A Thought on Writing

"For a writer, life is always too short to write.
I will just try my best during what remains of my life." 

~~~ Cao Yu 1910 - 1996

Are you ready to enter a writing contest?

I just got an email informing me Writer's Digest has announced it's now time for their annual writing competition. I'm signed up for their free email membership. This is legitimate.

Grand prize is $3,000 and a trip to New York for 3 days and 2 nights.

The announcement says:

"While you’re there, a Writer’s Digest editor will escort you to share your work with four editors or agents."

Now, I don't know if that means you get to show them what you wrote that won you the contest, but, I sure hope it means that you can share with them other writings you've created. Wouldn't that be cool?

They have ten categories in which you may enter:

1. Inspirational Writing (Spiritual/Religious)

2. Memoirs/Personal Essay

3. Magazine Feature Article

4. Genre Short Story (Mystery, Romance, etc.)

5. Mainstream/Literary Short Story

6. Rhyming Poetry

7. Non-Rhyming Poetry

8. Stage Play

9. Television/Movie Script

10. Children's/Young Adult Fiction

Here's the link for further information.
http://writersdigest.com/annual

When you click on the link, a box will come up asking you to sign up for Writer's Digest magazine subscription. Don't let it deter you.  If you're not interested, just close it out with the almost invisible x in the upper right corner of the box. Otherwise, sign up and enjoy. (May I have your old copies?)

You might find it advantageous to sign up for the free emails, as I did.

Even if you are not ready to submit something you have written, read through it all to get an idea of how things work. This will save a lot of stress in the future when you have finished something you might want to enter somewhere and find you have only a day to do it. You must read through and methodically follow instructions, otherwise your perfectly wonderful and publishable manuscript might be scrapped, because you didn't dot an i, or cross a T, or specify that this is a memoir and not a magazine article, for example.

Here's an something that caught my eye from their site where I can think things might get confusing and throw things off if one does not read all the fine print.

"Q: Are pen names allowed?
Pen names are fine. Write your pen name on all forms etc. so there is no mistakes on credits. Please be advised that we only need your real name if you are chosen as a winner (in order to issue prizes)."

Please note: I thought it was interesting that they used "is no mistakes" instead of "are no mistakes". If this is any indication of editing skills....

Also, before you go buying any of the books they offer for sale, check with Amazon or half.com, for better prices. If you don't mind purchasing a used book instead of new, sometimes you can get them for a penny plus postage. One other site I just love for obtaining books for next to nothing is

http://www.paperbackswap.com/

If you sign up for paperbackswap, you can reference me by name as the person who referred you. I would appreciate that very much, as then I would earn a point.

If you have something to add to this, please comment.

Getting Ready to Write - Poem

Got Ink?


Testing writing instruments

demanding, desiring penmanship
thirsting for new ink.

Will it last long enough
to finish what I’m saying?

Any pen,
trusting,
praying,
it will function.

Examine each one
for every clue.

Dried ones go
keep the evernew

        ~~~
Elizabeth Munroz

The Google Search Writing Trigger Technique

.
When writer's block hits me, this is a method I've developed to free me from the shackles.

Using one word is a well known technique for triggering writing, even if it only squeezes a single sentence from our brains. But, that is not the only part of my scheme. So hang with me, here, as we still need that one word to begin the process.

Pick a word any word.

Can't think of one?

Grab the nearest printed object. Mine says Ipod. Okay, so I grab the word, pod, and write about it.  "the pea pod was like velvet in my hand, the peas, like the food of the gods, blessed my mouth with flavor".

Yes, it's corny. But, let's not judge. Whatever you come up with will work. A stream of conciousness will suffice. (pod... dod... god... blessed.. food...). It's a trigger, not to be taken too seriously. Anything to stimulate creativity when we're wanting to unleash ourselves from our greatest enemy is a gift.

Now, take the full amount created and put it in Google search. The above one word trigger sentence brought forth a lot about peas in the google search, a lot about food. But, let's say you want something more creative to help you get moving. Something, unrelated to cooking or growing peas. In fact, let's delete the peas and anything that might bring up a food reference out of our search. Might as well get rid of the extraneous adjectives, and get a cleaner search.

pod velvet hand gods blessed mouth

Let's see what happens...

Ah ha! Look at that. Pod still wins out with food references. We can go with this or narrow down further. Even though pod was our trigger word, let's throw out the pod.

There it is! Many new trigger words to get your fingers jumping over the keyboard. Not just one.

Now, here is the important thing, and I mean important! No matter how interesting the response looks, DO NOT GO THERE! You will end up spending the next hour perusing the site and all the fascinating new information. After all, a writer is a word junky. Words call us home to luxuriate in their warm embrace. DON'T GO THERE! This is an exercise in self control. No, this is an exercise in creativity. Yes, both.

Here's what you do next. Looking at the Google responses you will see jumbled parts of sentences containing your words. This combination of phrases is enough to trigger some writing. One of my Google responses is from the site: Book of Riddles - Strolen's Citadel: A Role Playing Community

"A golden bird did in its mouth abide The serpent drank the water, ... Jewel on black velvet, pearl in the sea Unchanged but e'erchanging, eternally. .... For our ambrosia we were blessed, by Jupiter, with a sting of death. ..... A sieve/collander (Sphere of Annihilation) Though desert men once called me God, ..."

This is not an exercise in plagiarism, so it's not a good idea to turn this into a little poem. It looks like it already is part of one. If there is one turn of phrase that really stands out for you, write it down, and go from there:

Here's my example:

The serpent drank the water as the dew formed. I was more fascinated by the drops of moisture than I was of his tiny eyes staring fire into the dawn.

I don't care for serpents and I would find myself avoiding the visual stimulation to go further with this, so if I change serpent into butterfly... maybe. But, the researcher in me will want to verify if butterflies actually drink dew at dawn, unless I'm going to give myself poetic liscence, and go with the flow.

Another method is to make a list of all the significant words so that you will have something more substantial to keep you going. Perhaps create a whole piece with those words.

golden
bird
mouth
serpent
drank
water
Jewel
black
velvet
pearl
sea
Unchanged
eternally
ambrosia
blessed
Jupiter
sting
death
sieve/collander
Sphere
Annihilation
desert
men
God

I am so tempted to go into that website and discover how all those enticing phrases are related! What wonderful words these are!

We could easily spend an hour or two perusing a dictionary to delight in all the nuances of these words. Couldn't we? If you have time and no deadline to meet, enjoy yourself. See ya later. Come back when you're ready to play some more. But, If you are still in the "let's see where else this will take us" mode, stay here.

If you are still not feeling particularly creative, the simplest thing would be to make one sentence each with one of the words in it. In the past, I would have done this on small cards and put them away until later to use as triggers. But, now we can simply keep them in a document, we call, triggers list, or simply, sentence list.

Here are some examples of sentences I might create if I am totally in left brain mode:

Her hair had the sheen of a newborn black colt

The hillsides looked like velvet.

He liked the feel of the pearl handled gun.

The sea was alive with fury that day.

Later on, we can go back to these sentences and ask the who, what, where, why's, etc. and maybe a novel will be born.

If you want to go a next step further, take all the words and make a poem or story.

I won't share mine right now. I think I've got 50,000 words on the way!

How many words written?

2.644 words today