So. A daily regimen of writing.
Yeah, I'm probably going to be rabbitting on about this for a number of entries. Also, I feel extra-wordy today. Be warned.
I'd like to write seriously, you see. I have what I feel are novel-worthy ideas. But I must, must, must write everyday if I’m going to get into shape to eventually sit down and stretch these ideas into actual books. Books with plots and exposition and character development and all that other cool junk that makes people truly want to read what I write. Also to possibly make a bit of a decent income so I can fulfill my other dream of becoming a semi-hermit that doesn’t have to go outside much and you know, be amongst the peoples. I love humanity. I don’t care for most people over much.
When I was a teen I kept a journal and out of my own little head came up with the idea of making a long list of things I thought were really neat and writing about them when my own geeky-massively introverted-awkwardly shy-hyperemotional days provided no interesting fodder. Which was way more often than you might think. Yes, I was a typical teen and sometimes poured out my angst on the page. But I also knew that most every other teen had angst to spare and angst was mostly boring. Gut-wrenching expose can be done well, but usually not by teens who have no real sense of structure and conclusion.
I thought I was very clever and innovative with this list of simple prompts. I had no idea this was a typical exercise for new writers to sharpen skills. This was long before the internet was available to the common masses of humanity, you see, back in the Iron Age of technology...the 1980's. If we wanted to look things up we went to the library. It just never occurred to me that there might be books that help you teach yourself to write. I figured that type of learning only happened in colleges.
I don't know who I thought was going to read these faltering proto-essays. Why write an a page and a half extolling the comforting virtues of a simple cup of tea if no one is going to read it? Hm. I just don't recall. That was twenty-five years ago. Maybe I didn't think anyone would read them. Well, no one will read them now. During my divorce in my mid-thirties I burned all the journals from my youth and early adulthood as a symbolic act of leaving the past behind...and because most of them were complete crap.
This morning I googled (yay, internet!) for lists of writing prompts (yay, free writing prompts at my fingertips!) and found Luke Neff’s big ol’ list of writing prompts. These will be excellent for in-depth exercises. They are high-school level, which is where I feel I ought to start.Thank you, random high school humanities teacher. Thank you.
I won’t be using one today, however, because upon attempting to write about my personal history of writing and my search for writing prompts, I have managed to actually write. I’ve written an acceptable daily blog post and completed today’s task of getting some damn thing down on paper. Um…getting something on screen? Shut up, I’m forty-two, I’ll describe it however I like. Paper it is.
I feel like I should apologize for the dearth of pictures with funny captions, but I have to break my reliance on visual aids and sharpen my descriptive skills. I'm not a Cracked.com contributor, hilarious as I find them. That would be a good beginning to getting myself out there into the world of published writers but I have no ideas for those list things they do. I want to write sci-fi and fantasy novels. Sci-fi and fantasy stories are descriptive heavy, because if you plunk your reader down in the future or an alternate reality you have to create a whole cloth world for the action to be plausible. At least, that’s how I think it should be done. And that’s how I will do it.
And now…once again…I have to make the hour drive to the apartment to clean. I’m so terribly, terribly tired of this.
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