It was a great weekend for writing. I continued to expand on the story that I am writing for the online writing class.
In addition, I had fun with both the Saturday Writing Prompts: http://spawningworlds.blogspot.com/2012/04/saturday-writing-prompts-042112.html
and the Sunday Writing Prompts
1. Word: Chaosopolis
2. Picture: A man with a lemon in his mouth
3. Sentence: If you retire, take up hobbies or volunteer work.
I signed up for a new online writing class on Saturday and was excited about getting started today the first day of the class. However, someone failed to put my name on the class list, so I have to wait till tomorrow to actually get started. Fortunately, a friend of mine taking the class told me what the intro exercise was, so I won’t be completely behind. One of the assignments is to list my writing obsessions and themes. As I thought about these I realized that they were not particularly deep. This set me to soul searching. Hopefully, I will find something that does not amount to cosmetic depth. Anyhow, if I am absolutely honest with myself I would have to say that the following tend to appear in my prose:
a. Beautiful women
b. Sex
c. Religion
d. Strong and often manipulative women
e. Super Heroes
f. Super Heroes (Yes, I did repeat myself).
g. Demons
h. Demented Villains
i. Messengers (I am not sure why. Perhaps the subconscious is sending a message to self. Ah I am approaching some depth, I think.)
j. Magic users
I am hoping that after much soul searching I can add the following to the list:
1. A search for meaning and purpose
2. Coming of Age
3. Perseverance
4. Undying love
The soul searching begins….
After reading that we need 10 to 15 minutes of direct sunlight to get good good sleep, I decided to hang out in a local park and get my daily dose. I ended up with thirty minutes more for good measure. While there I got some freewriting in and continued plotting work on a fantasy piece: If The Dawn Never Comes. Then I had fun with the Saturday Writing Prompts: http://spawningworlds.blogspot.com/2012/04/saturday-writing-prompts-040712.html
Because this week’s prompts all had a common theme (war), it was easy to get all three prompts in early. I first imagined it as a scifi piece but then started working on it as medieval fantasy. The change had to do with the fact that the sci fi version was not related to fictional ideas that excite me. However, I am not convinced that I can’t get it to work as sci fi, so once I have explored the medieval fantasy angle, I will return to trying a sci fi rendition of it.
Productive writing day. Yay!
I managed to focus on writing for three evenings in a row. I am doing another happy dance over that. This evening after teaching, I continued work on a story entitled If The Dawn Never Comes. It is all in the planning stages now, but I am excited about it. There are also two projects that emerged from the Gotham Writers’ Workshop that I am ruminating on in addition to The Omega War. I am gearing up for another great writing day tomorrow since I have Good Friday off from teaching.
New Saturday Writing Prompts posted: http://spawningworlds.blogspot.com/2012/03/saturday-writing-exercise-031712.html
It was a fun writing day today.
For Sunday Writing the group used the following prompts:
1. time cloak
2. a foggy morning in the country
As for the assignment for the writing class, I described three objects using not usually used to describe those items. Challenging and lots of fun.
All in all it was a great Sunday because I also got much leisure reading in. Besides super hero comic books, I read more of the novel The Quantum Thief (sci fi) and sampled a historical romance called The Least Likely Bride by Jane Feather.
I just had another mini-writing spell this week. However, once I switched back from trying to warm up to writing in the evening and started writing with the early morning commute, I was back on track again. This coming week will be more productive. I just have to protect writing focus.
Today was an off day for the Sunday Writing group, which was good because sleep deprivation started to kick in heavily after lunch. However, I did manage to finish the writing assignment for the Gotham Writers’ Workshop:
Postcard Describe your best or worst vacation. Describe the beginning, middle, and end. Pretend it all has to fit on a postcard so keep it brief.
In addition to some new narrative fragments written over lunch at the Cheesecake Factory I also got some writing in on the Saturday Writing Prompts that I posted yesterday:
http://spawningworlds.blogspot.com/2012/02/writing-prompts-020412.html
As for reading, I finished up the previous batch of super hero comics and bought a new batch today. In addition, I sampled three novels that I had bought last weekend:
Ripe for Scandal (historical romance) by Isobel Carr
After the Golden Age (super hero adventure) by Carrie Vaughn
The Unremembered (medieval fantasy) by Peter Orullian
On the magazine end, I started reading an article in The New Republic Feb. 2. 2012 entitled Not Fade Away: Against the myth of American Decline. I hope to finish it tonight.
Despite the effects of sleep deprivation, it’s been a recreation-productive Sunday.
I got together with a writer friend after work today and managed to advance a story involving a fallen angel that I had started earlier in the week. On the train heading back home, I also added some new narrative fragments to my notebook. It was nice to get back to writing after losing writing focus for much of the week.
It was another great writing day. First, in the Sunday Writing Group, we wrote stories based on the following prompt type: SVO.
Subject: The dragon
Verb: diagnose
Object: the drone.
Second, I completed the 500 word writing exercise for the Gotham Writers’ Workshop Fiction 1 class. For the class, I also created a profile for the main viewpoint character.
I am looking forward to the second class of the workshop tomorrow.
