The Place For My Writers Notes

Original Posting 29 March 2008

You're in luck. I stumbled across a cache of notes from some years back that seem to have odd hints and suggestions about some ideas for writing. So I thought perhaps I would use them as the basis for some new exercises. I know you've been waiting with trembling fingers. So let's get right to it.

Number one seems to have been me playing with variations on a phrase. Why don't you give it a try yourself? I was starting with "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Since one of my pet peeves is the tendency to use punishment when reward will work better, I was mangling it somewhat like this:

1. An ounce of reward is worth a pound of punishment.
2. A pat of reward is worth more than a pound of punishment.
3. A small pat of reward outweighs a pound of punishment any time.
4. A light pat in reward does more than a hard pound of punishment.
5. A light rewarding pat keeps people going long after a hard pounding has stopped all effort.

Not quite ready for prime time, but certainly a lot of fun to play with. Take your own phrase and warp those words! Try to come up with an aphorism that will live through the ages, or at least until tomorrow.

Number two. How about picking a number between one and six? Okay? Here are some phrases I had scribbled down.

1. My deathday is coming
2. innocent until traumatized (or innocent until victimized? Pick the one you like better)
3. bums are subject to grime and banishment
4. extraordinary minus ordinary equals ???
5. He's a time bopper
6. It wasn't just a story, was it? (With thanks to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen?)

Now take that phrase and do something with it. Maybe start out by doing a little brainstorming about just what the heck it means, and what it might suggest about a story or poem. Perhaps about a character, or a scene? Go ahead, what happens next?

Number three seems to be a whole collection of odd titles. So for those of you who'd like a title to start your wheels churning, here you go. Pick one that resonates for you and scribble. Or pick a number from one to 11 and see which one you've stumbled across.

1. The Songs They Sing in Hell
2. Some Days You Can't Get Out Of the Blender
3. The Rainy Season of Martha
4. High Precipitation with a Chance of Statues
5. Equations That Bite
6. Bury Me at A Crossroads
7. A Murchison by Any Other Name
8. A Little Castration's Good for the Soul
9. Boots without Laces
10. The Bizarre Tale of Love and Kippers
11. The People's Libation Fount

There are more notes on this stack but I think I'll stop here and save some for later. So go ahead and write.

When we write, we let others imagine.

Original posting 20 Feb 2008

Single Sentence Start?

    "Why didn't you buy it?" he said, and pulled the line.

What line? What happens when someone pulls the line? And who is he talking to, what didn't they buy, let the little gray cells agitate and spin dry, hear them fry in the crackling grease of your terrible hot pan?

I wonder just what kind of line he pulled, don't you?

When we write, we learn about ourselves.

Oh, that sounds like a good tale.

The Day That Lady Windwark Left the Bestiary Gate Undone

And what happened thereafter.

Now, should it be done in heroic verse or just plain text? And what was the list of the inhabitants of that bestiary? Were there green alligators, and long-necked geese, some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees? And was there a unicorn? Oh . . .

Tell me a story, do!

The pad by my bed says, "alien waiting room."

I keep a pad and pen by the bed just in case one of the thoughts that I stumble over while drifting between sleep and waking seems likely to be useful. I don't dream very much, or at least I don't remember my dreams very much, but occasionally something will come to mind in that half asleep half awake transition and seem like it should be useful. I've learned to scribble down a few words, and can usually figure out what they are later.

Last night, I realized that sometime this week I had scribbled something down. So I stopped to read it. "Alien waiting room." Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to resurrect the line of thought behind it. An alien in a waiting room? A waiting room in an alien society? Or is the waiting room alien itself? As an SF fan, I tend to think of alien as nonhuman, but it could be the simple foreigner -- an alien to the shore?

In any case, let's use it in a slightly expanded form as a prompt for writing. So, here is your one line starter.

She looked up and said, "There's an alien in the waiting room."

Feel free to give her a name. Oh, and why is she looking up? What kind of alien, the local foreigner or the more exotic visitor from the stars? And what kind of a waiting room is this, doctor, dentist, automobile repair, or something else?

You can use this one line as is to start a story or a poetry. You can modify it and use it somewhere in your writing. You can even simply let it inspire the writing, without ever explicitly using these words. But . . .

WRITE!

tink
(I shall try to avoid pondering just what I was thinking when I wrote "alien waiting room" on the pad by my bed. I'm sure I had something in mind, but it seems to be gone now. Oh, well. :-)