I Said What?

I spent a little time yesterday working on one of my novels, tweaking up the intro a bit and as I made my way through the first few paragraphs I found a word that I used that shocked me.

"Cantankerous"

Now, I know it isn't the rarest word out there, but it certainly isn't used in every day speech. At least I've never ever heard a soul actually use that word. I've only ever read it. So I got to thinking that maybe I should force myself to use that word today. At some point, I'm going to use it when talking to someone and see if they say anything or even notice. I'm not sure if they'll give half a rats-butt or if they'll just think I'm being stupid. Either way, I think it could be a fun experiment and would challenge you to do the same thing.

Find a word that you've written in your novel, but that you rarely ever hear, and try to use it today. Let me know what happens.

Scrambling the Pot

Today I'd like to propose a little creative writing exercise for you writers out there. It's no secret that with so much of our effort and energy poured into our WIPs that we can sometimes drive straight into a roadblock of ideas. At the very least, we can become so immersed into our current WIP that we develop a sort of tunnel vision that stifles our creativity. With this in mind, I present to you my creative writing exercise, which I'll call:

"Scrambling the Pot"

First of all, in order to participate in this exercise, you need to have at least 2 WIPs (even if one of them is on hold)

The object of this exercise is to write a short story using protagonists from your WIPs. You may only use Protagonists in this short story and may use as many as you like from any work in progress you currently have. This short story should be general style of beginning, middle and end, as well as contain some kind of conflict/solution scenario.

The idea behind this is to help you see how dimensional your MC's are. It will help you to understand their similarities as well as contrasts, giving you room to expand on their development.

True Lies

Last night was my weekly creative writing class and I must say that I had a blast. It was the first night that we were able to do some writing and group participation. (a much needed change of pace from listening to our instructor simply read to us various writings)

The teacher decided to have us do a writing exercise that was called "True Lies," in which we were told to write a small blurb, about 50 words, telling a lie, yet somehow connecting some truth to it. I'm a very black and white kind of guy. Those instructions were a bit to gray for me and so I had him give an example or two, then I set my pen to motion. Here's my true lie.

I'll sit in contentment as we share our raft. She'll probably rest her weary head on my shoulder. "I told you so," I'll say. "I knew this would happen." She'll deny any wrong doing, but I'll sit happy in the knowledge that I was right. After all, happiness is a state of mind, not a follow up to circumstance.

The class was asked to try to brainstorm about what the truth was and it became something of a riddle for some people. When they asked what my truth was, I explained that my beautiful bride-to-be and I are going on a cruise. That's right! Her father decided to buy us a 7 day Mexican Riviera cruise on Princess Cruise lines. We'll be leaving in March during spring break. I'll post more on this later, but for now, I'll explain how it ties in to my true lie. The lie portion of my blurb was a prediction that our cruise line would end up sinking. See, I have a fear of being on the open sea. I blame it on diabetic camp at age 8, but that's another story. All in all, I'm taking a huge step in overcoming my fears, by going on this cruise. I know it will be wonderful, BUT, I've jokingly told my fiancée that "I've seen the Titanic movie, I know how this ends."

So, the truth was, the fact that we'll be going on a cruise over the open sea.
The lie was my 'knowing' about the ship sinking, leaving us to sit in a life raft.

That's it for now. Have any of you done any neat writing exercises that you'd like to share?

A Literary Exercise

With much vexation of heart, I announced boldly to my body that it was time once again to get back into my exercise routine. I happen to have a physical therapy department at my office where I'm allowed to use it after all patients are done being seen for the day. In the department, they have many different exercise machines to help rehabilitate injured patients. One such machine is our good ol' friend, the treadmill. As I jumped on Mr. treadmill and set it to a hearty 3 incline and 3 miles per hour (Yes Grandma, you do in fact move faster than that in your wheelchair) I noticed a letter that was posted on the wall not 15 feet away from me. The letter contained a phrase that went something like this:

"Those who do not find time to exercise now, will have to find time for illness later."

I couldn't believe it, not only would I get a physical workout, (Yes Grandma 3 miles per hour does get MY heart going these days, geez, get off my back would ya) but I'd also get a mental one as I mused on this phrase. I thought of any way I could apply that to my writing world so that I could come back and astound everyone with a deep philosophical blog post. Then it hit me, faster and harder than a shoe being thrown at the president in contempt. I realized that it could be a fun activity to ask my readers to either comment back how this phrase could apply to their writing world, or ask them to post on their own sites an example of how it could apply.

So, here's where you come in.

1. Post back a comment to me explaining how you can apply the above quote to your writing life.

OR

2. Write a post on your blog explaining the same thing and asking your own readers to do the same.

I'd love to see some of the concepts you guys/gals come up with.