Writing – Page 13 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Work does have it’s uses after all!

I’ve started work again, but only part time. Still, it’s already biting in to my writing time. I was in the middle of writing a story for my anthology last night, right in the narrative flow, when I realised it was gone eleven and I had to be up for work at six. Most irritating.

At work I tried to find some time to work on another short story for the collection. Luckily, the technical department tend to be very much ‘go with the flow’ and since there wasn’t much QA-ing for me to do I did a bit of admin for the manager instead. Mindless and easy, my mind wondered off to other worlds. Break time came and I started to write. Twenty five minutes concentrated writing and then back to the day job. Then later another twenty minutes scribbling away. It might not be any good but when I’ve finished it and typed it up I’ll play around with it and improve it.

I find work is a good place to let my creative side have free rein on the subconscious level, so that when I do write it’s all there waiting for the short spurts of writing I can manage.

Maybe, if you’re having a bit of writer block, that might be a way to break it. Set aside ten, fifteen minutes to just write anything. Go away for a few hours and then have another short session. The intervening time will allow your brain to mull over ideas started in the first session.

Work, for most of us, is a dull grind done so that we can afford to do the things we want to, so using the time effectively, to allow writing during the work day, is a must.

Going to nap now,

Bye,

Rose

I’ve been working on a few things…

While I was travelling to Nottingham last month I started writing a short story from a prompt I found on Tumblr – which has some great writing blogs by the way, go and look. I finished it a few days ago. The only problem I had was that the idea I went with wasn’t the only idea I had; there were three I wanted to do something with. Consequently I wrote another short story and started a third which I need to get around to finishing.

I got distracted by a picture prompt from another Tumblr blog and started writing a short story for that. Then I found some ‘opening paragraph prompts’ I wrote on the train home from Nottingham in December, in another notebook. So I started writing another short story. Yeah, it’s got a little out of hand now. So, I was thinking, since I’m writing shed loads of short stories right now why don’t I do something with them?

That’s my current project, take two written prompts and two picture prompts and write three short stories for each of them. It’s going to be an interesting exercise for my creativity.

I suppose it’s a good job I have a few new notebooks about the place, because I’m using them up rapidly at the minute. I find I’m more likely to finish a story if I hand write it than if I type it straight away on my laptop. I think it’s probably psychological. It also allows me to do a first edit as I’m typing up.

There’s all sorts of things in my notebooks. I rarely let other people see them though. Not that anyone can decipher my handwriting; when I’m in full scribble mode my writing is terrible.
I’ll stop rambling now, and get some writing done,

Bye,

Rose

See, I told you my writing was scrawl, although that’s actually not too bad…

The Short Story that turned in to a Monster

A while back I wrote a short story called ‘Summer Wine’ and then it just sat in my notebook/laptop/brain for a few months. And now it has mutated in to a creature that could very well become a novella, or even a novel.

Now the only problem is, can I get my act together and actually work on it. I might even finish it.

Since that’s the case, I’d best be off and do some writing hadn’t I?