Unexpected Writing Resources

At Saturday's meeting, Greg asked what writing resources we were using. I didn't realize until after the meeting that the answers were at my fingertips (in my notebook) the entire time. Here are a few of the "offbeat" tools I'd taken for granted.

1) timeanddate.com

Maybe you're in the middle of scribbling the next great American novel, when you discover you can't write another word--and the story isn't going anywhere. Well, when was it set?

The Time and Date Calculator helps. I'm the type of writer who wants to know what day of the week Christmas fell on in 1976 and what day my character's 40th birthday will fall on in 2015.

I want my writing to ring true after I'm gone. If 20 years from now I'm writing that September 11, 2001 was on a Friday, rather than on the devastating Tuesday that it actually took place, readers may lose faith in my abilities.

Also, if I write that a soon-to-be evicted character has 40 days from Valentine's Day to get out of her apartment, I want to know what date is 40 days from February 14th.


2) Personal ads

I find many potential characters in the personals. I underline their positive qualities in green ink, and their negative ones in red. I tape my marked ads to index cards where I list 3-5 questions that may lead to a story.

Example ad: "SM, father, seeks new friends to begin a new life. I like...fishing, sitting at home, watching movies...Want to join me?"
Question 1: What was wrong with his old life?
Question 2: How many children does he have, and where is their mother?
Question 3: Who has he met sitting at home? I'd really like to know...

3) Song lyrics

Sometimes I'll jot down 5 words from a song and use them in a poem or short story.

Example 1:
The hymn: "Amazing Grace"
The words: amazing, wretch, blind, sing, sun
Possible outcomes: Those 5 words could be written in love, suspense, horror, anything...not necessarily Christian writing.

Example 2:
The nursery rhyme: "Miss Mary Mack"
The words: black, buttons, fifteen, high, July
Possible outcomes: Suddenly, you're writing a mini-mystery about a summertime military heist or your own version of "Mary Poppins."

Example 3:
The popular song: "Nick of Time," by Bonnie Raitt
The words: night, babies, folks, change, choices
Possible outcomes: A poem about teenage pregnancy or an article for the local paper.

4) Jump the Shark This website has a forum that allows TV viewers to air their complaints about their favorite and least favorite shows. Did "The Brady Bunch" go wrong when they added Cousin Oliver? More than just an online complaint fest, this site helps me see what more than a few people saw as "bad" writing, and try to avoid it in my own (writing).

5) The Yellow Pages
Lots of writing books will tell you to look in the white pages of the phone book, pick a name, and create a character just from that name. I like to go to certain page numbers and pull a word or two a page from the yellow pages.

The last time I tried this was in October. I went to pages 11, 22, 33, 44, 55....you get the idea. Here's some of what I found:

11: airport, visitor
33: alarms, muffler
99: garage door opener, hardware
111: carpet, florist
222: museums, gravel
333: thrift store

One of my story ideas from the "yellow pages" prompt: A woman who leaves her car unattended at a yard sale, doesn't realize her garage door opener is missing until she gets home.

6) Stock Photo Prompts
When I noticed that fast food restaurants and insurance companies sometimes used the same photos of models in the same poses, I learned about stock photos. In addition to the ones in the clip art gallery in Microsoft Word, I use pictures from fotosearch.com and istockphoto.com for inspiration. Stock photos are expensive and rights have to be purchased to use them. However, rights don't have to be purchased to look at them and ask a few questions that will help you write your next story.

Click here for the picture source for the following questions about a picture of a pregnancy test.

• She's not wearing a ring. Is she or isn't she pregnant?
• What if she is single and childless and wants to be pregnant? What circumstances brought this desire about? Turning 30? A broken engagement?
• There's a colorful, seemingly child-friendly piece of art behind her? Does she already have children? How will the outcomes of this test affect her and those around her?

Surely, there are other offbeat and unexpected sources of inspiration. If you know of more, let us know. Until we meet again, happy writing!

Heading Into The Home Stretch!

Well, guys and gals - it's time to do what we said we were going to do - put together our own anthology! What an exciting project! And just think how motivated we'll be to see our own words in print!

But the Anthology is not the end of the process. It's just the beginning.

Now we have to move to the next logical step. The one outlined by our fearless leader. Get published! Put ourselves out there and make the editors/publishers realize just how much talent there is in Chesterfield County. A few of our members are already doing it, so why not you?

There is a venue for each of us--young adult, faith-based, flash fiction, memoirs, self-help, DIY, pop and literary fiction--it's all out there waiting.

Where, you ask? Well, there are lots of places to look. Writers Market, Ralan's website (www.ralan.com), Spicy Green Iguana (www.spicegreeniguana.com) to name a few. Go to the bookstore magazine racks--Ellery Queen, Asimov's, Fantasy, Glimmer Train. Check the spines on your favorite books, look inside at the Dedications, ask around, Google. It's all out there and waiting for YOU.

Let's put our best best foot out there with this anthology, but don't let that be your only step! Take that BIG step! Take that Leap!

Yes, Virginia, there are writers in Chesterfield.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many pictures is a word worth? Mark Twain once wrote the following words in a letter to George Bainton:

"The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

We're jotting and counting words for our first anthology, hoping that the pictures we paint convey the messages we intend. We're writing with the purpose of encouraging each other to write. We're showing the world that yes, there are writers in Chesterfield County....the one in Virginia.

Sure there are writers in other Chesterfields, writers who sit on chesterfields, and writers who wear chesterfields, but we're part of a special bunch of writers. If you don't believe it, we dare you to join us at our next meeting, Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 12 pm.

October Octaves

That was worth tons more than two cents, my friend. Here it is:

We scribbled
flash fiction.
We shared
mixed reactions.
We listened.
We learned.
The meeting
adjourned.

“Adjourned” works, considering that November wraps the anthology.

4 familiar faces:

• the improv /computer guy, “editor and chief whip cracker."
• the fantasy weaver/word diva, creator of an angry, armed chick.
• the nonfiction/comic book penman, java jams leader. (More later.)
• the Christian writer/poet (that's me), who serves God in ink.

4 new faces:

• the country chef/soul food author, who candied us at the end.
• the poet/country-western lyricist, who also writes kids' lit.
• the father-daughter writers:
• The dad, who told us of orphanhood and the Halloween of 1949.
• The daughter, his "moral support," who can write flash fiction.

Real writers write. United, we discover invaluable tools and lessons.

4 tools for writers:

1. Book: Pen on Fire
2. Book: Writer’s Market.
3. Workshops/classes: James River Writers
4. Workshops/classes: Studio Unlimited Virginia

4 writing lessons:

1. We can write in a flash, chop it in half, and still have great stories.
2. Be willing to promote your own work, even with larger publishers.
3. Just getting the ISBN doesn't ensure publishing success.
4. We don't have to get stuck in one genre.

Writing Exercise at Yesterday's Meeting

I'm going to toss my two cents into the blog arena, so bear with me, folks!

I won't go into much detail about yesterday's meeting other than to say that I was delighted to see so many new faces! I hope to see you all again next month. Nedra will probably post something outlining our activities.

I wanted to say that yesterday's short writing exercise really sparked something. I seem to be running into a lot more people writing for the Young Adult (YA) market and well, a story kind of leaped into my mind that might be marketable to that market (how many times can I use "market" in one sentence ;o). I ended up coming home from the meeting with the skeleton of a story plot and then slammed out a 1,500 word story. I'm actually pretty pleased with the result. It has to have been one of the easiest short stories I've ever written and while it's still in first draft, I feel it has potential.*

That's one of the things I've had to learn on the road to becoming a writer. I had to learn how to give myself permission to write, and write badly if necessary, as long as I write! You, my fellow writers, all know what I mean. At one point, back in the formative years, we're all taught that if we can't do it right, don't do it! But the need to do it right can sometimes keep us from doing it at all. We self-edit, over-critique, denigrate, etc.

Don't do it! Adopt the Nike slogan for your own and Just Do It! Get it out, get it down and get it finished! Then, you can do the nasty "edit" thingee!

Yeah, it's just that sometimes a person has to hear it about umpteen hundred times, get hit over the head with the ol' "clue by four" and then maybe in a "sudden flash" realize what everyone's been saying. Just write.

Write and then rewrite and then rewrite again. Nothing leaps forth fully formed and perfect - well, nothing written by anyone I know or know of (most of the famous writers speak of the necessary evil of revision/edit). Just write and tell the ol' critic sitting on the back of your chair to take a chill pill, shut up, and let you do your stuff.

So, that's it for now. I'm going to get back to it. Happy Writing!

*OMG, I just realized that the exercise produced what could be considered an "outline" of a story that I then translated into a fully fleshed out story! Wow! And I thought I couldn't do it that way! See-yet another fun discovery!

3 Reasons, 2 Ways, 1 Day to Go

Three reasons to join us at tomorrow's meeting at Central Library at 12 PM. :

1. You've always wanted to write but you've never found the time. See Too Busy to Write?.

2. You're writing and you're stuck...that bad ole' writer's block. Come get writer's block tips from other writers.

3. You've got a manuscript that you've read a million times, and you need another pair of eyes.

Two ways to join:

1. Click on one of the links to the right, either Meetup or Yahoo .

2. Come to tomorrow's meeting. Click here for directions.

One day to go:

Our next meeting is Saturday, October 27, 2007 (tomorrow, tomorrow...) at the Central Branch of the Chesterfield Public Library in Chesterfield, Virginia.

Central Library

Chesterfield County Public Libraries

9501 Lori Road

Chesterfield, VA 23832

October Meeting

The Chesterfield Writers' Club's October meeting will be Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 12:00 PM. We're still building an anthology of stories mined from the brains of different writers in Chesterfield County, and welcome submissions. For more information or to join the club, visit our MeetUp site.