Tag: writing prompt

Writing

Which Story To Write?

carolyncordon

I have a friend, a member of my weekly writing group, who is working on, I think she said, ten novels at the same time. She is a dedicated writer, and I am so impressed by her output, in both quality and quantity. She writes historical fiction, and more contemporary fiction, as well as a smaller amount of non-fiction. I am in awe of her, I’m not sure is she realises that …

I can’t imagine having that many ‘works in progress’, going at the same time. I work at a crazy mixed up, slap-dash kind of pace, and feel unable to commit myself, and my concentrated time, in the same way as my friend. That being said though, I have managed to write and either publish, or have published, seven books since my first one, about fourteen years ago.

My most recently published book “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”, which I self-published last year, is the last in a series of three books, written in the point of view of a made up dog, Buster the Dog, and I don’t think I am going to write another book in that series. I feel like that book from last year said all I had to say. But the thing about books and writing, is that inspiration can come from a wide variety of places, so really, who knows?

At the moment though, I don’t feel at all committed to writing another “Buster the Dog” book, but Buster is always there somewhere in my head, so who knows. I keep my mind open to new ideas, always! I have other, more sensible ideas for stories that may become books though, and I am much more interested in those. One is a book for the 10-14 year old reader, and it involves, amongst other things, unicorns.

Unicorns have been in my life since I was around the same age as my imagined readers for this book, and I’m certainly excited about getting that book out. It’s a positive book, about a young girl growing up and learning about herself, what she is capable of, and how her life may be as she gets older. It is set in a district based in part on the region where I live, which is also the region of a made up place, I have set another book I’m currently working on.

This particular book is a novel, with intrigue, murder, politics, and is a bit of a love story. It is slowly creeping into existence, with me adding another paragraph or two every week. As I said, ‘slowly creeping’! I don’t know if I’m going to ever finish this one. I know it will need to be at least 65,000 pages, but at the moment, after a couple of years since I began it, there are perhaps 12,000 words.

With this book, I have paragraphs in notebooks, and devices all over the place, and I don’t know whether I’ll actually be able to even find everything I’ve already written of this book-in-progress. I think if I was really committed to this particular novel, I would have got far more organised with it by now, but haven’t really done much about it at all. I think that tells me the truth about it. I still have my main characters in my head, but not so much on the page. I suspect Meredith may never come out into the world …

I’ve enjoyed writing the snippets I’ve written in response to prompts from someone in my writing group, and I definitely feel that all writing is good practice. So, if that’s true, I’m not wasting my time with this novel-in-progress, I’m in fact learning more about how to write a novel, so that when a novel I feel I must write comes along, I will be ready to do it justice.

I hope anyone reading this has found it interesting, and I would love to read about your own writing process! Feel free to leave a comment here!

Writing, writing exercise

Creative Writing Exercise 1

carolyncordon

This first creative writing exercise is all about finding something to write about. Often when you want or need to write, the best thing for the creative writing won’t pop into your mind, and you can’t write.

I have certainly felt this problem, but these days, I can write about anything at all, because I have trained up in writing using totally random writing prompts.I’ve done this in writing groups, and at home, using given words, and using words I’ve found for myself.

This is what we’re going to do in this creative writing session. You will need something to write on and with (pen and paper, laptop, whatever is best for you). You will also need a timer of some kind, and you will need a book of fiction. :

  • Take up your books, and turn to a random page, or if there are enough pages, turn to page 28.
  • Write down five words from that page, three nouns, a verb, and two adjectives, two  adverbs, or one of each.
  • These are the words you will be working with. Give yourself ten minutes and write a poem, short story, creative non fiction, using your five chosen random words and any other words as needed. Don’t think hard about it, just write.
  • Buzzer goes, time is up, now is the time to look at your amazing new piece of writing!
analog binder blank book
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This is a simple writing exercise, and it is an amazing way to turn off your inner critic, and just get the words down. I am finding the more I do five word challenges, the better what I write is getting.

I’ve also noticed the same about the writing of other people who do these exercises too. Writing often leads to writing well. And writing in this way, opens up the mind to all kinds of amazing things! The only pressure on the writer is to get words written, quickly, no time to make them lovely, just write. The brain is an incredible tool!