I'm still working on my goals for the new year, but one thing I know I want to do more of is delve into my artistic and creative side, especially writing. If completing NaNoWriMo this year accomplished anything substantial for me it was taking the idea that I thought I could write a book, and turned it into a quantifiable fact. Now I know I can write a book. I have done it! So now I want to continue to cultivate and foster that new enthusiastic momentum by doing regular writing exercises. I am planning to get them into a set routine, but while I am working on that I have decided to jump right into it without waiting for perfection.
Writing Exercise #1
Use the prompt to write the beginning of a story. Write for at least 20 min.
**The ghost was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich**
Whatever Eliot was prepared for, as he headed into the kitchen to nuke a bowl of Easy Mac, he wasn't prepared for what he saw. On a normal day, he may have expected to see the milk left out on the counter getting warm and potentially ruining his goal of having a nice cool satisfying bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cinnamon Toast Crunch after a long day at the Quick Mart. He might also have anticipated running into his roommate Jessica, asking him if he had eaten the last of her Brie (maybe?...he couldn't remember) and why he was home from work so early. Not because she was concerned about him, but because she was concerned about the store, since Jessica was also his boss. He probably didn't really expect to see Stan, from building maintenance in there fixing the fluorescent light that never stayed on and usually flickered out after about 20 minutes so that was not a surprise at all.
The thing that Eliot was most unprepared for as he walked into that kitchen was to see a ghost sitting there, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He knew that it was a ghost and not just one of Jessica's friends due to the fact that the guy was transparent. Eliot could easily see the other side of the kitchen right through the guy, although he noticed he was not watching the sandwich digest in the ghost's body. Strange. Maybe it was a ghost sandwich too, Eliot mused. The ghost sat on one of the bar-stool style seats that sat at the kitchenette counter. His legs, which were bare from the edge of his cargo shorts down to the lace-less Chuck Taylors, dangled down without reaching the ground. The counter had peanut butter, bread, jelly, two used knives and the bread's twisty-tie strewn all over it. So much for the ghost sandwich theory.
Eliot stared at him.
"You...you aren't supposed to be here. What are you doing here? How can you even eat? You're...dead." That word, dead, had such a finality to it. Like a dead bold sliding into place across a door. There was no coming back from that word.
The ghost looked up from his sandwich and looked at Eliot, meeting his gaze. A bemused expression moving over his face settling into the place where vigorous chewing had been happening mere moments before.
"Eliot, really," the ghost said "is that anyway to greet an old friend? I mean, I've come all the way back from the grave...as you mortals like to say." he gave a slight frown "When did you switch to Skippy? I preferred the Jiff."
Suddenly he waved away the thought and gave Eliot a conspiratorial look
"Listen, I've come back for a reason and you're going to want to know what it is." He flashed a devilish smile "I'm going to need your help with what I mean to do.."
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Review: A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to the Seasons
A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to the Seasons by Camilla Morton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love this book! It's part history, part how-to, part glamour. This is the perfect browsing book for someone obsessed with themes and trivia and who likes to know a little bit about a lot of things. It has a slight English slant because that is where the author is from. For me that is a plus as well because I love getting tidbits of other cultures along with my glamour. This is great for fashionistas, jet-setters, citizens of the world, and those who wish they were. This book will up your game or at least inspire you to do, try, or check out new things.
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Review: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual
Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is a nicely illustrated quick read about using (not so?) common sense when choosing how, when, and what to eat. It takes an "Everything in moderation" approach urging readers to eat "real food" that is unprocessed food as much as possible. This is not groundbreaking stuff, much of it I have read many times in women's health magazines (granted with a heavy helping of hype on the side) so it's not like author Michael Pollan is educating us with new discoveries, more like a reminder to care how we eat and not to fall prey to all of the diet hypes and food trends. It was nice to have the refresher in such a lovely little book.
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011
An Awesome Blog Article from Omnivoracious (Amazon Blog)
NaNoWriMo Special: The Shotgun Approach to Writing
by Susan J. Morris on October 31, 2011
NaNoWriMo is about getting hooked on writing. You kind of have to be if you’re going to hit 50k in just one month! Of course, to get to even 1k, you first need to do one very important thing: start. Starting is for many the hardest part. And the hardest part of starting is coming up with an idea you're crazy enough about to spend all your Friday nights cuddling up to your computer.
So, listed below are five of my favorite ways to get an idea. Try all of them! Who knows? You might just hit on something good. After all, legend has it Erin Morgenstern’s acclaimedThe Night Circus started in a story she wrote for NaNoWriMo . . .
There's a reason legends stick around for so long: something about them grips the human imagination. Which means they make damn good stories. You can tackle the big ones--like the fall of the mythical city of Atlantis, or the smaller ones, like the lost colony or Roanoke, in which 128 people disappeared, leaving only the word "Croatoan" carved on a solitary post of the fort. Either way, trying to explain the unexplainable is always a fun way to spend some words. Here are some of my favorites (inspired by Jeff Belanger's excellent Picture Yourself Legend Tripping):
- The origins of the Pied Piper myth is Hamelin’s town records. In an entry from 1384, it states: "It is 100 years since our children left." No other details. How’s that for a historical mystery worth talking about?
- The Starchild skull, found in 1930, was shown in 2000 to have belonged to a creature with a human mother (based on mitochondrial DNA)--and in 2009 to have a nonhuman father (based on nuclear DNA). Now, what could have caused that?
- Robert Leroy Johnson had such phenomenal talent that many said it could have only come from a deal with the devil. He makes an appearance in O Brother Where Art Thou? and Reservation Blues. But he’s hardly the only famously skilled musician who was said to have made a deal with the devil and died at age 27. What others can you find?
History is sometimes so strange as to be unbelievable, so poignant as to be heartbreaking, and so inspiring as to be worth a thousand tales. From the dramatic and epic lives of gangsters and cowboys like Bonnie and Clydeand Doc Holliday, to the oddest of mysteries. Like, did you know "dancing mania" was a thing? Tens of thousands would appear and dance for up to months in an unconscious, uncontrollable state. Why did they dance, and what happened to those who were left behind?
And then there are war stories. Scott Westerfeld, in his talk at Central Library, said that part of the inspiration for the Leviathan trilogy came from World War I--thinking about the tragic deaths of two Austrian nobles that caused the whole world to fall apart, and how much worse that must be for you if you were the child of that couple. What if your personal tragedy, which makes it feel as though the world is breaking, was echoed on the world stage like that? What if the world actually did fall apart?
3. Found Objects
One of my favorite methods of brainstorming is seeing what random associations your brain makes for you--what stories your brain will tell, if given an object, a detail, and a location. You’d be surprised what an effective story-starter this can be.
- Pick an object. You want it to be personal, like an antique pocket watch, a locket, a cuff link, a ring made of twisted copper wire, a ribbon, a much-folded drawing, an intricately bound journal, a torn-out page of a book in another language, or a key.
- Pick a detail to be attached to that object, like an inscribed date, a word, an address, a picture, some blood, a lock of hair, a map, a strange perfume, or a tooth.
- Pick a location to find that object, like a storm drain, the sidewalk, a hollow tree, a cereal box, an abandoned hospital, a tree house, the glove compartment of a rental car, a secret panel in your mother’s make-up kit, under the floorboards, or in a book.
Now tell a story about that object with that detail in that location. Who finds the object? How did it get there? What does the detail mean?
4. Art Books Are a Writer’s Best Friend
They say a picture is worth a thousand words . . . Books of pictures, then, must hold thousands of stories. Flip through the pages of a fantastic art book, or through galleries online, and see what inspires you. Some of my favorite art books are:
- The award-winning, annual international collection of the best fantastic art out there, every page ofSpectrum is inspiring.
- Brian Froud’s faerie and goblin art was the inspiration behind Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.
- Award-winning H.R. Giger is probably best known for his work on Alien, but there’s a lot more disturbing, beautiful art where that came from . . .
Songwriters have far fewer lines in which to tell their stories, which often results in lines that hold whole worlds in just a few words. Try taking a line from a song, and telling a story based around that single line. Here are some good examples:
- "I’m sorry if I left the angels crying over me"--Selena Gomez
- "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls"--Paul Simon
- "I saw my daddy cry and curse at the wind. He broke his own heart and I watched as he tried to reassemble it."--Paramore
- "Because you're mine, I walk the line."--Johnny Cash
- " 'There must be some kind of way out of here,' Said the joker to the thief"--Bob Dylan
Another useful music technique is listening to a soundtrack, and telling the story you hear in the music. Some of my favorites for this are Pan’s Labyrinth, House of Flying Daggers, Spirited Away, and The Lord of the Rings.
Come up with any interesting ideas? Take some time, flesh it out a bit. Then, next week, come back for some tips on writing a quick and dirty outline. Happy writing!
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Omnivoracious: NaNoWriMoSpecial
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
National Novel Writing Month!
"Not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. Begin anywhere." ~Bruce Mau
http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/karisabee
Friday, October 14, 2011
October Push
So it's suddenly the middle of October and I have so much to get done. First, I have classes, particularly my history class to deal with. Lots of reading for that one. Right now I'm looking for online journal sources (Mainly Jstor) as well as some primary sources. Ugh! Loads of work. Second I am reading several books simultaneously as usual. I'm getting through them slower than usual due to all the research for history class as well as, let's be honest, the new TV season. Yes there are quite a few shows I can't leave alone this fall, so it does hurt the reading roll I've been on all summer. Thirdly, NaNoWriMo is almost HERE!! One November 1st. I have GOT to get organized because this year...I want to win! For real. Yes. Win. Okay wish me luck and I'll keep in touch. By the way, that book I read about the Burgermeister's Daughter? Yeah, it was pretty academic. I mean, it was fine but could have been way more entertaining.
Ciao
Ciao
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Review: The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town
The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town by Steven E. Ozment
My rating: 0 of 5 stars
I have to read this book in 3 days, preferably in 2 days as the I have to write a book review on it for my renaissance focused, history class. I'll update you on here as well, once I have finished it.
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