Tomorrow is a good day for a new start

Tomorrow is NaNoWriMo. (That's National Novel Writing Month, if you don't happen to already know)

I’m particularly excited about it this year.

I’ve landed in Saudi, and I’m finally starting to feel settled. The household has been set up and is starting to flow the way that it should. Brandon’s MBA is done and is no longer swallowing our lives whole like it has for the past two years. In the next week, I’ll be arranging a housekeeper to come in twice a week and do everything for me from scrubbing toilets to washing and folding all of my laundry.

But the very most exciting thing? The boys start school tomorrow.

For the first time in eight years, I will have 7 ½ hours a day to myself without interruption, five days a week.

I will be able to go exercise without arranging a babysitter. I will be able to leave my house without having to hurry anybody up into their shoes or their coat. I will be able to play my guitar without having to fight off little hands. I will be able to make salad for lunch and not hear a single whining complaint from anybody. 

I will be able to think in a straight line, and then go on, and think some more.

I love my kids, but they are a handful. And that’s putting it mildly. They are good boys but socially, they are both extroverts. My oldest especially. He has absolutely no idea what to do with himself in an empty room alone, except to find somebody to be with. It’s painful to him to not spend the day at another person’s side constantly, constantly interacting.

I, however, am quite the opposite of that. I relish solitude. I long for quiet hours and peaceful, silent, unoccupied space. I’ve always been that way.

When I was in elementary school, I used to climb onto the garage roof just to get away from the constant flow and noise of people in my house. I was the second oldest of six children. Five of us were born in five years, one after the other, after the other. There was always a lot of flow and noise. I used to climb on the roof and tell myself stories for hours. It was the ultimate escape up there, with nothing but the clouds and the silence to keep me company.

Tomorrow, I’m going to miss my kids. My little one loves crafts and will sit and color with me all day long. My oldest is funny and has discovered that he’s nearly big enough to wrestle me to the ground. We wrestle a lot.

But having them both in full day school is going to be like getting my garage roof back. I’m going to have hours to myself again to stare at the clouds and dream of hero’s and battles and far off lands, and I’ll have all the time in the world to get it all onto paper. 

I’ve got a Writers of the Future win beneath my belt. I’ve got my kids off to school. I’ve got a housekeeper doing my laundry.

At this point, if I don’t start writing, there aren’t a whole lot of excuses left to hide behind.

Tomorrow I am going to start writing. I’m going to produce novels and short stories, and I’m going to see what I can sell, and learn from what I can’t.

Tomorrow is the day that my career starts.

25 NanoWrimo Story Prompts

Hello again! I’m diving into my favorite month of the year today. It’s NanoWrimo! Lots of exclamation points today!!! Seriously, I have a hard time even calling it November anymore!

I’ve discovered in the last year that I LOVE to first draft stories. I really do! I’ve read a lot from authors lately who say that their favorite part of writing is the rewriting, because they get to polish the story into the gem it was meant to be. Maybe I’m just too inexperienced at rewriting to really enjoy the process, but rewriting is really painful for me. For me, the fun of writing comes in discovering the new worlds that crop up out of nowhere every time I sit down to start another story. I get to meet people and see places and experience things for the very first time and there is NOTHING about writing that can beat that!

 

Last year I did Camp NanoWrimo in April. I decided I was going to focus on short stories. Partly because I wasn’t sure how much time I was going to have. Partly because I struggle to create a cohesive storyline and learning by writing 10 short stories sounded easier than trying to write 10 novels. At that point, I wasn’t entirely sure I even knew how to tell a good story. The writing part has always been easy for me. It’s story that I struggle with.

Much to my shock, I enjoyed the heck out of the month and walked away with 6 short story drafts, all in different worlds. And now I get to do it again! A whole month of short story creation stretching out before me!! I can’t wait!!! (What’d I tell you about the exclamation points?)

So in honor of my month of short story drafting, I’m posting another list of story prompts. Some are more complete than others. Some are bits of dialogue or just an image. Some are sci-fi but most are whatever you want them to be! Use them any way you’d like!

 

25 Story Prompts

1.       A semi-truck high-centered on a boulder.

2.       Even very long hair stands straight up on end before a lightning strike.
3.       Use sound as a weapon
4.       An explorer fabricates evidence to keep the program running.
5.       “Is that still hard you?” “Of course. Always.”

 

6.       A lab tech accidentally tests for something they shouldn’t have. Now they’re caught in the   conspiracy.
7.       “How can you not know what’s in your own museum. And how on earth did it get here?”
8.       The story of a woman doing something alone for the very first time.
9.       Having to apologize for doing the right thing.
10.   A blank message left on a newly occupied hotel room.
 

11.   A disappearance

12.   A prison break
13.   An archeological relic
14.   Human/animal chimera
15.   Sacrifice brings blessings
 

16.   A building site is chosen by shooting an arrow high in the air. It lands in the back of a deer. He runs.

17.   Rumspringa for a king.
18.   Two siblings. One trying to get the other to reconcile with the parent before it’s too late.
19.   What would happen if we managed to sterilize EVERYTHING?
20.   Lost in a corn field.

 

21.   Bridge to nowhere

22.   A technology that’s needed desperately, but it’s too terrifying to use.
23.   Refugees are disappearing
24.   Mining the landfills for plastic because we’ve run out of oil.
25.   Two is one and one is none.

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Finding time to write

Since placing in Writers of the Future, I’ve been in a bit of a panic. That was all I had ready, so now what? I can’t be a writer on just one published story. Shortest career in history.

So I’ve been trying to find ways to slip writing into my schedule more than I have. Which is tricky. I go to conventions and sit in panels filled with men who tell me that finding time to write at home is easy. All they have to do is focus and if the kids act up, they just send ‘em to talk to mom!

Well, that’d be a lot easier, if my name wasn’t mom.

My reality, that I’ve had to accept, is that I simply won’t ever have 14 hours a day for three straight months to focus on spitting out a novel. I just won’t. I’m not the primary breadwinner. I am the primary caregiver. And it's pretty much going to be that way until the youngest leaves home. The best I can hope for is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week during the school year once my little one hits first grade. Only somebody still has to do the laundry.

Anyway, in my quest to find time to write, I bought the NanoWrimo Writing Tools Story Bundle as advertised by Dave Farland. It’s a bunch of e-books about writing, one of which was Million Dollar Productivity by Kevin J. Anderson. In his 25 year career, he’s written something like 130 books or so. I’m assuming that number is higher by now because that man never stops writing!

I was a bit skeptical at first. I was expecting things like, “Think about your story all the time.” That one was in there and it wasn’t a surprise. But do you have any idea how hard it is to follow even the simplest thought from point A to point B with “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” interrupting your thoughts every 30 seconds? It’s like wearing the thought canceling earphones from Harrison Bergeron, designed to make even the brightest of person below average in less than a day!

But then there were some other suggestions that really caught my eye. Keven J. Anderson hikes A LOT. Which, when he first mentioned I was a little jealous of. I love hiking and it’s one of the things that have given way in the face of all the rest of my life’s responsibilities. But as he hikes, he dictates into a voice recorder. He can dictate several chapters of first draft in a day, then he sends it out to be transcribed. There are times when he employs 3 typist full time to keep up with him. Cool Huh?

Wasn’t sure it’d work for me, but I thought I’d give it a go. For the past 2 days, I’ve turned my phone off and hiked into the nearby national forest. I’ve always talked to myself anyway.

Total breakthroughs on the story that I’m working on! I’ve been stuck for a week. This afternoon, I took my laptop, got as far as a picnic table and pumped out 1200 words of the climax in about an hour and a half. When I got stuck, I got up, hiked around and brainstormed into the recorder. When I figured it out, I sat down and wrote. Not quite his method, and I haven't exactly climbed any 14ers, but 2 days in, it’s working for me.

And bonus, because I was 20 minutes from home, there were no looming chores to bother me. Everybody else’s needs got left behind. All I had to focus on was writing, brainstorming and enjoying an incredibly beautiful fall day. Now all I need to do is figure out where I can go in the winter time where I can walk around, talk to myself and not get kicked out for weird-ing out the other people in the room.  

I’m a fan. Even though I have an office, I’m going to keep leaving the house to write. I’m going to start carrying my voice recorder everywhere I go. And I’m going to keep taking advantage of the little moments I can find in the day. Eventually progress will be made, right?

I’m hoping to get my story finished before NanoWrimo starts so I can spend the month doing first drafts. Only 7 days to go. NanoWrimo has made November the best month of the year!

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Life really is good, isn't it?

One day left of Camp Nano and I'm sitting at 53500 words and 5 completed first draft short stories. That's just 1500 words away from finishing. I'll be able to easily pump that out today on revisions and rewrites by the time I pick my youngest up from preschool. And I've got to say, I'm feeling really good about this.

Last year, my husband announced that he was going back to school to get an MBA. It wasn't a surprise to me. We'd talked about it on and off for years and I knew it was a goal that was eventually going to catch up to us. But it was something I'd been dreading. When we got married, we were both in school and it was easy to balance schedules and homework and everything else, because we were both doing it together. But this time around we're balancing his full time job, full time school and two little kids at home. It was not sounding fun to me at all.

But when he started classes in January, I realized his MBA might just be the best thing that's ever happened to my writing career. The boys are in school for a good part of the day, which has opened up all kinds of day time hours for me. But now in the evenings, I'm looking forward to the nights when he's got homework. Because I get to sit down and write for hours without any worry about neglecting kids or husband.

And just so you all know, I have the best husband in the entire world. With the amount of time his MBA program was going to take this year, I was most worried about having time with him as a family. Eighteen months is a long time to not see dad. But he's gone out of his way to make every minute at home count. If the boys are up, he's playing Lego's with them. If there aren't any assignments pressing, he's reserved the evening for me. I think the hardest thing so far this year has been realizing that when he has time between classes, I need to fold the laptop up and make sure I'm making time for family too. I'm determined not to let a fantastic marriage drift apart, just because we're both trying to get somewhere. And it feels good to finally know that we are both getting somewhere.

Last night, we started keeping 'gratitude journals' with our kids. We have one son who simply isn't capable of seeing anything but the sunny side. Our other son is pretty upbeat. most of the time. But when he gets down, his entire world falls apart and there's nothing good anywhere. And there never will be ever again. He can be pretty dramatic. We thought that keeping a daily account of the good might gently help to steer his focus. Remind him of what we have. Our little family has a lot to be grateful for. Brandon and I are keeping these journals too.

My first entry was about gratitude for my husband. He believed in in my ability to write before he ever read a single word I'd put on paper. He encouraged me to seek an education and to think of ideas and concepts that when I was young, I'd have sooner ignored. He's made time for me to write and read every word I've written since I started. He's become a fantastic Alpha reader for me, because he wants to see my writing in print as much as I do. But most of all, thirteen years into our marriage, I still know that he loves me. More now than ever. I was pretty picky when I chose my husband. Turns out it paid off. I wound up with the very best.

And I am very, very grateful.

Wonderfully horrible first drafts

I mentioned in my last post that this month I'm away at Camp NanoWrimo. It's my very first trip to camp and I'm loving it! Things are going much better at this nano than at others. My kids are older and mostly at school all day. I've been more organized which has allowed me to become more focused and I'm not having to squeeze my writing in between Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. That's definitely been stress relieving.

My goal was originally to write 45000 words by the end of the month. I was hoping that would equate to somewhere between 4 and 6 short story first drafts to rewrite when the month was done.

As of this morning, I'm at 48100 words and have 4 completed first drafts. With one week left that gives me time to hit 55000 words (my new goal as of half way through the moth) and have 5 short stories to clean up and start sending in at the end of the month. And the most exciting part is that the short stories are good!

And when I say good, I mean that the writing is awful, major plot lines don't materialize sometimes until the very end of the story, characters are flat and underdeveloped and at some points, the plot doesn't really make any sense.

But the seeds are there. I've fallen in love with the potential for every one of them. Whole worlds waiting to be explored, characters dying to get out there and do their thing in a much better version in the rewrites. For at least three of the short stories, I see the potential for whole novels following after. I am coming to understand the truth of the statement that you really don't need to be a good writer. You have to be an excellent re-writer. And that's where I get to make these stories shine like they ought to.

I'm quite excited about all of this. I'm finally feeling like my dream of being a writer is phasing into an actual reality.

Before Nano started, I was working on cleaning up a short story that I wrote last year. It was originally a very short, very rushed little story with little to no character development and just about the most depressing ending you could ever imagine. A man's daughter gets killed in front of him and then he accidentally ends up ingesting and devouring her soul, essentially destroying what's left of her forever.

Horrible right?

But the rewrite is awesome. Everybody has a reason to be there. Everybody has a powerful motivation. Sadly, the girl still dies. But I manage to not make it the worst thing that could ever happen. In fact, the ending is infused with hope this time. And that's something I just couldn't see happening the first time through. Hooray for crappy first drafts and the chance to write it all over again!

If writing really is performance art for shy people, then I'm just glad that unlike the stage, we don't have to get it right the first time.

I'm planning on turning my story in to Writer's of the Future this month. Hopefully it does well. I'm realistic enough to realize that chances are astronomically against me winning the first time in. But it's a start. And it's a start with a story that I feel really good about. And that makes it real.

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50 Story Ideas to get You Juices Flowing

Today I start the month long writing sprint that is Camp Nano Wrimo. I'm pretty excited. I started Nano a few years back when my kids were little and I had far less time to write and I was amazed at how well my family adjusted to the idea. I had two little cheerleaders watching the stat graph over my shoulder every day making sure I hit the goal line. And if I didn't there were more than a few times that my oldest son pushed me back into my seat and told me to keep writing. I couldn't just let myself lose! His competitive streak helped me make my goal and feel for at least one brief month out of my year, that I could be a writer.

The hardest thing in the last several years has been just finding the time to write in between diaper changes and playgroups. And Nano has been my one month out of the year when I go to say, you know what kids? I've given you 11 months out of the year. It's your to give me back just one.

This year for the very first time my kids are old enough to allow me two. So this year April, November and maybe July, I intend to write my heart out and get the words down.

My goal this year is short stories. I don't feel like I have the time to novel but I can get out short stories. The ultimate aim is to start having at least 1 story a month sent out for publication and 1 story each quarter sent to Writers of the Future. Which kind of freaks me out in a very grown up it's-finally-time-to-start-writing-for-real sort of a way.

So in honor of short stories, I thought I'd post a few of the story ideas I've collected over the past couple of months. They aren't complete. Mostly they're little story clips meant to be rearranged and smooshed together in a thousand different ways. And they're fun!

But most of all, I'm finding them to be terribly useful.

50 Story Ideas to get You Juices Flowing
A homemade medicine.
The ruins of a temple
A villain who truly loves someone
A hero who breaks
Statue of a God with a scratched out face
The last animal freed from the zoo
A coward who acts bravely
A long sealed library
A tunnel made of light
Chasing seals off a dock

A fall from a window
Dragged by a carousel
Kites like birds swarming
A hot air balloon ride
A locked master bedroom
A phone call disconnected
A homeless man's photograph
Radio that receives only a single station
A car door that lacks a handle
A museum guard who touches the paintings

What does 'fisher's of men' really mean?
Divorce as a literal disease
Talking skeleton
A pet bat
A broken CD
The most important knitted cap in the world
Children sold by their mother
Standing corpses lining a crypt wall
A literal map of the heart
a bridge made out of fabric

Obsessive planner has his plans taken away
Overwhelming tactile sensations
A man with a room covered every inch in stuffed fish
No one is allowed to acknowledge the difference between the sexes anymore
A seamstress needs to sew human flesh
Watching on the day the world's last oil reserve is lit on fire
A character with a lisp who can't stop talking when nervous
16 shipwrecked ships are swept up onto shore on the same day
A woman sews herself into her own burial shroud
A scribe paid to sit on the steps of the courthouse to write letters for the illiterate masses

A baby abandoned because of a harelip
A vampire that sucks your blood through your shadow
A shadow that has turned deadly
A woman marries a convict at midnight through the bars of his cell
Don't step on the cracks
A breath on the back of your neck that changes everything
Seizure dogs
Someone making homemade chloroform
Printed DNA contaminates a crime scene
Why can't you walk by a pond without throwing in a stone?


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