Jump Write In

As we approach the week in which we traditionally focus on gratitude and giving thanks, I thought it only appropriate to give a writing prompt on the topic. But I want to put a little twist on it. It is easy to make a list of things we take for granted;the air we breathe, the roof over our heads, our families, all those simple and obvious things in our life. Just for today, write a gratitude list for the difficult or hard times in your life, then pick one and write about it.  Have you ever had a situation come up in your life in which you thought there was no light at the end of the tunnel then, somehow, things turned around and you made it through to the other side.  How did that experience change your life for the better? What were the lessons learned during that time in your life; about yourself, the people in your life, and the world around you?

I write with gratitude for you, dear readers!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion

One of our most common superstitions is the belief that Friday the thirteenth is an unlucky day. Others include  a belief that you’ll have bad luck if a black cat runs across the road in front of you, walking under a ladder will bring bad luck, and if you break a mirror there will be seven years bad luck. The list goes on and on.  Do you believe in superstitions?   Do you have any superstitious beliefs you have created for yourself? For example, when I was in elementary school, I had a friend who was superstitious about always getting out of bed on the same side she got into it.  I am not sure why she believed it or what she thought would happen if she didn’t, but it was one of those quirky little things that kids do. She had gone so far as to push her bed up tight against one wall so she couldn’t get out of the “unlucky” side of the bed.

For your writing warm up today, write a story in which your character has a “quirky” superstition or belief about something. Did something happen to your character that created the strange belief or behavior?  How old is your character?   What does your character believe will happen if the superstition is carried out? How much does your character’s superstition affect his or her everyday life and relationships? (Remember, not all superstitions are negative in consequence.)

For you sci-fi writer’s out there, create a story in which an alien population has beliefs opposite of  some of ours? How do their superstitions affect the society and relationships on that planet?

Have fun!

Until next time,

Walk in Beauty, write life with passion!

After I graduated from college with my first bachelor’s degree I went to visit my mother in California.  Tears welled up in my eyes as she took me into her office and opened her keepsake trunk.  She gently pulled out a large, yellowed piece of paper and handed it to me.  When I unfolded it, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that what she had kept hidden away for many years was the first story I had ever written. After my visit, I took it home, had it carefully framed and it now hangs on my wall above my writing space, a constant reminder of my writing origins. When I wrote that story, I was six years old and had written most of my words the way they sounded:

Blackie flew on a tree. It was poysn ock. Blackie got etchus all ovir.

For today’s writing warm up, write about the first story you wrote. How old were you? What grade were you in? What was your teacher’s name?  Who was your best friend at the time? Rewrite the story now, adding more action, description and details to the story, OR write a story about the little boy or girl who wrote the story. Enjoy a walk down memory lane.

Have fun!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

Writing A Letter the old fashioned way can help release writers block

I have a confession to make. I have been fighting writers block for quite awhile now.  When I sit down to write, it feels as if my fingers are no longer attached to my hand, they just type on their own. It has felt as if there are no feelings or thoughts flowing from my brain and down through my fingers and onto the keyboard.  So early last week, as  I was typing an email to a friend, I suddenly thought about how much typing has dominated my life.  I suddenly felt a longing for my childhood days when I was writing a letter to a pen-pal in Yugoslavia, or to my brother’s friend who was serving in Viet Nam. I thought about the airmail stamp, of licking it and putting it on the airmail envelope then dropping the letter into the mailbox.  And then I thought about the the time I wrote a story in the sixth grade when I felt proud of my penmanship, and my wild imagination that took me to the planet X where I flew an X-15 rocket around the planet to the far side and saved the planet from destruction.  My inspiration back then was a brand new television show called Star Trek, and another show in which the Robinson Family continued to be “Lost in Space.”

So as I finished typing the email to my friend and clicked send, I vowed it would be my last personal email for one week.  For me, typing a letter has become a detachment from everything that is important to me.  In that moment I suddenly longed for the act of  writing. For my own sanity, I needed to get back to basics. I needed to hold a pen in my hand, put it to paper and form the letters that make the words to convey my feelings and thoughts to the recipient of my letter.

I posted my intentions to my wall on facebook. I made a declaration that for one week, my response to everyone who sends me personal emails will be a hand written letter from me.  “Yes, it will take longer”, I stated, “but I need to get in touch with my writer self again.”   I also requested they also include their mailing address, just to make sure I had the updated information.

Five of my friends responded to my post, sounding rather excited about receiving something in the mail that wasn’t a bill. When I sat down to write the first letter, I thought, “Why not encourage others to hand-write a letter as well?”  So I did.  In each letter I wrote, I included a blank stamped envelope on which I put their name and address in the return address corner. I asked them, in the letter, to use that envelope to hand-write a letter to someone they care about and include a blank stamped envelope in their letter, asking their  friend to do the same thing.  My dream is to get the whole country to hand-write one short letter. The cost is one stamp, two envelopes, and the paper on which to write their letter.  (No, I don’t work for the post office.) After this one week of hand-writing letters, I feel better.  I feel like I have reclaimed the writer within.  I found the part of me that had moved out of the way for the sake of technology.  For me, this past week has been a rebirth.

I know there are probably many of you shaking your head and saying, “What the heck is the big deal? I can type my feelings just as well as I can write them!”.  Perhaps others of you are stuck in a writer’s block mode right now, struggling to get in touch with the act of writing again. Why not try hand-writing a letter to a friend. You may find yourself experiencing an “aha” moment (along with a little writer’s cramp) as you put your pen to paper and discover that writing a letter for old time’s sake, is just what you needed to help you move forward with your story or poem. Write a letter to a friend about the first letter you ever wrote. How old were you when you wrote it? To whom was it written?  What was going on in your life at the time that you couldn’t wait to write the letter and tell that person all about i?

Have Fun!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

Did you ever have a pen pal?

What country did he or she live in?

Have you ever written a fan letter?

Timing is everything when writing a story with suspense and intrigue. For your writing warm up today, write a memoir or poem about a childhood experience in which you felt scared and excited both at the same time. Maybe it was the first time you used a ouija board, or took your first roller coaster ride,  or walked home at night through a graveyard.  Describe in detail what the fear and awe felt like. Did you have a lump in your throat, a dry throat, lose your voice, or scream loudly? Did your body shake, or did you run as fast as you could? Embelish the suspense, keep the reader on the edge of their seat as long as you can before concluding your story. Have fun!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

The names for our English days of the week are derived from Germanic, Norse, and Old English languages.  Some are named after Gods, and some from heavely bodies. Most cultures have their own names for the days of the week, created out of their own stories and myths, and some are numbered days such as day one, day two, or named for it’s meaning such as the day after work day.

For your writing warm up today, write a description of  an imaginary culture. You are an ancient story teller, passing down the wisdom of your culture to the next generation. You and your tribe are huddled around a fire on a chilly night. To pass the time, you are asked to tell the young ones the origin stories of your culture.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

What are the days of the week and how were they named in your imaginary culture?

What does your imaginary culture believe about how time began?

What are the spiritual beliefs and practices of your imaginary culture?

Are there holidays and how did they come into being?

Does your planet have seasons what are they called?

How were the seasons named?

After writing your story, gather some friends or a writing group and read it out loud. To challenge yourself further, memorize it and perform it for the group.

Have fun.

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

For today’s writing warm-up try writing a poem or short story about the letter T. Make every sentence begin with the letter T (and nix on using the word THE for every sentence).

Include the following words in your story:

Ti-pi       Tornado     Tonsils     Trip    Trapeze    Trick       Treat     Two

Twenty    Travis     Tina    Tan     Turtle     Tuesday     Touchdown     Troll

Tweet     Twister     Tank     Tulip     Tomato     Tootsie  Temper  Tommy

Halloween is coming.  It is the night when ancient cultures believed the veil between worlds becomes thinner.  Witches and ghouls, goblins and faeries, pixies and trolls run amok in our earthly realm, performing acts of mischief and leave chaos in their wake.  Halloween is a time for you, as writers, to pass through the veil of writing deadlines and proper grammar, release your imagination, put your pen to paper and let the magic flow.  Go ahead, release your inner critic, give it a day off and then allow yourself to free-write a halloween story just for fun.  Let it be full of magic and mischief,  mayhem and madness.

For today’s writing warm up, write a Halloween short story. For those of you who may need a little help getting started, I have provided some  lead in ideas below.

1. On a restless night when the moon was full they saw____________

2. Trixie the pixie knew she needed glasses when __________________

3.  The witch threw her______________

4. The gaggle of gueese heard the faerie shouting____________

5. The reluctant troll didn’t know_____

Going to the fair was always an exciting time for me when I was a child. I was fascinated with the glitter of the lights and the barkers calling out to the passing crowds.  I always avoided the rides where the excited screams and yells of the passengers warned me that it was not a ride for the faint-hearted.  For your writing warm up today, imagine an exciting amusement park for writers only.  Describe the rides that would make a person scream with delight and fear at the same time. Perhaps the buckets in the Ferris wheel are shaped like inkwells, and instead of an octopus ride there is a ride that takes you through a maze of  paperwork,  and the house of horrors is full of agents saying, “Needs more work. ” What type of games would one find along the midway? What are the barkers calling out to the crowds of writers as they pass along the way.  Create a character to attend the fair. What is his or her name and which rides would he or she be attracted to? Who would he or she meet along the way?

Use creative license and most of all HAVE FUN!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

Make a list. Everyone makes lists at one time or another: grocery lists, to-do lists, address lists, donor lists, goal lists and on and on it goes.  I was sitting at my computer the other day, trying to think of new things to write about writing (which can be more of a challenge than you think).  I suddenly remembered a few years ago, as I sat in my master’s program advisor’s office, lamenting my lack of ideas for a thesis topic. He said to me, “Write what you know.” So I sat down, made a list of my passions, my life experiences and various other personal thoughts. It was from that list I came up with my thesis idea and the rest is history.

Making lists has saved my bacon on many occasions and it is a journal writing technique from which other writing sessions can be generated. Making lists can be enlightening, helpful in organizing your thoughts, and therapeutic. I know one woman who made a list of reasons why she couldn’t sleep and discovered that, after “fear of fire” showed up several times on the list, she realized that she was living in an upstairs apartment for the first time and didn’t have an escape plan in case there was a fire.  She bought a drop-down ladder, drew herself a map of the apartment with all the possible escape routes, and bought a fire extinguisher. She said she slept like a baby after that.

In her book, Journal To The Self, author Kathleen Adams suggests making your list long; one hundred is a good round number.  By making a list this long, you can get past the immediate things on your mind and begin to tap into the subconscious, as was the case with the friend I mentioned above.  Making a list can also help generate more ideas when you feel a writer’s block coming on and it can help you organize your story plot or develop a character. The trick with writing a list a hundred items long is to write it in one sitting. Starting it and coming back to add more defeats the purpose of spontaneity and reaching the subconscious.

So here is your challenge for this morning: Number from one to a hundred down the side of a page and then write a list of one hundred things you can make a list of hundred about.

Here are a few to get you started:

1. reasons why I need a vacation

2. things I love to eat

3.  places I would like to visit

4. things that get me riled up

5. reasons I like being single/married

6. ways that I would spend a million dollars

7. topics to write about

8. things my main character is afraid of

9. things my main character wants to do before my story ends

10. unusual names I’ve heard

With this as a starter, you only have 90 more things to put on your list of 100. When you are finished with this list, take one of the topics each day and make your list of 100 about that topic, then choose one item off of that list and write for five or ten minutes on that one thing.  For example, tomorrow you can write your list of 100 reasons why I need a vacation, then choose an item off that list and write about it.

Have fun!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!