Room to Write - "Inside Out" and Write Brain Workbook - "Circle Game"

Room to Write’s prompt for exercise “Inside Out” - Describe a place impossible to enter; the center of an erupting volcano, the fifth dimension. Turn the experience inside out. Let your imagination float and anchor it to what is feasible.

See if you can guess what it is I’m describing.

---

It is dark like night, and understandably cold. I stand atop a crisp, flat expanse of land, dusky green but for the lines of silver shot through at precise, deliberate angles.

In the air I smell faint traces of ozone or other remnants of explosive reaction. There is a sense of active travel here, though not by human feet. It is the travel of tiny particles, through the ground and through the air, and a dry wind blows across my face from somewhere far away, bringing with it a volley of dust to fill my lungs and drop me to my knees, coughing.

I hear clicks and whirrs, piercing beeps and low, insectile buzzing. All the while, softly, as if halfway imagined, I hear a tap-tap-tapping, somewhere in the direction of the sky. Though it is a familiar sound, I cannot exactly place it, and the rhythm finds its way like a persistent worm into my ear and wraps itself around my brain.

So familiar, yet so alien. Almost as if a dream given life.

I hear voices, too, without a doubt human, though they are layered on top of one another like leaves in a wet pile. They stick together, become one lump, and then break apart at odd intervals. Some sing jingles, some scream, some are intertwined with instruments that shift and blend and distort. I am at a loss.

There is nothing here for me to lift, nothing to taste. It is all smooth, dark expanse interspersed with silver lines and ridged square bumps here and there. Occasionally small, round nodes stick up from the ground in geometric patterns like the avant garde artwork of an alien civilization. Still, something strikes me as familiar. Something I have seen before lurks here just below the surface, something so commonplace that it would make sense to forget it as thoroughly as I have. Something I may have seen or experienced a thousand times, ingrained into myself so that it only lurks now in the farthest recesses of my mind.

I turn my face heavenward, towards the rhythmic tapping, and realize. But it is impossible...

---

I picked up a neat new writing prompts book called The Write-Brain Workbook by Bonnie Neubauer. It’s a neat book, exceptionally creative, complete with full-color graphics and odd backgrounds for each page. It’s a bit like a more complex Mad Libs coupled with prompts taken from fiction workshops. The book is designed so that you can write directly on the page, but being the anal-retentive book archivist that I am I’ve been typing mine up. I’m still undecided on whether or not I’m going to go from the beginning to the end in order or if I’m going to bounce around in my typical fashion, but I have done the very first exercise. It’s called “Circle Game”

I had to pick one word each out of three sets of four-word options, and then use them in an exercise. My choices were exorcist, garage and keepsake. I had to start the exercise off with the line Sometimes I feel just like a gerbil, running around and around on his wheel!

---

Sometimes I feel just like a gerbil, running around and around on his wheel!

It took a few weeks for me to convince anyone to hire the exorcist. I'd found his advertisement in the back of one of those funny comics magazines, the ones that make fun of movies and tv shows. Like Mad or Cracked, only a little cheaper. The ad was a tiny black and white square, not much bigger than a postage stamp, and it had a headline in large block letters.

EDWIN MORVACK, EXORCIST, SPIRT DOCTOR AND SPECTRAL MEDIUM.

Whatever that meant. I wasn't sure. But ever since things started rearranging themselves in the garage when we left for the day, I knew an exorcist was something we could benefit from. I wasn't much concerned with the rest of the things he claimed he could do, so long as he could put an end to the poltergeisting.

I called off sick from work, which wasn't really so much of a lie as it was a slight exaggeration. The goings-on had really done a number to my stomach, and even though relief was right around the corner I couldn't help but feel the white-hot jolts to my stomach. Please let this be over soon, I thought to myself as I picked up the phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the tiny ad.

There was a hiss and crackle as my phone connected to another somewhere out there in the universe. It ended abruptly as someone picked up, blissful silence followed by a soft, dry voice that sounded like it was crawling out from below me somewhere deep in the earth.

“Yes?” My ears had to strain to hear it completely.

“Um, yes, is-is-is this Edwin Morvack?”

“Yes, it is.” I could swear the voice was smiling, faintly.

“Um, well, yes, I found your ad in a magazine and I thought that you could help me.” There was no immediate reply, so I soldiered on, in rapid and horribly nervous fashion. “Okay, well, I have a poltergeist in my garage. Well, I'm fairly sure it's a poltergeist. It destroyed an heirloom mirror my great-grandmother bought when she'd first been married, and then tore the legs off a vanity dresser that belonged to my grandmother. It's shuffled some other stuff around, here and there, but I haven't found anything else broken yet. I hear it start moving as soon as I leave the house but by the time I get back it's long gone.”

“I see.”

I waited. There was no other reply. “Well, um, yes, I was wondering if that was something your 'exorcist' expertise might cover. I'm really not well-versed in all of this spirit and ghost stuff, so I'm not sure I called the right person, but there aren't a whole lot of alternatives, you know?” I chucked self-consciously. “Is this something you think you might be - “

“I will be there in an hour,” the soft voice said. It felt like the smile had broken into a grin, but there was no evidence. The actual sound of it hadn't changed at all. And then, suddenly, my ear was full of the symphonic hissing that had preempted the call.

He'd be here, in an hour?

I hadn't told him where I lived.

---

I really need to make more time for writing exercises. I feel very accomplished when I finish one, and that sense of having done something worthwhile with my time can carry me throughout an entire day.

Exercises aside, I’d like to be spending more time as well on novel writing. Teahouse’s rough draft is completed and the first chapter (and request for beta readers for the entire work) will be released to Critters on April 29th. I’m hoping to receive some helpful feedback that way, though I’ve already identified several points in the novel where I need to add chapters to flesh out the characters. I’d like to expand the word count by thirty to fifty percent, if possible.

Rain has been a bit slower to progress, but it’s still somewhat of a back burner project and really always has been. I’m up to twenty-two shorter chapters with that one and will be resuming work on it in the next couple of weeks, after I’ve drawn up some ideas for additional Teahouse material. Two of my biggest personality flaws are my inability to remain organized and the flip-flop way I handle almost everything in my life. I flit back and forth from thing to thing like some sort of crazed bumblebee, and it takes me forever to get anything done. I’d really like to work on that a bit, maybe force myself to become more structured. I’d like to be able to actually see progress instead of having it come agonizingly slowly because I can’t pay attention to one solitary thing for more than two days straight.

1000+ Words "The Long Finger"

I wanted to do a short writing exercise on the concept of missing limbs after reading Max Barry’s “Machine Man.” Inspiration comes at the oddest times, and from the oddest places. I have a lot of fun with these exercises (and all writing exercises, really) because of their “no pressure” nature, and in the end I usually turn out something that is not only fun to create but isn’t hard on the eyes, either. If only the stuff I work on seriously was this easy, I may not be so stressed out all the time.



The Long Finger

It all begins the day I lose my finger.

I don't have that many memories about the accident, to be honest. I can remember the drive to work that leads up to it, the unscheduled stop at a fast-food place for a breakfast sandwich and the stop light I got stuck sitting at. I was in the lead, with several cars behind me. I can also remember a glimpse out of the corner of my eye at a box truck with Erotic Party Services painted in soft pastels on it gliding down the steep downtown hill towards the same light, from my left. I can remember pulling out into the intersection when the light turned green, but that's where it becomes fuzzy, as if someone is standing above it all with a bright halogen lamp, erasing details in a blinding white glare.

My memories return a few days later. My mother is there, dark bluish bags under her eyes, half-asleep in one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs that keep your back ramrod-straight. I immediately wish I am still asleep, because my roommate is cursing loudly and uncontrollably from behind the curtain that separates us. Later on my mother will tell me that the poor girl was in a crash not unlike mine, only involving a motorcycle and a Beetle (the new kind, not vintage) full of drunk college students, and she has some kind of neurological damage that causes her to drop the f-bomb loudly without realizing she's doing so.

I expect the worst, but most of the damage consists of scrapes along my face and torso. My car is gone. I'd just finished paying it off a few months prior and was so happy to have the title in my mini safe. Now, it is worthless.

It takes a few hours for me to realize there is something wrong. Nobody has pointed it out to me, not my mother, not the nurse who's checked my vitals several times. My doctor, I am sure, would have told me by now but he or she has not been in to see me just yet. Phantom sensations can cloud your perception, I am told, and this is why it has gone unnoticed by me for so long.

I am missing the pinky on my right hand. It is completely gone, sheared off where it meets the hand. Almost as if it never existed. I turn my hand over and over, examining from multiple angles, hoping I'm wrong, but knowing I'm not. The bandaging is wrapped tightly, and I can tell there is nothing there, despite feeling like there is.

I look at my mother, slightly irritated.

She sighs and looks away. She is afraid and unsure what to say to me.

* * *

My options are limited, and time narrows it down more. My doctor, a young eastern European woman with a faint accent and a neatly-upswept bun, tells me that I can live without a finger, wear a prosthesis or attempt a transplant. If I choose the latter, she tells me, I need to do so quickly. There is a viable finger available, but it needs to be transplanted now.

I am the impatient type. I am also the don't-second-guess-yourself type. I go with the transplant.

* * *

It is a success. I now have a new finger. It is slightly thinner than the others, and just a smidge longer. It is obviously a woman's finger. I wonder if they cross genders for limb and digit transplants. Looking at my own tiny girlish hands, I wonder what it would be like to have a thick, hairy pinkie sticking out at the end of my hand.

The days go by and I get to use the digit more and more. I am told not to strain it, or lift heavy objects. Just exercise it a bit, the doctor tells me. Her name is Doctor Elishka. I think she may be Russian. That could also be her first name. I'm not sure, and I never ask.

After a few weeks, everything besides my finger is healed completely. My face is unmarred, and the various cuts and scrapes on my body have faded. All that is left now is to learn to use my new digit. I call it my “long finger.”

This long finger is not so easily integrated with the rest of my hand. I find it difficult to control, stubborn, unwilling to move at my command. It is frustrating, because I've been under the impression that once it heals it will move as fluidly as the rest of my body, almost without notice.

This is not so.

I spend several hours a day grappling with my new finger, bending it to my will, forcing it to discontinue its habit of sticking out from my hand at an embarrassing angle. After a few days it seems sufficiently tamed, and I take it to the task of touching things and lifting small items. Everything seems to be working well enough.

A few weeks later, at breakfast, I idly scratch my eyelid with my long finger. It's not itchy, but I do it anyway. It's an old habit of mine, scratching my face gently while I'm daydreaming.

A few minutes later my eyelid begins to itch something fierce.

I wash my hands and try to stay away from the eyelid, but I end up rubbing until it's red and puffy. I spend the night trying to fall asleep only to be distracted by the soreness and persistent itching. By morning it has subsided enough to ignore for long stretches. I force myself not to touch it again.

The following day I am sitting idly at the kitchen table again. I have finished my morning tea and, on a whim, decide to test the strength of my new finger. This is the first time I will have picked up and held something with that finger alone.

I loop my new pinky through the handle of my light china teacup. It is a cheap imitation of a piece of formal tableware, and I am not too concerned about dropping it. It does not drop from my finger though, as my new digit is surprisingly strong. It is just like any other finger, I suppose, only it once did not belong to me. I have difficulties wrapping my head around this concept.

I watch in silence as the first crack on the handle forms, and then another, followed by several more. In the span of a few moments it appears as if a thousand tiny rivers have suddenly formed on the china's surface before it all crumbles apart. The cup lands on the carpeted floor below, intact save for the handle that has disintegrated into nothing.

Later on that same day, after showering, I am leaning in close to the mirror over the bathroom sink. I am scouring my face for blemishes and checking on my eyelid. All redness and swelling is gone from my eye, and it doesn't seem like I have anything on my face. As I wipe the steam that continues to form from the mirror's glass, I notice something odd. I pause, my hand still on the mirror.

Cracks. Tiny cracks. Radiating from the right side of my hand.

I pull away as the mirror spiderwebs into dozens of growing fractures, and I am halfway out of the room when the first glass piece falls from the mount on the wall. I run into the garage for a cardboard box, and as I put the pieces in and sweep up what is left with a hand broom I begin to wonder.

Call me superstitious, call me foolish and irrational, but now I feel I need to check.

I look all over my house and belongings to see if anything else is amiss. What else has this finger touched recently?

Several keys on the right hand side of my laptop keyboard are visibly warped.

The right-hand side of my car's steering wheel cover, the one with the flower petals embroidered on it, is unraveling and shredding in several small places.

The very end of my toothbrush appears to be melting, as is the very end of my hairbrush.

It seems to be too much to be coincidence, but too little to be panic-worthy. I begin a small series of tests to confirm the impossible. I run my hand over several things, waiting to see what happens.

I grab a coffee cup and, once again, it falls apart. I move on to flatware, and several pieces lose their luster and appear as if being held under a flame as I run my long finger over them.

I rest my hand on the front door and a small, barely noticeable scorch mark appears. It could almost be mistaken for a natural darkness in the wood if viewed by someone else.

I go out on the porch and run one final test. A few years before I quit smoking, I made several ashtrays in a pottery workshop I attended once a week. I still have one, and it sits outside atop my patio table. It is grey and black and has a flat, glossy surface. It is the largest ashtray I made in the class.

I extend my long finger and draw two perpendicular lines across the ashtray. For a moment, there is nothing, and then it shivers, extending tiny cracks along my imaginary lines, finally falling apart into four dusty pieces.

I go in the house and wrap my hand in a thick bandage. I am shaking, nervous, excited. Mostly I am afraid, afraid of where this finger may have come from and what I will find when I ask. I am also afraid Doctor Elishka will refuse to tell me anything, or that I will have to have the finger removed. Not being able to touch something without damaging it is frightening. It makes me feel isolated. I am now worried about my ability to return to work or live a normal life. Many things flash through my mind, few of them positive.

I sit at my kitchen table, my phone in my awkward left hand, and dial the hospital.

The Writer's Little Helper - "The Nugget"

In forty words or so, write down what your novel is about.
 
In the Teahouse
Horror/Dark Fantasy
 
A young woman watches as her friends commit suicide for unknown reasons, suspicious of a teahouse they had been celebrating in shortly before. She must find out why her friends are dying or face the spontaneous urge of self-destruction herself.
 

Forty words exactly. Not too bad.

1000+ Words "Techonology"

This was another Eric-suggested exercise that exceeded expectations. “What about a ghost that can communicate only with technology? What if it can only appear as glitches in electronics?”

I took the idea and ran with it, though in a slightly skewed direction, and came up with a 1,800-word short I’m calling, simply, “Hello.” The ghost doesn’t show up as glitches, exactly. It does use electronic hardware as a way of getting their message across, though.

I wasn’t too thrilled when I started writing this. It really had the feel of a story that I’d end up abandoning halfway through. I used to write a lot of those. I’d come up with an idea, write out what I’d thought through (which was only about the first half of the story) and when it came time to flesh it out and finish it I’d balk. My idea would feel very stale to me, not worth spending time on, and I’d scrap it. Up until recently I’d probably write three or four of these half-stories for every one I’d actually finish.

Lately, though, I’ve been finishing more and more of my stories. In fact, most of what I start out writing simply for exercise ends up longer than I’d expected starting out. It’s a glad reversal, for me, and I feel like writing every day now. I no longer feel anxiety at having to come up with a new idea. Granted, not all my ideas end up panning out, but once I’ve committed to putting something onto paper I don’t feel a lack of inspiration anymore. In his book Writing Short Fiction, Damon Knight called the subconscious mind, the part of your brain that floats ideas up to the surface, Fred. Having a dialogue with Fred meant sending ideas or thoughts into the subconscious and accepting what was given back to you. The more you talk to Fred and use what he gives you, Knight explained, the more ideas you’ll end up receiving.

It seems like Fred’s been working overtime lately, and I really appreciate it.

1000+ Words "Baking"

I asked Eric for story ideas today. Occasionally I’ll go to him for inspiration and he’ll come up with a theme for me that ends up working well. Since I made cupcakes this morning and took photos and posted them to my Livejournal, he suggested I try a writing exercise with a baking theme.

What I ended up two hours later is a 3,125-word short story titled (for the time being, at least) “The Scavenger Girls,” and it really only has a slight involvement in the flour and sugar arts. It’s another ghost story. I can’t stop writing them. It’s a horrible, possibly fatal, affliction at this point.

Always the ghost stories, and always the tragic suicides. I can’t divorce myself from them, and at this point I’m not even sure I want to anymore.

At this point, I’d like to write anywhere from three to five more shorts this month. After that I’ll become serious about NaNo and my “month-long writing exercise,” and when I fill my daily quota on that project I can stop and busy myself with edits for the stories I’ve written. I’ve written four this month so far and there are several from last year I think I could reread and make a bit better.

1000+ Words "Unoccupied Apartment"

Write 1000 or more words describing an empty apartment and what can be found inside. I ended up with another somewhat pleasing short story, this one 2.640 words in length. This one is titled “My Neighbor’s Apartment.” I think I’m slipping in the story titling department as of late. My titles keep coming out bland.

There’s something about Autumn that turbocharges my fiction-writing initiative. Last year I wrote four or five short stories in October and November, and this year I’ve written three in a week. Granted, not all of them are going to see the light of day (what writer has a 100% publication rate?) but they’re fun to write and make for great exercises. Plus, each new story adds an entry to the body of my work as a whole, which makes me happy. I like to see my collection of stories grow, even if they haven’t been published and possibly never will. There’s a little fragmented piece of me in each and every one of them.

Despite NaNo season coming up in three weeks, I dusted off my old copy of Damon Knight’s book “Creating Short Fiction” today for a reread. It’s a great book, full of ideas, charts, writing samples, exercises, you name it. Despite being 27 years old, it’s still one of the best books on the subject I’ve found.

1000+ Words "Street at Night"

Yesterday I assigned myself an off-the-cuff idea. Describe a street at night and what waits at the end of it. An hour later I had a rough 1,700-word short story that I edited and polished into a somewhat pleasing little piece I’m calling “Humidity at Night.” Since it has a very concrete beginning, middle and end I’m not going to reproduce it here. I just want to give an update so I can prove to anyone reading (and myself, really) that I’m not slacking off. I am still writing.

It’s just going way better at the moment than I’d expected, and I’m keeping more of it to myself than I thought I would.

I’m still not sold on the title “Humidity at Night,” though. It seems a little generic to me.

Funny Observation

I did another Room to Write exercise today, “Rantings and Ravens,” but I ended up with a 1,200-word short story that really pleases me. I’m not putting it up here just yet, in the off chance I may be able to use it somewhere. For the time being I’ve named it “Curious Morning.”

I wrote it in the first person and kept the protagonist rather vague, not for any concrete reason but because it was intended to be nothing more than a short writing exercise. However, I had in my mind a picture of a woman while I wrote it, probably because I am a woman.

When Eric read it, he saw the protagonist as male. Funny how we inject a little piece of ourselves into the things we read (and write).

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.

---

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


---

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.

---

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.

----

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.