Hello and happy Monday! Last weekend, my book club met to give a warm send-off to one of our long-time members who is moving to New York with his wife later this month. We’ll miss him tons and it seemed fitting to give him a send-off in the form of a writing weekend.
This was a very prompt-heavy session for us. I brought a copy of the lit mag that published me to give my friend Marybeth and she had the idea of using first lines from the stories in there to start our stories. It was fun for me because I’d already read the stories and I remembered some of them. I liked seeing where the original author took the story and how that differed from what my friends did. We did this twice and the second time, my first line was an option, but no one chose it. Darn!
The second set of prompts we did in teams of 2-3. Everyone would have four categories and in our teams, we’d come up with objects for those categories that had to make it into our story (unless you’re me and completely forget about this). The first one we did was a time period (1920-1935), object of importance (bike), a name (Dory) and a color (red). I really liked the story I started for this one and it would be great to continue it some day when I have the time. The second time we did an age (70s), social trend or political view (skinny jeans), a genre (thriller), and a quirk (dressing out of character). That one was hard for me and I don’t like my story much. It’s more of a cozy mystery than anything else, a genre I’ve never tried before. The last one was food (banana cream pie), weather (tornado warning), a topic of conversation (ailing relatives), and a murder weapon (crossbow). I liked this story a bit better, but with the time we had, I didn’t have time to get far enough into it for anyone there to know what was going on. I had someone say, “I’m intrigued but what the heck are they doing?” I guess I need to learn to type even faster. Prompts like this are a good practice for NaNo!
We’re going to focus our next meeting on author platforms. Do any of my Readers have any suggestions around this? I use my blog to talk about my writing some, but without anything published yet, I don’t have too much here. I like to talk about when I am writing or my writing community but that’s about it. What’s the best piece of writer advice you can give me?
Until next time, write on.
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Taking On a World of Words 