Write Anyway

Hello and happy Thursday Thirteen, all. As per usual, I will be giving you a list of thirteen prompts in all shapes and sizes. They could be a first line of dialogue, a plot idea, or something else. I hope you enjoy and pick and choose as you please.

If there are any other types of prompts that you would find useful, let me know anytime.

Have a great day.

1. “There’s gotta be something for me out there.”
2. Start a story with a song.
3. “I want to find my way back to you.”
4. Give one of your characters some personal thinking time.
5. Stuck in place? Try going back a paragraph or page and taking things from there to see if you can find a new direction.
6. “You suck. No, really. You suck.”
7. Read your work out loud.
8. Invite some friends over and cast them as voice actors for your characters.
9. “There’s something about the ocean. It makes me feel…”
10. Try going to a park or garden to do your writing.
11. Try writing a story in a genre you’ve never written in before.
12. A stranger comes to town…
13. “Life is like a big, fat, fuzzy caterpillar.”

Hello once again everyone!

Welcome to another mid-week random word bank. I rather like random word banks. There is a challenge in them that not only gets your mind working, but you can also end up with a scene that you didn’t know you had it in you to write.

I hope you find these word banks useful. If there is a type of prompt you would prefer to see, please let me know.

Remember, with all the words, you can use any form, any tense of the word. Eg. Laugh can be laugh, laughter, laughs, laughed.

For the first word bank, I don’t want you to write a short story or anything actually. What I want you to do is word association. For every word there, I want you to write the word and then write the first word that comes to your mind after.

For the second word bank, I do want you to write a short story (or something longer if you like) that incorporates this week’s theme. This round goes as usual; just include all of the words in the bank.

For the third word bank, it is something different yet again. I would like you to try your hand at writing a poem incorporating the words provided. (Don’t worry if you can’t quite use all the words; eight or nine is great!)

Enjoy!

First Word Bank
Website
Crystal
Apex
Train
Gasp
Pill
Comfort
Stone
Chocolate
Tear

Second Word Bank
Room
Heart
Guitar
Break
Appearance
Song
Girl
One
Secret
Silence

Third Word Bank
Soft
Weep
Whisper
White
Sweet
Go
Care
Flower
Long
Cloud

With my maternal instincts well and truly kicking in, I have babies and children on the brain for today’s contemplation.

Even though it’s something I’m feeling, I still find it hard to explain, this whole ‘maternal instinct’ thing. When I was younger, I never thought I’d be a mother. I didn’t think I had it in me. As I grew older, I didn’t have any hopes for marriage, so children wasn’t something I pondered on.

Now that I’m happily married and settled here in Australia, I’m thinking about starting a family. “Getting clucky” as they call it here. (Grumble.) While certain aspects of life aren’t exactly ideal for raising a child, the maternal instinct apparently couldn’t give a flying leap how much money you have in the bank or if you’re renting a place instead of own one.

Fun, fun!

Do you have children? Did you plan on having children or were/are him/her/they a surprise? What significant changes in your life happened upon becoming a parent (besides having a child)? Would you like to have more children?

If you don’t have children, do you want them? Why or why not?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity and a generous muse.

Hello and welcome back to another Musical Monday.

I decided to go the way of a variety of songs under one theme this week because I’ve had the idea to do a “Disney Classics” version of Musical Monday for a while now. I hope you like it and I hope you are reminded of your childhood (whether or not you actually saw the movies).

After all, when we were children, our imaginations knew no end…

To help this site load a bit faster, I’m tucking the videos after the more tag. Hopefully that will make things a bit easier.

Enjoy!

(more…)

There are so many things in my life that I am grateful for that it’s hard to sit down to write about it and know where to start.

There are the general things like basic necessities being provided, small cafes that provide free wireless for buying a coffee or five, and things like chocolate covered pretzels (that have taken me about two years to find here in Australia). Yes, I’m grateful for chocolate-covered pretzels.

I’m grateful for the internet for certain. The internet has brought me friends from around the world, the chance to express myself in anonymous ways, my work and, of course, my husband. Without the internet, I don’t know what life would be like for me today. I don’t like to think about it.

I’m grateful for handwritten mail just to me. That always makes my day bright.

Then there are the not-so-general things like being grateful for the chance to start a new life. I’m grateful for the love I have for my husband and the love I receive back from him. I’m grateful I can do what I love to do even though it means I make less than I would if I were employed outside the home.

I’m grateful for the people who don’t ask questions. I’m also grateful for the people who do.

I am most grateful for my husband. But, given how much I go on and on about him, somehow I don’t think you find that surprising. I won’t go on and on about him today because he knows how I feel. And so do I.

Friday, Friday, Friday. You come into my life and bring me joy only to leave so soon… Then you come back again!

Yeah, I know, I’m not thinking straight at the moment. I think I need a great big mug of coffee or something. Or a great big chai latte would be even better. If you haven’t tried one of those, you should.

Anyway… Enough babbling on.

Friday Fill-Ins 99

1. The last band I saw live was several country artists at a concert.
2. What I look forward to most on Christmas is giving pressies. (if you don’t celebrate thanksgiving, insert your favorite holiday)
3. My Christmas/holiday shopping is not something I’m thinking of at the moment.
4. Thoughts of where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going fill my head.
5. I wish I could wear a size 12 dress. Or a size 12 anything.
6. Bagpipes are a strange yet fitting addition to ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top if You Wanna Rock and Roll.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to turning off the computer and taking a nice, long, hot bath, tomorrow my plans include getting some cleaning done, groceries, etc and Sunday, I want to get even more cleaning done and relax some, too!

And there you have it. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. For once I don’t have anything scheduled plus my husband is home, so hopefully it’ll be a nice weekend for us both.

I will be back on Sunday with Sunday Scribblings. Until then…

Hello and happy Thursday Thirteen, all. As per usual, I will be giving you a list of thirteen prompts in all shapes and sizes. They could be a first line of dialogue, a plot idea, or something else. I hope you enjoy and pick and choose as you please.

If there are any other types of prompts that you would find useful, let me know anytime.

Have a great day.

1. “They weren’t after the money after all.”
2. Create a character who is a computer technician with a secret.
3. Go “YouTube surfing” and see what inspiration you can find among the millions of videos.
4. “It’s your decision.”
5. Pick a country to start researching. You never know what might inspire you.
6. You wake up in an airport restroom…
7. Your picture has been put on someone else’s criminal record.
8. “Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion.”
9. It’s said that criminals and cops are two halves of the same psychological profile; they just choose to go one way or another…
10. What would make you go insane?
11. “I’ve been looking over everything and I’m afraid you just don’t make the cut.”
12. Try shaking up your writing space by writing somewhere new.
13. You receive a phone call you never wanted to receive…

Hello once again everyone!

Welcome to another mid-week random word bank. I rather like random word banks. There is a challenge in them that not only gets your mind working, but you can also end up with a scene that you didn’t know you had it in you to write.

I hope you find these word banks useful. If there is a type of prompt you would prefer to see, please let me know.

Remember, with all the words, you can use any form, any tense of the word. Eg. Laugh can be laugh, laughter, laughs, laughed.

For the first word bank, I don’t want you to write a short story or anything actually. What I want you to do is word association. For every word there, I want you to write the word and then write the first word that comes to your mind after.

For the second word bank, I do want you to write a short story (or something longer if you like) that incorporates this week’s theme. This round goes as usual; just include all of the words in the bank.

For the third word bank, it is something different yet again. I would like you to try your hand at writing a poem incorporating the words provided. (Don’t worry if you can’t quite use all the words; eight or nine is great!)

Enjoy!

First Word Bank
Cling
Police
Signature
Cluck
Computer
Motorcycle
Transfer
Lawyer
Nasty
Remember

Second Word Bank
Listen
Brother
Purple
Work
Wolf
Date
One
Gut
Against
Story

Third Word Bank
Pride
Stop
Climb
Strength
Time
Grasp
Away
Day
Exhale
Glance

I find myself at a crossroads of sorts lately.

I work from home and make my income from the work I do online. I’m a professional blogger, virtual book tour coordinator and freelance writer. While I do make enough to pay my bills and occasionally have enough extra to afford a luxury, I could not live on my own and do what I’m doing.

It’s no big secret that my husband supports us. I take care of my bills from the US and he takes care of our lives over here. While he has made it clear that he is happy for me to work at home doing what I love and pursuing my dream (getting a novel published), I would be lying if I said me working outside the home wouldn’t make a difference for our finances.

We would be able to get to our goals faster. But it would mean giving up doing something I like. Thus the dilemma.

Today I would like you to think about the sacrifices you have made for the benefit of others as well as the sacrifices others have made for you. Were those sacrifices made gladly? Would you/they do it all over again?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity and a generous muse.

This weekend went too fast! I think we should get another day of weekend. Or maybe just give us all a week off. What do you think?

Pout, pout, pout.

Okay, now that’s out of my system… (Hehe.)

My friend Hawke gets the credit for introducing me to this week’s Musical Monday artist: Amanda Marshall

According to Wikipedia:

“Amanda Marshall (born August 29, 1972 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian pop-rock singer.

She grew up in Toronto in a biracial family to a Caucasian father and a Caribbean-Canadian mother. In several of her songs, Marshall has reflected on her racial identity “as a woman who looks white but is also half-black”.”

I hope you enjoy her music and find it inspirational for your writing.

Like I said, there are a lot more songs out there, so do some hunting! I hope you find this music inspirational.

If you have any suggestions for singers or bands you’d like to see featured, let me know in the comments. I won’t promise to put all selections up, but I do promise to take a look.

Take care.

This is a bit later than even I anticipated it to be - and that’s saying something because I’m pretty much always late - so you’ll have to forgive me. No virtual tomato-throwing, okay?

On to Sunday Scribbling 137 - Stranger

When I first saw the word ’stranger’, I thought the natural ’stranger as in a person I don’t know’. But immediately after that, I thought about the movie ‘Stranger than Fiction’. (I highly recommend it. Very funny - and a bit head-trippy if you’re a writer.) That naturally led me down the path of what it is like to live life as a writer…

I think writer’s lives are stranger than other people’s lives. Whether they realize it or not is another matter. And I’m not saying that non-writers can’t have strange lives as well; I’m painting broad strokes with a big brush for this one.

Writers notice things and, if nothing else prevents them, they play out different scenarios to everyday things. Say my morning bagel drops on the floor with the cream cheese side down. I don’t just curse and pick it up. As a writer, I think about reading the Bitter Butter Battle by Dr. Seuss. I then think about how weird it would be if something on my dirty floor reacted with the cream cheese giving it life. My bagel would then sprout cream cheese legs and wander off toward the pantry to liberate all its friends.

Don’t worry; I’ll stop now.

Writers’ lives may not be inherently different, but the way their minds work can make their lives stranger than ‘the usual’. Of course, it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

If a painter told me about wanting to paint every leaf on a tree to make a gigantic mosaic, I would consider that painter to be stranger than me…

It’s time to get back to Frank and Treasure as they wander through the world of new love. Or is it the world of love? You have to read to find out.

I quite like the word ‘intuitive’. It speaks of something more, something… slightly otherworldly that we know about but don’t completely understand.

Unfortunately, I’ve used it this time for evil rather than good. The good news is that this is probably my first 100 Words contribution that doesn’t include the actual word. Yes, I know. Quite special.

Intuitive

She looked away. She couldn’t lie. Not to him. He’d know.

~
Ouch. Trouble in paradise before paradise is even fully built. That has to hurt. It’s interesting to finally see that Treasure is human and has her own hang-ups and doubts about the world as well. This could be an interesting journey into her mind…

Or not. Who knows what my mood will be next time for the next edition. I guess we’ll just have to wait and find you.

Before I do anything else, I would like to welcome back Velvet Verbosity to 100 Words! She has been struggling for some time with personal things and had to take some time off from the meme. However, she is back in action and I am happy to once again play along with one of my favourite games.

Once again, we join Frank and Treasure who are discovering all kinds of interesting things about each other…

Resurrect

He could live again.

~
Ah, to find new, beautiful love. I’m quite happy for Frank. When I started writing for him, I had no idea that he would ever have a talent like painting, not to mention finding love from someone like Treasure. It’s always nice to see my characters figuring it all out…

But, being the evil author I am, I know I’m going to have to throw a wrench into that wonderfully working world. Would you like to try to guess what that wrench will be?

Woohoo! It’s Friday! I’m very thankful it’s Friday. I have been waiting for the end of this week all week. (How bad is that…) Anyway, it has been a decent week, but yeah. Time for my favourite Friday activity…

Friday Fill-In #98:

1. Please feel free to leave me a comment.
2. When I get a bouquet of flowers I can’t help sniffing it occasionally.
3. My favorite thing to cook is pretty much anything I haven’t cooked before. My favourite thing is experimenting with new things.
4. Sushi is something I can’t get enough of.
5. That’s the thing I love most about the world.
6. Some of the videos I see on the internet always make me think to myself, what the heck?
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit, tomorrow my plans include welcoming my husband back home and Sunday, I want to relax some more with my husband!

Yeah, my husband has been gone on a work trip since Tuesday and I am definitely looking forward to having him back home. I never like being separated from him, especially for more than one night. But, we do what we must and he must make trips to Tasmania for work.

Yeah, I’m kinda jealous, too. I’d love to go down there!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend full of wonderful weekend-y things. I’m sure I will, too. I will be back, as usual, on Sunday with Sunday Scribblings. (They might be a little late with all the ‘husband is home’ distractions.)

Hello and happy Thursday Thirteen, all. As per usual, I will be giving you a list of thirteen prompts in all shapes and sizes. They could be a first line of dialogue, a plot idea, or something else. I hope you enjoy and pick and choose as you please.

If there are any other types of prompts that you would find useful, let me know anytime.

Have a great day.

1. As a warm up, try writing some fan fiction for your favourite book/television show/video game.
2. “Kiss this.”
3. Write a poem from the perspective of one of your characters.
4. Create a character who has a strange habit/addiction/obsession.
5. “The first thing you need is a kick-ass opening line.”
6. Even if you feel like you don’t have any artistic talent, try drawing some of your characters.
7. Do some character profiling with things like their favourite foods, colours and music. The little things can help a lot with getting to know your characters.
8. Create some maps of the places your characters visit.
9. Write a story based on a song you hate.
10. “Do you ever get over yourself or is this a permanent affliction?”
11. Find inspiration for stories or plot twists by going blog surfing.
12. Try listening to some purely instrumental music for writing tunes.
13. “I can’t.”

Check out my other Thursday Thirteens on The Book Stacks and Fiction Scribe