Creatively Writing...

Published At Last!

2011-11-07T21:53:00.000-05:00

It's taken awhile but I've taken the leap, or maybe it was just a small step, and written an article to be submitted to Associated Content which is part of the Yahoo! Contributor Network. Today I received word that it was accepted, and an offer was made and accepted. The article has been officially published. You can view it here.

The Outpost...Previous Blog

2011-11-01T01:49:00.000-04:00

I was just reviewing this blog and saw the post about being picked up in the military truck and can't believe I still remember this. It was actually from a dream I had and when I woke up I thought there was for sure a story in it somewhere. I just don't think I am the one to write the story. I do know that when the truck stopped at this outpost, it was out in some isolated desert-type area with a huge structure made of canvas and poles. Inside the main entrance was the main room that served as both a meeting hall and cafeteria. Beyond that were two main hallways with canvased rooms lining each side. Inside the rooms were bunks for us to sleep. We could choose which room and bunk we wanted as long as someone else didn't already have it. There were probably at least 100 such rooms and bathrooms were spaced between every ten or so rooms. We were all dressed in civilian clothing. No one there seemed to know why we were there or what would happen now that we were there. Once we were inside this outpost we were not allowed to go back outside. All we could see outside while exiting the truck was sand and dunes. There were no signs of life of any kind except for those of us leaving the trucks and entering this outpost.

How would you write this story?

Using Music as Your Muse...

2011-10-29T03:56:00.001-04:00

Have you ever used a song, either the music, or lyrics, or both, as your muse to write your next story? For instance, just tonight while trying to sleep I was awakened to hear Art Garfunkel singing "Break Away" and thought how the lyrics of that song kind of told a story. But not enough of a story. The lyrics of this song would be a great starting point for us to write short stories, or maybe even a whole novel about.

Off the same album is "My Little Town". Not that song begs us to write the story. Why did the boy feel this way about his hometown?

Well, that's what I woke up with tonight. It seems I am having too much trouble with the typing to actually write any stories tonight as my sleep medications are saying it's time to get back to sleep. But tomorrow when I am awake, there just might be a story waiting to be written from one or both of these songs. What will you do with them?

More Writing Prompts, Etc.

2011-10-27T02:35:00.001-04:00

The Write Prompts--Writing Prompts Squidoo Lens chock full of writing prompts.

nanowrimo-tips Squidoo Lens with ideas for National Novel Writing Month. Write a novel in November.

Writer's Notebook Squidoo Lens to encourage keeping a notebook for all your writing ideas and more.

Generating Ideas Squidoo Lens about how to generate ideas for your next writing project.

This is So Sad

2010-12-14T03:52:00.002-05:00

Looking at this is so sad. I've all but abandoned my blogs, as well as my writing. Somehow I have to pick myself up and start writing again--at least blogging if nothing else. The spark is still in there somewhere. The question is, how to get it to ignite the rest of me into action with my writing. As short as this post is, hopefully, maybe this will be at least a small start. At least I haven't totally given it up, right?

A New Writing Prompt

2009-05-20T15:17:00.002-04:00

You have just been picked up in a military truck, and riding away with others who were picked up at various locations, you wonder what your future holds in store. The truck arrives at an outpost in an area you didn't even know existed before.

Questions to be answered:

Who are you?
Why were you picked up?
Where are you?
What is your purpose in being there?
How long will you be there?
When will you know what is going on?

Write a short story or if you feel it is possible, a novel about this incident and what it is leading up to.

Today's Prompt

2008-09-25T22:14:00.001-04:00

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” - Jack London

Today's prompt is to write about what inspires you to write. If you want to add what blocks your writing, you may do so also. But try to put more of the focus on the inspiration side of things to keep you focused on the positive. Write as little or as much as you want to with this one.

New Writing Prompt

2008-08-04T22:13:00.002-04:00

Here is today's writing prompt found from http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/ .

In 200 words, describe a hot day.

Hot days come in various flavors. Flavors, you may ask? Well it is the only word that came to mind just then. Maybe it is because hot days tend to make things melt. Especially good things like chocolate, ice cream, butter, and other things of flavor. And what melts and how fast depends on just how hot of a day it is, whether there is air conditioning or whether the melting item is in the full sun or slightly cooler shade.
Thinking of air conditioning and that I don't have it where I live always makes me think of my mom when I was a child and we lived in a mobile home then as I do now. Why doesn't the heat seem to bother children? I just remember my mom stripping down to her slip when she came home from work and doing her daily activities only partially dressed because it was just too hot to do otherwise. She always had all the windows opened and a fan sitting at the front door to suck in fresh air.
What do I do on those terribly hot days when it is unbearable inside without air conditioning in this tin can I live in? Not what my mom did. I am too bashful for that. But I get my shirts wet with cool water and let the fans blow the fresh air on me. That cools me off for the most part. However, sometimes that just isn't enough. Hot here begins at around 80 degrees if the sun is shining brightly and progresses to anything higher than that. Sometimes using ice packs I keep in the freezer for this purpose are the only things that help. Those and a cool shower or bath. I save those for when the sun is about ready to go down and I can stay cool for the rest of the evening until the next day when the sun gets high in the sky again.
This also makes me wonder how our ancestors ever managed in this heat. Too bad I can't ask them for tips.

A New Writing Prompt

2008-07-29T23:34:00.002-04:00

Today I am taking the writing prompt from the first line of a famous book...George Orwell's 1984. Whether you have read this book or not is not important to this prompt. Take the first line and write your own following lines. What will you come up with?

This is the line: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

This is the first prompt I have given you in awhile. My experiment is not going so well at the moment. I think my brain is being fried in this summertime heat in my mobile home. But here is the prompt for you to work on. I can't think of anything right now except if I saw the clocks striking thirteen, I think I might want to go back to bed and hopefully wake back up in the real world again.

Creatively Wordle

2008-07-22T23:01:00.004-04:00

Wordle? Yep, that's right. You can find it at http://wordle.net and it is a lot of fun. Just take any grouping of text, a URL, or other option listed on the site, and you can watch as it creates amazing word art from your words. In just seconds, even! Give it a try. Below is one of the creations it made from this blog. You can check all my other blogs to see what it did with each of them.

Creativity On Break

2008-07-13T23:44:00.002-04:00

If you have spent any time recently on my other blogs you may have read about the death of my son-in-law a little over a month ago...in fact, the day after my last post. I have found it very difficult to come back to blogging, and especially to being creative. In fact, tonight as I was looking at some other blogs, and decided to check this one out, I remembered the first post here about the empty glass. Of course, that was off the top of my head...and was about a young boy and his mother. But how freaky is that? Just a few days later, just over a week, my son-in-law dies. After spending most of three weeks with my daughter and grandson so she wouldn't have to be alone during that difficult time, I can't help thinking, what kinds of things is she coming across that is bringing up those kinds of thoughts and memories? On the surface she is showing her strong side. Yesterday, just a comment from a child, another of my grandchildren, brought out the pain all over again.
Creativity is going to be on break for a little while longer, I think...

Writer's Prompt Website

2008-06-06T19:17:00.004-04:00

Just a quick post for right now. A friend sent me this link. Here is a chance to get some good writing prompts to follow. Give it a try. Just keep clicking on the refresh button under the prompt and it will give you a new one.

http://www.archetypewriting.com/muse/generators/plot.htm

New Lens Tonight

2008-06-01T00:51:00.002-04:00

Check out my new lens to go hand-in-hand with this blog. This is the first lens I have made that I am happy with just starting out. I will be adding to it down the road, of course, but I like where it is going right now.

http://www.squidoo.com/creativelycapirani

Writing Prompt #3

2008-05-31T22:56:00.002-04:00

This prompt came out of my own brain. Imagine that! Actually I was working on another Squidoo lens about creative writing and I gave one of the modules the title having to do with taking a vacation or going to a writing paradise. It got me thinking of this prompt. So here goes...

Writing Prompt #3:

If you had all the money and time that you needed for an extended trip anywhere in the world, where would it be and what would you write about while you were there?

I would like to take a trip to a lot of different parts of the world. I would like to see the lands of my ancestors first. There I would hopefully be able to do some genealogical research and I would write about the information I found and the people I met. I would journal basically the entire trip about everything I saw and did in each place. The biggest part of the trip would be photography. You know they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
I would also like to go to the lands that my children's father came from so I could see it from a different perspective than I can only have now by seeing it on the internet or hearing others from there speak of it. My camera and my journal would be my closest companions on this part of the journey as well.
After those two trips, I would just like to visit anywhere that offers unique photo opportunities, beautiful landscapes, animals I have never seen before outside of a zoo or in pictures, waterfalls, forests, architecture, and people of course. Then I would journal about everything again.

When I got home and relaxed, then I would edit the photos and any videos I took. I would reread the journals. I would have a weath of information to build all kinds of writing on. Since I have not had that opportunity at this point, and don't have those pictures, journals, and memories, I don't know what I would actually write. But I do think at least one of the things I would write would have to be a travel article or book.

Tissue Paper

2008-05-30T00:07:00.000-04:00

The writing prompt I am using this post is also from www.creativewritingprompts.com and is as follows:

"List 10 things you can do with tissue paper.
Pick one from the list and write about it."

1. regular gift wrap
2. decorative stuffing inside a gift bag
3. tearing colored tissue paper into small pieces and using white glue thinned with water, brush onto glass bottles to make a stained glass effect.
4. wrap a boquet of flowers in to give to your favorite lady
5. blow your nose in--tissue paper is tissue paper, right?
6. use on your other end as needed--tissue paper is still tissue paper
7. make pretty paper flowers of all sizes
8. make larger items with the already made paper flowers
9. carefully push colored tissue paper into a bud vase and then fill with nice artificial flowers--or cut flowers as long as you don't push the paper down into the water.
10. crinkle it up into various size balls and dip in paint, then dab on objects or wall for unique effect.

In high school for prom, it was always the Junior class' responsibility to create the theme and plan the prom for both the Junior and Senior classes. When it was my class' turn to do this, our theme was American Pie...the song was American Pie by Don McClean. Of course this was back in the early 70's. I had learned how to make big tissue paper flowers and had taught some of my friends who took the idea further. Some made a huge full stage wooden frame with chicken wire over the entire thing. Others of us in the class had gone out and bought all the red, white, and blue tissue paper we could find anywhere and got together to make as many flowers as we could. Each flower was its own color, either red or white or blue, but not mixed. When the frame was finished and the flowers were finished, classmates gathered at the frame and twisty-tied all the flowers to the frame to make what ended up being a full stage size American flag. It was really cool. Extra flowers were used to decorate other areas of the gymnasium.

The Experiment Begins Today

2008-05-28T17:17:00.000-04:00

This blog is all about creative writing. This blog is about using writing prompts I find online and elsewhere, be it Writer's Digest Magazine ( www.writersdigest.com ) or other places. These past few days I have found several writing prompts online so I am going to try to choose one prompt a day at a minimum and come up with some kind of writing with that prompt. Maybe it will be a short story. Maybe it will be an essay, or a short memoir. Maybe it will be a poem. I have no idea what this experiment will end up with. What I am hoping it will do is bring this brain of mine back into thinking more creatively and see what I can actually do. I would appreciate your honest comments about what you read in these posts. Just remember that this blog is, as are all my other blogs, rated G and is safe for family viewing. If you post a comment that is offensive, it will not be published.
Be warned, I have a quirky mind sometimes, if not most of the time. So you can be sure that the writing prompts I choose will be quirky as well.

So...here goes...

Writing prompt #1:

"Write a story about an empty glass", (from www.creativewritingprompts.com )

There it sat on the end table. Empty. Once the glass was full. Once it held flavor. Taste. The glass had been sitting on that table for several days. It was hard to tell now what was originally in it. Was it milk? Was it fruit juice? Or was it just plain water? Now it was just dried up and dirty. It needed washed. It needed picked up and taken somewhere else where it would be taken care of. Cleaned up. Eventually refilled with something else having flavor and taste. Kara sat there in the dimness of the twilight staring at the empty glass. It was his glass. It was the last thing he had done before he walked out the door for the final time. She could barely see his fingerprints on the side and she could picture him sitting there drinking whatever it was he had been drinking. She couldn't remember that now, what he had been drinking. Why couldn't she remember? Hadn't she poured the glass for him and brought it to him?
Now she felt as empty as the glass. He was gone and he would never return. It was as though all the flavor of her own life had been drained from her just as the liquid had been drained from that glass on that last day. She couldn't bear to touch the empty glass, let alone carry it to the sink to be washed. It would wash away all his fingerprints and those were just about all she had left of him that was fresh. If she washed away his fingerprints it would be like burying him all over again and she just couldn't do it. Not yet anyway.
He liked Pepsi. Maybe that was what he had been drinking that day before he left for the game. He was late and he had to hurry to get to the ballpark before the coach penalized him for being late again. They said the sun must have been in his eyes and as he hurried toward the ballpark, he never saw the car coming at him from the right as he rode right out into the intersection without even slowing down. Death had come instantly. He didn't suffer. That's what they all told her. All she knew was that he would never be coming home again. How could she possibly wash that glass now?
Silently, a tear streaming down her cheek, she rose and walked to the other room. She couldn't look at the glass anymore today. Today the glass would sit there as it had been for the past week. Empty. Just like she was.