Room to Write - "No Experience Necessary"

Today write about something you haven’t done… Don’t be concerned with accuracy or believability. Instead follow your feelings and your imagination.

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Every year I say that this is the year I’m going to do it. I’m going to lose enough weight and get in decent enough shape and I’m going to take lessons, and once those lessons are done and I’m certified I’m going to take the money I don’t have and fly down to the Caribbean and dive.

I haven’t done it yet but I have grand plans, plans that include swimming with sharks, touching an orca, discovering an untouched plane or ship at the bottom of the ocean and witnessing skeletal ghosts with my own eyes. I’m going to see clusters of tiny barnacles with my own eyes, iridescent squid and miles of glowing jellyfish too. I’m going to witness a wobbegong hiding in the sand, a cookie-cutter shark taking ragged little chunks out of the hulls of boats.

I’m going to be there, connected to a portable metallic lung, while dolphins chase fish, while kelp dances, while manatees do whatever it is they do while they aren’t fleeing boat propellers. I’m going to touch the sides of giant tuna as they go by, grab onto the fin of a whale.

I’m going to touch a seal. It will even sit on my belly as we float on the surface.

Maybe I’ll discover something down there, artifacts worth money perhaps, or maybe personal effects that mean something to someone still living.

I haven’t gone diving yet, but I’ve had a subscription (a free one, but still) to a scuba magazine for two years now. I don’t always have time to read all the articles, but the pictures take my breath away. I’m taken by multicolored little fish, giant cetaceans, the sleek, dark divers beside them. The beaches are all beautiful, with shiny white or matte black edges meeting the water, the vegetation tall and well watered. The plants in magazines never go thirsty, never dry out.

I’ve never been diving, but I will. I’m not sure when or how, but I will.

And I know it will be nothing like my imagination.

Room to Write - "You're Such an Animal"

“... write from the point of view of the animal with whom you identify most.”

Try to guess who this is. /sarcasm


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I love going to the bathroom in my neighbor’s yard. There’s something about wandering into someone else’s grass and dropping a deuce that appeals to me, though I’m not exactly sure what that is. I just like it. It’s the perfect way to start the morning.

Life is, for me, somewhat boring, and because of that I have to find my pleasures where I can. Entertainment is often watching a movie on the television with one of my housemates in a language I cannot understand, harassing people as they walk by my house or napping.

Napping. Oh, God do I love napping. I’ve made sleeping in odd places practically a competitive sport. I can sleep on linoleum, grass, pavement, hard carpeted stairs, anything. I can sleep inside a claustrophobic plastic prison with bars across the door, on my soft-foam bed (just like the ones they advertise on TV), on those stairs for hours upon hours. My favorite place to sleep, though, is in a carpeted corner, twisted up like a corpse, my legs thrown up on the wall like an afterthought. It looks like someone’s murdered me and tossed my body somewhere convenient. It never fails to freak the housemates out, especially the girly one who makes me watch those movies with her every day.

Another thing I do to pass the time is eating. Normally my food is bland and even the water I drink liberally does little to help me choke it down. Sometimes, though, people buy me cookies or give me chips. I love snack food. Once in a blue moon I’m caught by the urge to thieve food, just for the fun of it. I’ve stolen meat, cheese, cookies and even a whole salami sandwich once. American cheese tastes funny.

More than stealing, though, I love manipulating people into giving me what they’re eating. It’s so much more fun to wander around the house, following people as they make their lunches or dinners or snacks and harassing them until they cave. One of my most successful techniques is to sit at the top of the steps and stare at them until they cannot ignore me any longer. That usually yields some decent results.

Sometimes, though, I end up with food I don’t like. Those are the times I really wish I hadn’t begged, but usually I just throw the nasty stuff on the floor and someone takes care of it for me. It makes me feel like a celebrity. Some of the foods I’ve manipulated people into giving me that I don’t like are cucumbers, raw mushrooms, zucchini and dill pickles. If it’s green, cold and crisp I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like it at this point.

Just give me your Sun Chips instead.

Room to Write - "The 'D' Word"

Today write about discipline... Or, you can follow one of your characters through the process of dealing with an aspect of discipline.

I think perhaps I did this one a little closer to spec.

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Today was the day that Natalie finally admitted to herself that she lacked discipline. It was that morning, while brewing coffee to take to work with her, that she could no longer ignore it or blow it off.

It was staring her right in the face. Her countertop was so cluttered she couldn’t get to the paper towels she needed to clean up the coffee overflow (she’d used two filters again, damnit) before it cascaded onto the floor.

Now she was going to be late. This was the second time this week, and she had an evaluation coming up.

As she scrambled to clear the way to the towels, she banged her knee on the bread drawer she often forgot to close. She howled and dropped to the floor, bumping her head against the overflowing garbage can. Bits of last night’s taco salad, which she never could finish, jumped out of the open bin and came to rest atop her head.

She did the first thing that came to her. Natalie let out a string of expletives. Then she started to cry.

This was it. No more. The days of being a slow were over. She’d organize everything, toss out what wasn’t needed, pare her belongings down to where she knew where everything was. She’d even make a cleaning schedule, and she’d stick to it.

She’d start it tomorrow, for sure.

Room to Write - "Eat It"

Today write only through your sense of taste. Speculate on and imagine the taste of whatever surrounds you. Without necessarily writing about food, experience the world as flavors.

I’m not sure I went about this exactly as instructed.

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My flavor is bitter, spicy and smoky, permeated completely by the tea that flows through me. When I’m angry I become as bitter as an early spring crabapple, as hard and inedible as a cold, rough stone laying in someone’s driveway.

Full of happiness, I am as smooth, creamy and sweet as the finest chocolate ganache. I flow over the lips and tongue with little to no resistance, forming a brilliant symbiotic pleasure.

Those times are few and far between, however. For the most part I am lukewarm and full of quiet smoke, a fine Formosa oolong in a chipped cup. You can pour me full of sugar, but that only serves to mask my true nature.

Writing Exercises

For quite some time I’ve been conjuring up my own writing exercise ideas, things that I call my “1000+ exercises” simply because I force myself to follow the idea to the one thousand word mark and beyond. Many of these have become short stories, some better than others, and it’s for this reason that I’ve generally kept the ideas to myself.

However, I’ve been reading some writers’ books lately (most notably Room to Write) and in them there are many suggestions for story fragments, character studies, essays and simple ideas that get the creative juices flowing but do not necessarily end up with the creation of a salable story.

From here on out, I think I will be typing these up and posting them on this blog. I think I would really enjoy throwing things out for people to read and even share their own ideas, so long as there is anyone still reading this blog. It lays dormant for long periods of time, and for that I apologize.

Today I’ve done two exercises, short ones, and I hope to have them up shortly.

Where Have I Been All This Time?

No, I'm not dead. I've just slacked off somewhat. A terrible shame on me.
 
Over the last couple weeks I've found myself caught up in house cleaning, video game playing, exercising and reading the Murakami novels I hadn't gotten around to yet. I'm still about 15 books shy of my goal in the 50 Book Challenge, and I'd like to have most of that done by November before embarking on my second NaNoWriMo project.
 
I have written a few more small chapters for Rain and a few 1000+ Words exercises, just to flex the writing muscles once in a while. I suppose if I honestly don't want them to atrophy I'll have to use them more. I'm a bit ashamed of myself at the moment. Something that makes me so completely happy and fulfilled should be a bit higher up on my list of priorities. At least now, though, I have an orderly area in which to work, rather than that sty of a bedroom I used to spend all my time in. It took several days to get it to where I wanted it, and now that it's clean and organized I'm amazed at the amount of space I have to work with.
 
I've come to the realization that without structure and organization I am nothing. I can't get anything accomplished if I allow myself total freedom. Without putting things in writing I can't remember my goals. So from now on I'll have to go back to making daily To-Do lists, including both my household chores and my writing ideas. I'd ideally like to write a chapter of Rain a day before the enthusiasm for the project wears off, but barring that I'd at least like to write one 1000+ Words exercise daily or every other day. The exercises I'd really like to share, maybe even post here, but since a few of them grew into full-fledged short stories (and some are even still out for submission) I don't know if I can do that or not.
 
For today, though, I think before I wind down mid-afternoon in preparation for sleep I'll get to reviewing and adding to Rain. It's a neat little story that I'd like to finish not only for myself but also for Eric, who has been waiting patiently for the next several chapters.

A Few New Rejections

“A Poor Self-Image” was recently rejected from Fail Better (www.failbetter.com) and “Cryptic Coloration” was sent back from Ideomancer (www.ideomancer.com).

Oh, well.

“A Poor Self-Image” may end up being too heavy-handed to sell, considering the message it’s pushing. I didn’t really want to tell the story like that, with a moral nicely baked in the center, but it was the only way I could write it that included everything I wanted. A rejected reflection only comes about from one of a few things, most of which are going to sound cheesy when put down in writing.

“Cryptic Coloration,” though, I’m very fond of. I can go back and read that any number of times. It was my first attempt at Magical Realism, and though there’s not much in the way of an exciting plot (and zero in the way of real conflict), I felt a sense of accomplishment when I finished it. It was a delight to write. Only now, during the submissions process, I’ve come to realize that this story really doesn’t meet any genre criteria. I might have to go the way of literary magazines to find a home for this one. It’s not horror at all, nor science fiction, and it could only be categorized as fantasy in the loosest of senses. Ideomancer requires a genre to pigeonhole the story in, and gives you a list to choose from, so I picked “slipstream.” I’m not even sure that was accurate, to be honest.

So now I have four or five stories I need to shop out again, and two I’m waiting on hearing back about still.

Back to the Post Office I go.