What trolley did you get on? Prompt #43

  • What trolley did you get on? Prompt #43

    When using prompts for writing, you can answer from your personal experience, or from your fictional or real character’s point of view. Feel free to let your imagination meander.

    If you only know where the trolley you got on would take you . . .  What trolley did you get on, and where did it take you? What other trolleys were running then? What if you had taken one of them?  Not had kids, had kids, chose to live on the Atlantic instead of Pacific, gave up art or gave up law, married him/her or didn’t. Tell us about your trolley.

    Prompt:  What trolley did you get on?

    Marlene C

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  • Are there rules for essay writing?

    Pat Olsen has written an excellent article about writing personal essay in the December 2013 issue of The Writer magazine. Highlights:

    “. . . when I am so obsessed about an idea that I can’t wait to put pen to paper, the essay almost writes itself. That’s not so say I don’t struggle over every word, or that I’m done after the first draft . . . Some of the best advice I’ve received is that it’s not only what you choose to include in an essay that’s important, but it’s also what you choose to omit.”  She gives an example and then goes on to ask:

    “Are there actual rules for essay writing? If so, not all writers agree on them.” After consulting essayists, here’s what she discovered:

     Kate Walter:  “‘An essay should have a universal theme . . . No matter how unusual a story may seem,’ she says, ‘there should be a broader theme that every reader can identify with.”

     Andrea King Collier:  “‘Voice is everything,’ she notes. ‘Two people can write an essay on the loss of a parent, and it is the voice and the approach/lens of the writer that can make one sing over the other.’”

     Bob Brody: “Start with an anecdote, a scene or an observation, Brody advises. Go back in time or stay in the present. Have a single big moment or a series of big moments.”

     Amy Paturel:  “The best essays, she says, are about a transformation. ‘Between the beginning and the end of your essay, there has to be some sort of epiphany or awakening . . . ”

     Andrea Cooper:  “. . . take a break from your essay. ‘I studied once with memoirist Patricia Hampl, who encouraged us to think of revision literally,’ she says. “It’s re-vision, re-seeing.’”

    Lots of good information in this article about writing personal essay.

     Nina Amir posts writing prompts on her blog.  Her January 31, 2014 post, about personal essays, includes Writing Prompt #9, Brainstorm Personal Essay topics.

    Nina writes, “Personal essays tend to focus on one particular event and how it affected you or your life. They often have universal themes that makes it possible for readers to relate to personal stories.”

     

     

    Marlene C

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  • I stand on the edge of . . . Prompt #42

    When using the freewrite style of writing . . . write freely with no worries about the end result. The editor that sits on your shoulder, the inner critic. . . out the door.  Give ’em the boot. Not invited to this party.

    It’s not about the writing . . . it’s about the process.

    The process of letting go. Trust yourself. Go with your imagination. Go with what’s on your mind.

    Today’s writing prompt: I stand on the edge of . . .

    Marlene C

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  • Phantom Drift accepting submissions.

    Phantom Drift accepting submissions Jan. 1 – March 31.

    Fiction: Looking for fabulist flash fiction and short stories: stories that favor the unusual over the usual; stories that create a milieu where anything can happen.

    Poetry: Prefer poetry composed in the new fabulist tradition: that shatters or valuably distorts reality, whether this means surrealism, magical realism, fantastique, or bizarrerie.

    Non-fiction: Looking for essays on New Fabulism (or the range of imaginative literature generally referred to as slipstream, new weird, magic realism, fabulist and cross-genre fantastic literature difficult to categorize).

    Art: Looking for fabulist art for cover and for b/w interior. We are not looking for realist or abstract art. Please acquaint yourself with surrealists and artists of the fantastic. Artwork may be based on myths or dreams or purely imagined, but must complement the range of literature we seek

    Marlene C

  • Guest blogger Victoria Zackheim, “If we want to live full and creative lives . . . “

    Guest Blogger Victoria Zackheim writes:

    How many of us are beset by that nagging voice that tells us we’re not good enough, not thin enough, not smart, tall, educated, talented enough? I don’t know about you, but I face this every day. It used to run my life . . . now it’s a tiny slice of annoyance that I can easily push away. It took years—decades, to be honest—but those demons are silenced. When they try to reappear, they’re quickly vanquished. Not dead and gone, but shoved aside where they can do no harm.

    It wasn’t always like that . . . and for many women, and those of us who spend our lives not only writing, but putting our words into the world for everyone to read . . . and judge . . . fear is often the rule, whereas a sense of security is the exception.

    Girls are too often told to behave, not to rock the boat, but if we want to live full and creative lives, we must take risks. I have a friend with ten novels published, including at least one on the NY Times bestseller list, and she still worries herself sick with every publication. I have another friend who’s got nearly thirty million books in print, yet she battles the same self doubt suffered by first-time authors. Why do we do this to ourselves?

    It’s about trust. Trusting ourselves. Trusting the universe to treat us kindly. Trusting our friends and family to be there for us, sharing the celebration when all goes well, sharing the pain when it doesn’t. And we have to trust time, that finite thing that can be friend or foe.  A support system is golden.  For me, it’s what keeps me breathing, writing, and taking risks. When I hit 60, I was NOT happy with my body of work, so I decided to act on every creative thought that crossed my brain. I promised myself to view a no-go idea not as a failure, but as an idea that had no legs. And I created a new definition of “failure”: the idea we’re too afraid to pursue,

    The result? Since I made that promise to myself, I’ve sold six books, have two plays in development, signed an option with Identity Films for my first feature screenplay, wrote a documentary that ran nationwide on PBS, and am teaching writing workshops for UCLA online, and at writers’ conferences here, as well as in Canada, France and Mexico.

    You are never too old to follow your dreams. You want to write a memoir, but you’re convinced that your mother’s ghost will haunt you? Make it a novel! Got an idea for a play, short story, anthology . . . just do it!

    Whatever you read in the beauty magazines, whatever the television commercials promise, you ARE getting older . . . and it’s a good thing. Every day gives you one more shot of maturity, confidence, and fodder for your writing . . .or for living a fuller and more satisfying life. As for me . . . I can’t wait to see what my seventies bring!

     Victoria Zackheim is the author of the novel, The Bone Weaver, and editor of six anthologies, the most recent being FAITH: Believers, Agnostics, and Atheists Confront the Big Questions (working title, Simon & Schuster/Beyond Words, March 2015 publication). Her screenplay, Maidstone, a feature film, is in development with Identity Films. Her plays The Other Woman and Entangled are in development, with the latter having its staged reading at San Francisco’s Z Space Theater in April. Victoria writes documentary films for On the Road Productions. Their latest, Where Birds Never Sang, appeared nationwide  on PBS. She teaches Personal Essay in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and is a 2010 San Francisco Library Laureate.

    Marlene C

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  • The only way to get better at something is to do it.

    Ray Engan, winner of the 2013 Toastmaster International Speech contest for District 57 (Northern California) says, “Everybody in this world has a story to tell and they should share their stories.”

    Engan believes we learn how to overcome adversity when we share our stories.  Engan had to overcome his fear of public speaking.  One of the people he met in Toastmasters, Darren La Croix, said something that inspired Engan, “The only way to get better at something is to do it.”

    So, what are you waiting for?  Write that story that’s been simmering on the back burner. Just write!

    Ray Engan is a humorist, sales trainer and executive speech coach whose lively stories can be heard every month at West Side Stories Petaluma.

    Ray will be giving a seminar to add humor to presentations and your life in Petaluma, CA.  Details soon on his website.

    Marlene C

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  • How to write fiction based on fact. Prompt #41

    Part Two of how to write fiction based on fact.  Part One is Prompt #40.

    Alla Crone-Hayden began one of her first historical novels with this opening line:

     On the cold Sunday of January 9, 1905, the pallid sun hung over the rooftops of St. Petersburg trying to burn its way through a thin layer of clouds.

     The weather matches the mood of character, of story.  Perhaps draws you in.  Maybe you want to know more   .  .  .  does the sun succeed in burning through?

     Second sentence:

     By two o’clock in the afternoon the dull light had done little to warm the thousands of people milling in the streets.

    The second sentence answers the unasked question about the sun. Notice the word choices:  cold, pallid sun, thin, dull light . . . words match the mood or tone of the day/event.

    Alla used weather to match the narrator’s mood. The weather matches the tone of the story. It’s probably not going to be a pretty story. It’s probably going to be gritty.

    Writing Prompt:  Take a pivotal event from your life and write it as fiction.  Suggestions:

    Use weather to mirror your narrator’s emotions.

    Add any details you want. . . whether they really happened or not. Remember, you are writing fiction based on a true event.

    Here are some lines you can start with:

    In the early morning light, while still calm and quiet. . .

    The sun played peek-a-boo . . .

    Just as day was fading into night . . .

    I could feel the storm gathering . . .

    The sky opened and rain bellowed down . . .

    Sunset, that quiet time of day, good for reflection . . .

    Mid-afternoon, hot sun beating down . . .

    Mint julep time, or as Granny/Grandpa used to say . . .

    You get the idea. . . use weather or time of day to match the mood of your story.

    For brilliant fiction based on fact, check out Alla Crone, author of Captive of Silence, Winds Over Manchuria, and more.

    Marlene C

  • Writing is like being a salesperson . .

    Elizabeth Berg, Escaping Into The Open, The Art of Writing True on Persuasiveness, page 32. Excerpt:

    In some ways, writing is like being a salesperson. you are in the business of convincing someone to buy something, as in, believe something. Try to develop your skills of persuasion so that your villain, say, is really felt as a villain. In doing that, think about the small things—everything really is in the details. For example, it’s not so much the description of the murderer killing someone that demonstrates his evil nature, it’s the flatness in his eyes as he does it; it’s the way he goes and gets an ice cream immediately afterward. Similarly, a man offering a diamond bracelet to a woman shows love; but that same person smiling tenderly when he wipes the smear of catsup off her face shows more.

     Your turn. Write a scene showing the bad guy as a villain. Really. . . show how he or she has no remorse. Show the evil. OR, write a scene showing the love felt between two people. Just write.

    Marlene C

  • Make a list of pivotal events. . . Prompt #40

    Today’s Prompt is Part 1 of 2.  Part 2 is “How to Write Fact Based on Fiction,” Prompt #41.

    Part 1

    Make a list of pivotal events in your life. Those times when, at night, you were not the same person you were in the morning.  By day’s end, you were a different person.  Just write a list.

    When you are finished writing the list:  take something from your list and write the details . . . as you remember them.  You can be as detailed, or as general as you want to be.

    Write about an event that altered your life:  all the gritty details. . . be as honest and as genuine as you can. Bleed onto the page.

    Part 2 will be the next prompt post.

    Marlene C

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  • Your Life. . . in 100 words

    Reader’s Digest 100 words contest. In 100 words or fewer, tell a true story about yourself. One grand-prize winner will receive $5,000 and have his or her story published in our June issue. One runner-up winner will receive $500, and six finalists will receive $100 each.

    Entries must be received by March 14, 2014

    Good Luck!

    Marlene C