Prompt Production

Writerland has been very empty for me lately, the place it usually occupies taken up instead by things of a decidedly more mundane nature. It's hard to be creative when, as I've grown fond of saying, life is being stupid in my general direction.

But I wanted to share a little of what has been happening in my creative brain over the last few weeks, largely in the form of the output from the Toasted Cheese prompt chats. The chats are held each Sunday, and while I don't make it to every one, I sometimes do the prompts on my own during the week. That scoundrel, Lieutenant James Sterling, who's grown into his own since I played him last summer in a Dresden Files roleplaying game, invariably turns up when it's time to do Toasted Cheese chats.

Here's a sample of what happened in the last prompt chat I wrote on. Standard "James has a filthy mouth" disclaimer applies.

Prompt: tell about a tempest in a teapot.

Reg and I struggled to hold the basement hatch shut against the howling wind. "You're trying to tell me," I shouted at him, though he stood right beside me, "that this fucking teapot holds the answer to all the weird shit that's been going on in town lately?"

"Yeah!" he shouted back.

"God, why can't normal things happen to me?" I complained at a more normal volume.

"What?!"

I raised my voice again. "Nothing! Where's Del?"

There was a loud thump and a squeaky cry of pain from outside.

"Shit. Let it open a bit," I told Reg.

"I don't know --"

"Do it!" I barked. "We can't let Del be out there with that thing!"

We relaxed our holds on the hatch and the roaring winds immediately took advantage, pulling the sturdy wooden door upward. Reg lurched forward, standing up on tiptoe before managing to adjust his balance. The door opened about three inches.

"Del!" I cried, squinting against the rush of air.

I could feel a weight shifting on top of the door. I flicked a glance at Reg, who nodded. He felt it, too. Several fingers appeared on the edge of the door, gripping it so tight the knuckles were white.

"Gimme yer hand, Del!" I released the door with one hand to extend it toward the visible fingers. A second set of fingers joined the first, a foot away.

"Del!" I edged closer to the opening, hoping she would let go with one hand so I could grab it.

I heard a faint voice: female, but incomprrehensible in the wind. I couldn't wait any longer. Reg's face was red from the exertion of holding the door mostly by himself. I reached for the second hand and grabbed the wrist on the outside of the door, then pulled. There was another shriek, and the hand struggled to pull away from me for a moment, then relaxed. "I've got you!" I pulled with all my might, releasing my hold on the door entirely.

The basement door flapped open wide for a moment as Reg failed to adjust to the sudden extra work he had to do to hold it. In the moment it was open I could see outside. It was like a scene from The Wizard of Oz out there. A whirlwind made visible by the objects it had collected: planks, doors, what looked like a horse trough, howling madly away, and at its center a plain, unadorned, everyday bright red teapot, its top rattling as if it were in the process of boiling. I thought I could even hear a whistle amid the sound of the treacherous wind. As I pulled, the first hand let go of the edge of the door and latched onto my wrist. I hauled in the body attached to the hands and in a moment Delia came flying into the basement and landed on my lap, bowling me over.

June, come back!

June is halfway over already. I feel like it just started. Monday marks the Summer Solstice, after which the days will begin to get shorter again. I tend to celebrate the Winter Solstice because it means the days are going to get longer, leading us out of the dreaded cold of winter. But I'm trying not to think too much about the Summer Solstice. I love summer, and I don't want to see it go away too soon. A lot of my days have been going by too fast lately.

As I mentioned previously, I'd meant to put up a large post in several parts this week, but it kind of got away from me. The topic was outlining, based on knowledge gleaned from Jon Franklin's Writing For Story, which I got at the library's book sale a month or so ago. I found as I was writing the post that, instead of just jumping in, I'd better read the whole chapter before trying to utilise advice based on its content. I'm still going to put that article up here, but it may take a bit longer than I originally anticipated.

The deadline for Toasted Cheese's Midsummer Tale contest is fast approaching and I have nothing to submit for it yet. I'll have to go back to my notes and see if I can put something together this weekend.

Qarrtsiluni's journal is seeking submissions for this month. Their deadline is June 30th. I hope to submit to them as well.

New Month, Lots of Opportunities

I'm having a hard time coming up with a topic for today. I have a lot of tasks to accomplish this week and the fact my mail/calendar suite keeps crashing is not helping me stay focused, as I instinctively try to chase down the errors and look a bug reports and figure it out, even though I know I ought to just leave it for now and get to my work.

Sigh. I am easily distracted, and computer issues are itches I can't resist scratching.

It's June already. When did that happen? It was just the beginning of May last time I looked... well, June is full of writing things for me. There are two contests/calls for content with June deadlines, a Writers' Cafe held by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, and that same group's monthly meeting. I don't know that I'll participate in all those things, but it certainly makes my calendar seem full. And it's irritating when my calendar program crashes as I'm trying to add things to it.

I also have an edited article to submit this week. I need to take another look at it before I send it off. And speaking of editing, my manuscript is still awaiting my attention. Eeegh. What a mountain that is.

For those interested, Toasted Cheese has its Midsummer Tale contest, whose deadline is, handily enough, June 21st. Winners are published in the literary magazine and receive Amazon gift certificates for $20, $15, and $10.

The Qarrtsiluni online literary magazine is calling for submissions about "The Crowd". Pieces can be up to 1000 words or up to five poems, or photos, videos, or digitzed artwork. This isn't a contest, but a general request for material. Deadline for this one is June 30.

Oh yeah, and Associated Content. It's been far too long since I submitted to them. Time to get on the ball and get writing! Has anyone seen my energy? Did Ioan it out to one of you guys? No? Rats.

Contests and Lifeclutter

I'm considering trying my hand at Toasted Cheese's A Midsummer Tale contest. The style is creative non-fiction and the topic is 'make believe'. There are more details on Toasted Cheese's contest page. The deadline is June 21st.

Speaking of deadlines, July is rapidly approaching and I have a lot of work to do on my manuscript before it's ready to be sent in for a proof copy. An entire chapter has to be rewritten. There are several transition scenes that need to be written. When I originally wrote this story in 2005, I hadn't quite gotten into the swing of National Novel Writing Month. I was struggling with the pace and I left out a lot. I was just trying to get to the end of the story. In the process I skipped over things which now need to get put back in to fill out the story.

The bad news is that as I try to get something going for Toasted Cheese's contest and finish my manuscript, I also have other creative projects clamouring for my attention. The worse news is that other things in life are taking precedence, mostly in the form of forcing me to sit here and try again and again to phone this person or that person, only to get voice mail or no answer. It's disruptive, as I ususally start around 9 am, the same time I really get going on my morning work and writing. It's very difficult to get writing flow going when you have to stop every fifteen minutes to call Mrs What's-Her-Name. Again. The sooner I get that done, the sooner I can dedicate my morning time to writing projects. I have a lot of them, and many have gone by the wayside. Poetry, short stories, articles. They've all been mostly shunted aside as other, more pressing things barge in and camp out on the sofa of my mind. Once I feed these freeloaders and send them on their way, I'll be able to invite my Muse back in for a cup of tea and some cookies. Gotta have the cookies.

I hope your creative projects are uncluttered and your Muse is unfettered this week!

A Morning for Meandering

I've spent half an hour playing around on Toasted Cheese's site instead of writing in here. I am a bad, bad, blog writer. I also have typoitis today, apparently. My rate of typos is up about seventy-five percent. Possibly more. I don't chart these things, but it's a lot worse than usual. I blame squirrels.

As usual, I'm working in Kubuntu in the not-quite-as-warm-as-usual study, with my classical music stream streaming along in VLC. I decided on a whim to reduce the opacity of my text editor window so I can see my desktop through it, so it looks like I'm typing over top of a beautiful Caribbean beach. "Look!" say the tourists behind the camera, "there are words floating in the air, being typed with a plethora of typos which are then being backspaced over and corrected, before my very eyes! Hey, mysterious typer in the sky, you got some typo issues, don't'cha?"

Yeah, we covered that already. But I suppose you were too busy ordering your girly drink to have noticed the beginning of this document, eh?

Clearly, I am in some kind of odd mood today. But this is my privilege, as I am a writer, and weird-ass moods are where we get some of our best stuff.

As I was perusing Toasted Cheese, I recalled Jasper Fforde's series of books about the Bookworld. I've touted the Bookworld in other journals I've kept online before, but let me do so here: go read these books. Begin with "An Eyre Affair" and move onward from there. Ever wonder what the characters in your favourite stories do when they're not being read? I didn't think so. Read. You'll find out. Fforde's stories are hilarious and brilliant. Anyone who loves to read should grab them up straight away. Go! Go to your local library and seize them!

Ahem. See aforementioned odd mood. Yeah. This is probably the least professional-looking blog I've done in here since deciding to dedicated myself to writing about writing (almost) every day.

I mentioned the Bookworld novels because Toasted Cheese had for sale a tote bag emblazoned with the words 'Boojum Hunter'. The word 'boojum', in Fforde's novels, refers to a jurisfiction agent (read the books) who gets lost in a previously unexplored novel. It's used as a verb in the Bookworld, but, having not read the books in a while, I had the thought that there was a something called a boojum which attacked bookpeople. I don't think this is true, and if you go read the books, you'll be able to tell me if I'm wrong!

Anyway, my apologies for taking time from your day to be random at you. But this, too, is an aspect of my writing life: the 'what the heck /is/ this, really?' bit where ideas float around in the air near my head like twisted, broken little dragonflies, each whispering fragments of coherent thoughts which are lost in the incessant twittering of the mass of them. May your dragonflies fly in formation today.