Writing Wednesday

Yesterday I wrote a story of 1000+ words in under ninety minutes. It was an odd story for me in that it wasn’t regional or colloquial. It was a timed, prompted exercise and thus the end result was far from perfect, but it was a complete story, and I consider it a success.

I like the challenge of timed, prompted flashing. I have to be very focused and that’s not always easy for me. Easily distracted by noise or physical discomforts, if I don’t have the proper conditions, I freeze. That’s why it’s gratifying when I complete a story. Chunks of things I can write every day. Entire stories or chapters are more difficult. Doable, but some days it's a battle. I gather this is common among most of my peers too. Nice to know I'm not unique.

Even though the story I wrote yesterday was prompted, I utilized old fodder of mine as well. Every month I create a file for writing fodder. Sometimes it’s notes I make when I’m in the outer wilderness and have a chance to observe the natives. Other times it is a phrase or sentence or photo I’ve run across when traveling the interwebs. Regardless of the source, I write everything down or copy a URL or photo and save it to my fodder file for the month. I highly recommend doing this if you don’t already.

For example, last month a resident of my apartment building had a mental breakdown and stabbed himself dozens of times. Being that he was a paraplegic, he did not feel the pain of the multiple stab wounds he inflicted upon himself. Sadly, this man had a service dog that witnessed the entire event and no one in the building seems to know what happened to the dog. Well, that’s a jumping off point for a something. It’s fodder. I don’t think I’ll be typing from this, so feel free to run with it. Anyhow, even if I do utilize the above in something, the odds are it will be quite different from that which you might do. I’m constantly amazed at how various people can begin with the same prompt and write all flavors of different stories.

So find a prompt and write from it today. Anything will do. Look around. I daresay there’s something within a yard from where you’re reading this that you can use. You know you want to.

Write!