I haven’t got so much of a word count in, but I have been plugging away at 30 days of world building, which I found on this blog here.
Basically you spend each day working on the different aspects of creating your world. So far, I’ve created a climate, created a rough sketch of map, and selected what races will be in my world and how they will interact, etc.
The planning is so detailed and it’s been a lot of fun so far. Some of the stuff I’ve already come up on my own, but before I started doing the exercises I hadn’t even thought as far as climate and how weather (like a bad storm) could help drive a plot point.
Kind of neat! I think tonight I will do my world building exercise, (Economy and Politics!) and get down to some actual writing for once. I tend to not want to sit at my desk, because I sit at one for work all day long, so here I am propped up in bed and it is working so far.
How is everyone doing? How do you keep yourself motivated to keep writing?
This week is a week of inspiration for me…and another inspiration is dreams. I get a lot of inspiration from dreams, as they are basically stories that the brain invents all by itself while you are sleeping.
This morning I woke up at 4am with the knowledge that I had the best dream EVER, and despite me writing down as much as I could, it still seemed like a whole lot of nothing. I could barely remember anything.
All I do remember is that I was at a friend’s house staying the night, I made out with one of my girlfriends, (we have been watching a lot of Orange is the New Black lately), we sang a song, there was food and candles lit, I went somewhere with my boyfriend. I was working out on an exercise machine, doing pull ups. Then the dream switches to me being on a slide with my friends, we were poling on a raft through a river of dead bodies, then there was this waterfall drop, I was too scared to go so I jumped off the raft to the side.
Just as I’m about to go down the shoot, some arms and legs emerge from a grate and a man appears with a gun and a bunch of soggy money clutched in his hand, he tries to shoot me and the dream changes again…I remember a story within a story, a love story I eventually tell to someone and my amazing heroics. (Apparently I could control water.) I remember a large grassy hill and a yellow mansion on the hill. I remember writing names on a mirror in pink paint or lipstick; someone scoffing and saying they definitely weren’t the best couple ever. I remember I dreamed up a night’s worth of actions in two hours.
Although I couldn’t remember everything, what IS clear is the emotions. I felt hopeful, triumphant, amazing and invincible. Like justice was really served or true love really triumphed in the end. I felt strong and confident and young. My heart was warm, and fuzzy, I was the happiest and the most excited about life that I have been in a while.
If I had a dream about my ex-boyfriend, I wouldn’t be warm and fuzzy. No, emotions like regret and longing sometimes resurface. But it is funny how sometimes a story has the ability to influence your emotions, changes the way you feel.
That’s what I want to do someday: I want to make someone feel happy because a character is happy, I want a reader to rejoice in their triumphs. I want to write something that changes a person’s perceptive about certain things. Words are powerful. I want to shape them, make them my own and be one of the triumphant ones.
Anyway, that’s enough from me…What are your goals and inspirations? Ever have a story that was inspired about a crazy dream of yours? I’d like to hear it!
It is raining here in upstate New York, coming down like it means some business. We’ve had a flash flood warning, have been threatened with 3 or 4 inches of some good rain, but I’m not afraid.
Julianne Hough as Sherrie in Rock of Ages. I thought the whole Tom Cruise rock star thing was a little freaky at first. But you can barely recognize that its him in the movie.
Instead, I’m in that writer-like dream mode. The rain reminds me of sad stories, lost loves, that sad aching feeling of something once remembered, something cherished.
Just finished watching Rock of Ages while doing some much-needed dishes, and near the end of the movie is the song, “Every Rose Has its Thorn.” I don’t know why, but it inspires me…So I’ll use that as my inspiration for my next 15 minute journal session.
My 15 Minute Jouraling posts are something that I started as a warm-up for myself, so as to keep myself writing and the creative thoughts flowing. It’s something we used to do in my creative writing classes with a prompt given from the teacher. Anything can inspire me and I thought I’d give it a share.
I’ve done some other entries too, if you are curious, you can view them here, and here.
Also, it helps if I have that song playing in the background…I’m a sucker for covers and I really like the version on the Rock of Ages.
Here’s where I’ll put 15 minutes on the clock and do that thing that I do, GO!
>>>>She stared out the window at the rain, watched it come down in sheets and sheets of water that fell so hard it looked almost white. Her mother told her not to do it. Told her not to move away and live with a boy she’d just met.
The town they had moved to was in the middle of no-where. Except for the nuclear power plant a mile away, there was nothing there – except for a few dusty stores and cows that bellowed in the fields nearby. Her mother told her once that she hated the sound, that bellow. It was empty, mournful, made her think of her father that had up and left them. Angel said that the cows bellowing gave her stomach ache. It sounded like they were going to be sick and she’d rather steer clear of them.
Except there wasn’t anywhere to go in the empty town. She liked the look of the green grass and the trees that waved in the wind in the summertime, but come winter all she felt was loneliness. It was the kind that bites. That seeped into the cracks of their trailer and left a chill in her heart, an edgy-ness. Everywhere she went in that small town she could feel them watching.
And Angel knew that she wasn’t meant to stay.
It didn’t matter that she had no money. She wasn’t going to ask her mother for any either. She’d pack her bag and leave and feel the sun on her face once more. It was time she did something for herself rather than others.
She didn’t know how much that her boyfriend would put up a fight.
She’d told Andrew on a Tuesday that things weren’t right. He’d crush the beer can he’d held in his hands. Yes, he was the typical red-neck…complete with wife beater and ratty faded blue jeans. She’d like the grease on his hands at first. She liked the way he swaggered.
Now, she felt afraid.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said as he lit his cigarette. She’d told him not to smoke in the house.
Angel fumbled with the dishes that she was drying and nearly dropped it on the floor. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, nothing,” he said, and laughed and got up and kissed her bare shoulder, traced his hand along the edge of her tank top. “You won’t go anywhere without me.”
“May…maybe I’m meant to be,” she stuttered, and followed him into the next room, her hands still soapy. “You once told me I could do anything.”
He sat in front of the TV. “Yeah, that what I said?”
“Well, I’m going to do it,” she said with one hand on her hip. “I’m going. And you won’t hold me back.”
He laughed a laugh that had no emotion. She wondered if when he said that he loved her, if he really meant it. “Do what you want, Angel,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
If it didn’t matter, why was she so afraid?
By the next week, she had her bags all packed. She’d filled her car full of gas.
ANNND…that’s all the time I have. I used online stopwatch and the alarm just rang, scared me, lol. If I were to end this story, it’d probably go something like this:
She left him standing in the driveway, mouth wide open, his eyes finally open and lonely. The coldness had dropped from his face, and his shoulders drooped in that ratty wife-beater. It reminded her why she had loved him. He was so tall, and broad-shouldered, his eyes dark and beautiful. When she’d first met him, she thought he was so strong and steady. That he’d protect her, make the monsters of the world go away.
She imagined someone tough and blond-haired would marry him. She’d probably be a girl who grew up in camo and went hunting with her brothers on a regular basis. She wouldn’t be beautiful, but she wasn’t ugly either. She’d swear like a sailor and be stubborn. She wouldn’t take Andrews crap, and eventually he’d turn to alcohol anyway.
Angel felt her stomach twist as she turned onto the highway. Felt the tires run on the open road and breathed a sigh of relief. Yet, she felt a jolt in her heart as she felt the pressure on her abdomen and she pulled over to the side of the road and threw up in the ditch.
Bile clogged her throat and bits of her breakfast went back down as she swallowed. And she ached all over, felt a kind of dread that defeats tiredness, it brings on its own kind of weary. Tears ran down her cheeks and she snuffed loudly as she tore around in her backseat for a tissue. Her fourways blinked and clicked obnoxiously as a semi bellowed past.
It was too late. She wasn’t in this alone anymore. She’d never be alone again.
Whoa. That took a different turn, geez. I didn’t really do any editing, except to fix spelling errors and I think I’m going to keep to that. I might use this as inspiration for something else someday.
Anywho, thanks for reading and now perhaps I can run to the store now that its not raining buckets and get eggs so I can make cupcakes!
A. J. Morse 