Writing Prompt #6: For Tomorrow We Die

You may be asking yourself where my writing prompts have been these past few weeks.  Or you may not.  Because you probably don't care.  But if you do, then let me explain.  I've been stuck in a well.  I know.  It sounds unlikely.  But seriously.  Wells are super slippery and and once you fall in one, it's hard to get out.  Especially when Lassie isn't around.  And there are no more buckets on ropes.  And that scary brunette girl with the wet nightgown won't have any of you leaving.

But I'm back.  And only slightly damp from the entire thing.

Writing Prompt #6: For Tomorrow We Die

Don't panic.  We aren't literally going to die tomorrow.  Well, some of us might.  I hope not.  But that's life for you.

So, in a semi-famous work known as THE BIBLE, Paul says, "Let's eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die."  Killer line.  Pithy and appropriate on so many levels...

Let's all do a "fill-in-the-blank," shall we?  The task is to come up with our own dialogue excusing our wild excesses and wanton actions, followed up by the latter part of the line, "...for tomorrow we die".  I suppose it could be something tame, like, "I think we better put on clean underwear, for tomorrow we die."  Apparently dying in dirty undies is a major point of anxiety for some people.  Not me.  But I've heard of it being worrisome.

Come up with something that needs to be done before biting the dust on the morrow.  Once you've got that, come up with a character that would speak this line in a story.  For example, the character that says, "I think we better put on clean underwear, for tomorrow we die," is a woman in her mid-fifties that wears curlers to bed, feeds her cats raw ground beef and touches her chest every time she talks to a man younger than her.  Her name is Linda.  She is a Cancerian.

Okay, got the line and the character?  Do you like them?  Do you really like them?  Well then give them a world to play in.  Maybe even let them live past tomorrow.  Or not.  But get the story done today, for tomorrow WE DIE.

And all come back as zombies.    

Writing Prompt #5: Body Parts Like Something Something

And away we gooooooooooo!!!

Writing Prompt #5

No matter who or what our characters are, no matter if they're alien or human or little shiny toasters, we have to give our readers some descriptors on what our heroes and villains look like. Thing is, a lot of writers (and I'm counting myself in this group as well) fall back on the typical physical targets for our cliche metaphors and similes. We tend to talk about the hair, the mouth, the eyes. I'm just going to go ahead and say that if we never again read about eyes described as pools of water we'll all probably have better lives. And live longer. And have awesome sex.

Seriously. Let's stretch that descriptor muscle (Um, this could be one of the physical body parts worthy of describing...). What about the earlobes? What about the shape of the moles up your heroine's inner wrist? What about the strange, stunted nub on the Tractyl Minister from Alpha-574?

Here's the deal: Dream up a character and write a paragraph describing their physical condition without resorting to the boring standbys of lips as red as blood or biceps bulging out of a ringer tee. Characters have more body parts than that. I swear I've seen more than eyes, noses and lips on people (though those might be the only parts of a Tractyl. I can't readily say.). Pick some of the other body parts and work on describing them with substance and attention to physical detail. It's sure to make your writing more dynamic and unique. Or at the very least, it'll wake up readers when you wax poetic about webbed toes and goiters.

Writing Prompt #4: Four Letter Words

Last Monday I was sick so there wasn't a writing prompt. I bet you missed having one. So I'm giving you one about swearing to make up for my absence. Hooray!

Writing Prompt #4

Swear words add a lot to writing. And life. And they're fun. A lot of them are four letters in length. This apparently has a lot to do with the Anglo-Saxons conquering the isle of Albion. So not only did they bring over a taste for sauerkraut (honestly, this is probably not even true) but they also brought over rocking things to scream out when you stub your toes.

Today we're going to create our own four letter word. The rules are simple. First, it needs to be four letters. Second, it needs to mean something naughty. You can do the first thing first or the second thing first. You can come up with some sordid definition and then produce the word or come up with a word like larm and then decide what exactly that means.

Then SHARE! I know there are those of you out there they actually do my writing prompts. And honestly, I need some new four letter words. I'm really exhausting all the ones I already have in my arsenal.

Happy swearing!

You Will Be Rejected!

I'm on my second book. I have a 160,000 word first book waiting for a very thorough edit. I have some short stories I'd like to shop around and one that needs to get the last 3,000 or so words plopped on it to make worth something. I've been writing poetry; it's a lot of emotional, diction play. I'm doing my damnedest to blog.

I'm writing. Sort of.

But I've also been thinking lately about taking that plunge into publishing. Gasp! Eek! Yeah. I do those two things all the time. Because from what I understand, the odds of me getting my work published are close to the odds of me spontaneously looking down between my legs and discovering I've become a man.

Okay, maybe the odds aren't that much against my favor, but they ain't looking too good neither.

I've been reading books on how to get published. Man, there are a lot books on how to get published. I think my odds of getting published would skyrocket if I would just write a book about how to get books published. Except then people would be all, "So what have you published." And I'd be all, "I've published this book on how to publish books."

Besides, I'm not really into nonfiction writing. My fantasy worlds are vastly more interesting than my own relative reality.

The book I'm currently reading is titled, 77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected. I'm sort of mad at the book, because honestly I haven't even submitted a book for rejection yet, but apparently its already happened. It's been rejected. I guess this book is saving me having to go to all the trouble of actually trying to get published. Okay, no, this book is helping me be lazier. Thanks book.

I actually dig the book. I really do. Except for the little fact that according to the author, Mike Nappa (a dude that has written more than this one book on how to publish books), if an editor runs out of detangler for their unmanageable hair the day your book proposal comes through their inbox you're pretty much screwed. Or if you bore them with your title. Or if the VP of Marketing thinks that your unsellable because you don't have 3000 friends on Facebook and an in with Oprah.

Sad thing is, Mike Nappa, you're probably right.

So I've got to get a plan, dear readers. I've got to have a bomb story, perfect grammar and spelling, proper etiquette, a million social media friends, be best friends with Paris Hilton (oh God...), have a plot that fits into the current trends but doesn't fit the current trends TOO much, develop a "sales" history, do the editors job before they even lay hands on my manuscript, and become perfect.

And THEN my book will only be rejected if one of the gatekeepers stepped in dog crap that morning or just doesn't like my name. Erica Crockett? What kind of name is that, they'll think. And then the rubber stamp with the red ink will come down on the paper. REJECTED! (I bet that stamp exists and someone out there uses it on newbie writers...)

Or I'll just write what I like, tell the stories that matter to me, do what I do, so to speak, and then see what's shaking with those powers that be once I'm ready to roll. And maybe, just maybe, someone will say, "hey, this ain't too bad" (yes, this editor will use the word ain't) and I'll see my stuff somewhere besides my laptop screen.

It could happen. I'm willing to bet it might even happen before I spontaneously change genders. Oh, damn. I'm feeling lucky.

Writing Prompt #3; Add To Those Verbs, Yo

Yes, it is Monday again. I know. Wild. Let's get to it.

Writing Prompt #3

Grammar lesson! Whoo! Who knows what an adverb is? Anyone? I bet you do, even if the definition is somewhere in a section of brain you use to store memories about things like winning Scrabble words or what color your hair was when you were five.

An adverb modifies a verb or another adverb. They basically make things a little zestier or a little clearer when it comes to action, time, etc. Or they basically make things clunkier and more verbose when it comes to action, time, etc.

So, to use adverbs or not use adverbs? Style, my friends.

You're going to write two versions of the same story (and the story can be a paragraph. I'm not that much of a slave driver to make you do excessive work...). In the first one, slather on the adverbs. Have all the actions done "quickly" or "later" or whatever. Load those adverbs on. In the second one, take them out. Instead of using lots of adverbs, keep your writing close to the basics. If you want some flavor, really dig for a clever verb instead of adverbs to jazz it up (ie: choose "sprint" over "run").

Take stock of your stories. Which do you like more? Do you think the best one is the one you haven't written yet? A third version that runs the middle on adverb use? Or are you into verbage or are you all about the bare bones?

Hope this helps in clarifying your own writing style.

Writing Prompt #2: Parts

It's Monday again. Wow, that seems to happen about every week or so...which means another writing prompt! Yeah!

Writing Prompt #2

Let's consider the concept of parts and the concept of things in wholeness. For instance, think of a flower, say, jasmine. I adore jasmine. I like everything about it: the way it blooms at night, the tone of pink underlying its white color, the way it smells warm almost to the point of being overly heady in its perfume. I like the whole jasmine. But let's go ahead and pull the flower apart. What's the part of the entire experience of "jasmine" that I enjoy the most? Is it the softness of the petals? The strong, spindly stems?

Pick a concept/thing/being you love or a least like (ie: Magic markers, a beautiful woman, your first apartment, cocaine) and break it down into parts. And while you may truly dig all the parts, just pick one part to focus on, the one part that when you pull it up and out of the whole it makes you go "ah", makes you feel a little zap in your brain or gut or heart or junk.

Have that part? Good. Now write about it in a form of worship and love and adoration. Put that part on a pedestal. Decorate it with laurels and ribbon. Write about why it's the part that makes the whole something more, something amazing. Praise the cherry on top and write about why, without that cherry, it wouldn't be a whole dessert.

Good writing.

What's Left

We live, and while we live, we have discernible impact. One of the things I adore about writing is the way it survives past the years we have in these shells, these inadequate husks. If we can put words to paper, and those words persist even after we are dust and those we loved are dust as well, a bit of our sparkle and soul remain here, on this planet, with new souls, ones we never got to meet. But maybe they get to meet us, through writing.

I want to be remembered for my stories. But what if all that survives is one of my grocery lists scrawled in shaky block letters? What if it's one of my poems written during a time of angst? Will my written aftershocks only give clue to what sort of vegetables I liked or make me seem like a bitter wretch?

Do I care? Does it count all the same if just a little bit of me stays in the physical world?

When I was a teacher, I had a student named Yasin. He was a middle-aged Afghan that would come to class in his dress shirt and tell me stories of his daughter's impending wedding. He was unassuming but proud of his heritage and his rough and sad past. He often smelled of cooked rice and he worked in a factory that made protein bars.

Yasin died in a car accident a few years ago.

The last time I was substituting at my old job, filling in for one of the other teachers, I was closing down a computer when I noticed a file on the desktop that caught my eye. It's a piece that I prompted Yasin to write about five or six years ago. I'd like to share it with you, without any editing, just as he wrote it:

I am from Kabul Afghanistan.

I was born in Kabul on 01/01/1953. Kabul is a big city and the capitol of Afghanistan. The climate is similar to Boise. I have five brothers and three sisters that live there. My whole family lives in Kabul city. I was seven years old when I started school. When I was a child, Kabul had electricity, gas, drinking water, buses and T.V. Now it does not.

Kabul had parks, gardens, university, medical school, law school, engineering, and economics.

I lived in the center of Kabul. It is a very old part of the city. All the houses are very close together. Some times I would go up on the roof and fly my kite.

The area I lived in was called Barana.

M. Yasin Khaliki

I printed off his writing, folded it into quarters, took it home in my pocket. I read it over and over. I thought of Kabul, the Kabul Yasin must have known and how it's now gone, made to rubble. I thought of Yasin, that sweet man who would only accept the best venue in Boise for his daughter's reception, the man that struggled with pronouns, and how he's now gone.

But his writing remains. It's not much. But now it's off that singular, old computer at my old job, a computer that would be replaced or wiped sooner or later. Now it's on the Internet. I've shared his words and because I have, after death, a bit of the spark that was Yasin is living again. And it will for a long while yet.

Thanks for reading his words, however simple. Thanks for experiencing his reality in an Afghanistan decades in the past. Thanks for meeting him.