelia so set on them going there? She was still pondering this when they were sitting around the campfire later.

“This Shrine of Dorian,” she asked. “What do you know about it?” The question was directed at Kaelan, Sebastian, and Dominic.

Dominic shrugged. “For my part, I just know it’s a shrine on the Sirene Sea. The Cult of Dorian built it a few hundred years ago and then pretty much died out.”

“Really?” Howard asked. “Why?”

“Most likely because the Sirene Sea is poisonous.”

“Poisonous?” Jessica, Ellen, and Howard chorused.

“Now he tells us,” Howard muttered.

“Didn’t we mention that?” Sebastian said. “It’s why there are no settlements anywhere near it.”

“Then why was Aracelia so insistent we go there?” Jessica asked, voice edging from irritable to angry. The men looked at each other, somewhat at a loss.

“The Well!” Kaelan said suddenly.

All eyes focused on him. “There is rumored to be a Well within the shrine.”

“But if the sea is poisonous, wouldn’t the well—oh, not that kind of well,” Ellen said.

“A Well,” Jessica mused.

“Yes, but surely there are Wells closer,” Howard pointed out. “And Jessica’s not supposed to use her power so it’s not like she needs to replenish it.”

Kaelan spread his hands wide. “I cannot say what was in the Lady Aracelia’s mind.”

“I have another question,” Jessica said. “If the shrine is on an island in a poisonous sea, how are we supposed to get to it?”

“And the faithful will find the way,” Sebastian intoned. He grinned at the look on the faces that turned towards him. “As I understand my religious instruction, the Followers of Dorian built a causeway.”

“Huh. I guess that’s better than trying to build a raft or something,” Jessica said.

“So,” Ellen said after the conversation died down again. “I get that we’ve been travelling more west than south, but once we’ve been to the shrine how much longer is it going to take us to get to Jessica’s family in the south?” She looked around at her companions. “It’s not that I haven’t been enjoying the adventure and all, but my parents are probably already freaking out.”

Kaelan and Sebastian looked at Dominic who looked anywhere but towards Ellen.

“Guys?”

Dominic scraped a hand through his hair and shot a quick glance at Jessica who quirked an eyebrow at him in return. “From what Jessica’s told me of your world things move at a much faster pace than they do here.” When the expression on her face began to slide towards alarm he quickly added, “But with the aid of the elvensteeds it will shave weeks off the journey.”

“Weeks?” she repeated weakly.

“It should take no more than two, maybe three months in all,” Kaelan assured her.

“Months? Are you freaking kidding me?” Ellen jumped to her feet, fists clenched and face pale. “I’ve already been away too long. If I’m gone for months my family is going to have the Mounties out looking for me!”

Mounties? Kaelan mouthed to Dominic? Dominic shrugged.

“It’ll be okay, Ell,” Jessica told her, not really believing it as she said it. But what else was a good friend to do but lie?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

Wandering Wizards – 1,000 words (approximately)
I didn’t do as well last week as I did the week before, but any week I have new words to show is a good one as far as I’m concerned.

Weekly Prompt – 0 words
I made a feeble attempt at a story, but only two paragraphs worth. And I can’t see finishing it any time in the near future so time for a new prompt.

New Prompt
Use this as your first line:
People call her Camilla - not that that's her name.

Happy Writing!

World on Fire

Wow. I was tongue in cheek when I compared the COVID-19 pandemic to Stephen King’s the Stand last week, but it’s not so funny anymore.

Canada is basically on lock-down, until further notice. Grocery stores and pharmacies are still open, but we’re told not to go there unless it’s an absolute necessity, and the grocery stores are limiting purchases and the number of people they’re letting in. Our children’s children will be learning about this in history class.

Being diabetic I’m considered “at risk.” So’s the hubby, who’s only been cancer free for a couple of years. There have been 6 cases reported in our area but no deaths so far. I hope it stays that way. If you’re curious about the numbers around the world, check out the COVID-19 map.

One of those confirmed cases was at the granddaughter’s school. They’re being close-mouthed about what grade it was but the daughter is taking no chances. And her hubby works for a store that’s still open to the public, which pretty much puts them at risk too. So, while they’re still coming for Sunday dinner tonight, I’m off the hook for babysitting for this week.

For the record, I’m not liking this much.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

Well, I’ll tell you. For part of the first three days of last week I enjoyed the company of the granddaughter. Thursday I just didn’t feel like doing anything, and Friday the hubby and I binge-watched the first season of Game of Thrones. Saturday I wasn’t quite as lazy, but still.

Wandering Wizards – +1000 words, -700 words.
There is this scene I want to write that shows Jessica is having misgivings about staying in the magical realm, but I just can’t seem to word it right. I wrote it three times, deleted it twice, and I might just skip over it on my way to the action.

Weekly Prompt – 424 words
My prompt story took a creepy turn (as my short stuff often does) and I’m not finished with it yet. Maybe I’ll finish it this week.

New Prompt
Use this as your first line:
I survived the magical experiment gone haywire by hiding in her library.

Happy Writing!

Poetically Speaking

It was another slow week, writing wise. I’m still distracted and still thinking too much, but I also gave a poetry reading Thursday night, so I was a little preoccupied.

One of the emails I got from my poetry group said something about the reading being a bright spot in an otherwise dull month, so I thought, “Hey, why don’t I read all funny poems?” Well, it sounded good in theory, but the problem with that is that I don’t have a lot of funny poems. Certainly not enough to fill in my twenty minutes worth of reading.

So I decided to do what I do best – forms. Dutifully I gathered together some of the more interesting forms I’ve explored until I was sure I had enough to fill in my time slot. And just to make sure of the timing I read them out loud, which brought me to the second problem with my reading.

A lot of poetry forms look good on paper, but don’t sound so great when you read them out loud. The rhythm’s a little off, or this syllable count makes them seem choppy – I ended up rejecting about half the poems I’d selected. But in the end I came up with a respectable number of poems, and ended with three parodies to leave the audience laughing. They went over very well and I received many compliments afterwards.

But seriously, I have a LOT of poetry. And that fact is never brought home so much as when I have to go through them and select poems for a reading. More to the point, I have a LOT of poetry and I’ve never done anything with it. As in, I’ve never tried to sell any of it. And I don’t know why that is.

For a while I was doing a new form every week (on a different blog). I’ve done many poems from prompts (from a variety of sources). I’ve explored over 150 different forms and have a list of more than 100 I haven’t tried yet – even invented my own form. And I’ve written a whole lot of poetry just for the heck of it. But I haven’t tried to market any of it. What’s the point of writing all this poetry and keeping it all to myself? Some of my poetry isn’t all that bad, which begs the question, why haven’t I submitted it anywhere?

Good question. Wish I had an answer. Maybe that’s something I could start working on.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

Wandering Wizards – ???
I dabbled around a bit and expanded on the scenes I wrote last week, but I didn’t really keep track.

Weekly Prompt – 0 words
Never actually looked at the prompt from last week, so I guess I’ll keep it for this week too. It was:

Use this as your first line:
Cruelty is a sleeping boy but art was a bleeding man.

Happy Writing!

Stitching the Words

Writing is like sewing – but just as I’d rather sew something from scratch than alter it, I’d rather write something fresh than edit something old.

Once upon a time I sewed for a living. No, I wasn’t a tailor, although I had tailoring skills. And yes, I made a bit of money at it (a very little bit). The problem was, most of what people wanted were the fiddly little things they were too unskilled (or lazy) to do themselves, like repairs, hemming, or alterations. Things that weren’t particularly difficult, but they were time-consuming.

With sewing, you need to learn how to use a pattern – pin it to the material, cut along the lines, transfer the markings to the fabric – you need to learn how to thread a needle and do the basic stitches, then you’re ready to use a sewing machine. The machine is intimidating at first, threading it, pressing gently on the presser foot to start it stitching, feeding the material through, learning to reverse stitch and turn corners . . .

With writing you need to know how to use words to make a sentence, string sentences to make paragraphs and pages. You need to learn the rules of grammar and punctuation, and when it’s okay to break those rules. Maybe you’ll start with pen and paper before graduating to a computer where you’ll have to learn to use writing software, maybe you’ll even have to learn how to type.

Just as there are finishing touches to sewing – reinforcing the seams, trimming the threads, adding lace or buttons or other embellishments – there are finishing touches to writing – rewriting, editing, proof reading.

The stories I’ve been editing for the anthology were mostly written from prompts with restricted word counts or made to fit within narrow parameters. Getting them into shape is a lot like altering a garment – letting a seam out here, taking a tuck in there, adding some embellishments.

Quite frankly, I’d rather be writing something new.


Prompt of the Week

Between working on Wandering Wizards and working on the anthology - I really want to get one of them done before Christmas - I’m not sure if I’ll have time to work on a prompt story or not this week. However, if you’d like to give one a try, here’s the list of prompt generators:

The Story Shack
The Plot Generator
Writing Exercises and Prompts
Springhole
Seventh Sanctum
RanGen

Routine? Fate Laughs at Your Puny Routine

Well . . . I dodged a bullet, that’s for sure. Just when I thought it was safe to sort of have a routine, the education workers (CUPE) decided to strike. And this would mean Grammie would be back on babysitting duty – just when she was used to not babysitting – in the late morning/early afternoon.

I was already labouring under the lack of writing last week – the daughter was away for another conference. Babysitting last week wasn’t bad – for one thing it was later in the day, and we kind of missed the little rug rat. But the CUPE strike would be back to same old/same old, only with a bit of an overlap with things I have going on during the week now.

But as I said, I dodged that bullet. CUPE and the government came to an agreement and school continues as usual. Which also means, my friends, that I’m going to have to come up with some other excuse for my lack of writing.

I’d like to put it down to my regular pre-NaNo October dry spell, but this dry spell hit long before October. I’ve been suffering from a serious lack of motivation (as you’ve probably noticed).

But . . . it’s still only the beginning of the second week of October and I only have about 20,000 words left to go on Wandering Wizards. If I can write 50,000 words during the month of November while babysitting every week day, then surely I can write 20,000 in just under 4 weeks. Right? Right.

And I haven’t forgotten about the anthology. It’s inchworming along, giving me something to do when I get tired of my wizards. There’s still a chance I’ll have it done before Christmas – a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.

To paraphrase Nike, I just have to do it.

Prompt of the Week

Surprise! I have a prompt for you this week. I moseyed on over to The Story Shack and generated this:

Word count: 350
Genre: Romance
Character: An expert gardener
Material: An onion
Sentence: "I'm sorry."
Bonus: Your character is shipwrecked

The betting is now open as to whether I’ll actually get a story done for Saturday. :-)

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.

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?

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.

Empires Rising and Falling

I actually got some writing in last week. Real writing I mean, something besides blog posts and the prompt story. And how did I do this? By choosing to ignore my email and Facebook in the morning.

For me the best time to write is between breakfast and babysitting, you know, after I finish a whole list of other stuff. Suddenly it occurred to me that empires wouldn’t rise or fall if I failed to check my email first thing, same goes for Facebook. Instead I used that time to write.

That worked for pretty much two days in a row. Monday and Tuesday I spent the time between breakfast and babysitting writing my blog posts for those days, and Friday I had grocery shopping and a coffee date.

But I really think I’m onto something here. What if I got my blog posts done the night before, like I used to, and waited until later to check my email and Facebook?

It sounds good in theory, let’s see what happens when I put it into practice.

Prompt of the Week

Well this is annoying. I really, really like The Story Shack for generating story prompts, but every time I tried to click on it yesterday I got a security error and I couldn’t find a way around it. I’m kind of bummed about it. If I’m ever able to access it again, I’m going to download a bunch of prompts, just to have them handy.

So, for this week at least I’m going to have to find a different prompt site. First I tried a site called The Plot Generator. There were a lot of options for generating ideas and I tried Create a Paranormal Romance Plot in Seconds and Create a Smelly Troll Plot in Seconds. The resulting prompts were okay, so I saved them, but not quite what I was looking for.

Next up was the site called Writing Exercises and Prompts where I clicked on Quick Plot Generator, Random Plot Generator, and Random Scenario. Of the three, I liked Random Plot Generator the best. It gives you some details to work with, but not as much as I got from the previous site.

On to Springhole which is more geared to RPG, but it was still kind of fun. I tried the Creepypasta & Supernatural Horror Plot Creator, the Fairytale Plot Generator, and the Really Random Plot-o-Tron - Medieval-esque Fantasy Edition. While they were fun, they still weren’t quite what I was looking for. I want something quick and easy, so I’ll definitely go back to this one when I’m in the mood for something longer.

Finally, I tried the Seventh Sanctum writing generators. These generated ten choices at a time. I tried the romance story generator with fantasy as the category and received ten interesting ideas. Then I tried the writing challenges generator and got ten more interesting choices.

Are you starting to see why this blog post was late today? :-D

In the end, I went with the random plot generated by the Writing Exercises and Prompts site. It gave me:
Main character: A woman in her early thirties, who is very reckless.
Secondary character: A man in his early twenties, who is very compassionate.
Setting: The story begins in a church crypt.
Situation: Someone is being blackmailed.
Character Action: Your character has to do some quick thinking to keep ahead

Feel free to play along, or if you prefer, try out one of these generators on your own.

Dealing With It

I’d like to say I was MIA last week because I was getting copious amounts of writing done, really I would. But alas, I can’t. And the really sad part was that I had the whole week off from babysitting too.

The closest I came to buckling down was cleaning my office. I went in there with every intention of writing – well, truthfully I went in there to sit in my comfy chair and read for a bit before I did some writing, but as I sat there I realized my office was just messy enough to be distracting.

Let’s face it, there’s cluttered and then there’s downright messy. Cluttered pretty much means you have a lot of stuff, but you still know where to find (most) things. Messy means stuff is piled up haphazardly and you have no idea where anything is. My office was messy.

This time I did it right, too. Instead of my usual shuffling papers and piles around, I actually found homes for the detritus on my desk. It wasn’t exactly procrastination, it was a job I’ve been putting off for way too long. And no, it didn’t take me the entire week.

I caught up writing entries in my journals, tinkered with a couple of poems, and took a look at some of the shorter stuff I’ve been working on. And there was a lot of it. An appalling amount really. I mean, between the short stuff and the unfinished novels I have enough to keep me busy for the next ten years without having to start anything new. And how sad is that?

So I came up with a game plan. I made some lists, I prioritized, and I set some goals.

Now all that’s left is to get to work. Thursday.

Why Thursday? Because the daughter is in Washington D.C. until late Wednesday night, and I’m looking after the grandbaby full time until her mother returns. I get Thursday and Friday off for good behaviour, which technically means a four-day weekend.

Now I just need to get my writing mojo back, preferably before Thursday.

Prompt of the Week

I’m going with a prompt from The Story Shack again, but this time I’m going to share what the generator comes up with up front so you can give it a try too. It’s a lot of fun to have different writers all working from the same prompt. And even if you don’t care to share, you can still see how your idea differs from mine when I post my story on Saturday. And if you do care to share, by all means send me your take on the prompt and I’ll post it on Saturday as well.

Word count: 500
Genre: Drama
Character: A child hater
Material: Not enough money
Sentence: "I'd like a day without punishing you."
Bonus: Winter is long and extremely cold.

There you go, 500 words. You can do it, I know you can!