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I'm putting episodes 8.5 and 8.6 together, in part because I am having a devil of a time writing something for the prompt for episode 8.5. That episode talks about breaking the rules of writing, and it made me realize that I never really learned the "rules" for writing. I've never taken a class on writing fiction; all of the instruction I've ever received with regards to writing has been related to writing academic papers, non-fiction persuasion or position papers, essentially. I've had some experience in writing documents for work, things like standard operating procedures (SOPs) and minutes from various meetings, but none of that explains how best to handle point of view or whether you should move from one character's thoughts to another. I've obviously read a lot of fiction in my life, and so I have an idea of what I think works and what doesn't, but I also, embarrassingly, have to say that I don't pay super close attention to what - or rath...

Side characters are the subject of Episode 8.4, which is definitely something I could use help with. I usually have a decent idea of my main characters, but everybody else tends to just show up on their own, and I don't know too much about them until they start taking over the narrative. It's something that I could definitely afford to work on a bit more, so that I can get a better handle on who is in the stories I write, at least to begin with. What happens after they show up, well, that tends to be less under my control than would probably be considered healthy. Writing prompt: The Hero of the Most Boring Story Ever—your job is to make it interesting. (I'm going to cheat a little bit with regards to the "most boring story ever" aspect - I have a meditation app, Calm.com, that has sleep stories which are deliberately written to be the kind of thing that will help a person fall asleep. I'll riff on one of those.) I'm also just going to remind you all that ...

Pets! I love reading about how animals interact with characters in stories, but I'm so bad with it myself. I know the way I interact with my cats is not necessarily the way the average person interacts with their pets, and it makes me nervous to write characters who have pets or service animals or other animals that they interact with on the regular, because who knows how "wrong" I'm getting it. But meh, let's give it a go. Writing prompt: Write a human interacting with an alien, and the alien has a conspicuous companion animal who is critically important to the alien’s life. Steve was nervous, as usual, while entering their new ship. They were never particularly comfortable around others who were not of their species, or their planet, and a spaceship just exacerbated not only the strangeness of the situation, but also highlighted all the ways the sentient races didn't truly understand each other. It was their third spaceship since they had begun their travels...

 Episode 2 is all about the Campbellian monomyth/Hero of a Thousand Faces, which is one of those things that always sounded vaguely interesting from a distance. Even just listening to the beginning of this episode, though, it's sounding so much like a prescription for a story (at least, that's how way too many people look at it or treat it), and that kind of prescription has never felt organic or, frankly, interesting to me. This is probably why I was never a huge fan of literary criticism - so much of it seems to be focusing on labeling the different pieces of a story to fit into some kind of formula, and it just takes so much joy out of the experience. No wonder I fled academia. Writing prompt: Take Goldilocks and the Three Bears, apply the Campbellian Monomyth, and give us a short story. Babe opened the door wearily, slumping into his home just ahead of his two brothers. All three had been pulling extra hours at the mines lately, because money was tight, and Christmas was c...

(What? Two posts in one day? I know! Don't get used to it.) I'm starting something new now that 31 stories is winding down. I'm going through old episodes of the podcast Writing Excuses  and listening to one episode at a time, then following the writing prompt given at the end of each episode. I had listened to the podcast regularly for a long time, but like so many other podcasts, I've fallen behind to the point of ridiculousness. (I'm not the best at keeping on top of things with regards to podcasts, but I'm also very fond of being complete in my listening habits, which makes for an interesting combination - I'm sitting at about 40 months' behind on most of my podcasts, for reference.) To start this thing, episode 8.1 , "Microcasting," has this writing prompt: What does SFPA stand for? (It figures that the first one I pick is one that's the hosts being smart asses, but what can I do?) The old-fashioned phone rang on the wooden desk next t...

I'm drafting this up now, on the 29th, though I plan on posting after the end of the month. I want to get some thoughts down about my experience with the 31 stories in 31 days challenge, because it has been enlightening. First, I want to shout out to the team that created the challenge, and the community on Discord that was incredibly supportive and enthusiastic throughout the entire experience. The team put out prompts every day (sometimes multiple prompts), worked on giveaways, engaged the community members to discuss what was going well, what wasn't, and being overall incredibly encouraging for all of us. I don't know how many people actually managed to hit 31 stories - I know I didn't, but I also figured pretty early on that writing more days than I didn't each week was what I needed to get things going for my brain. I have been having a rough time with regards to my mental health of late. 2020 was not kind to any of us, and the combination of that, some physic...

 I know it's been a few days. I have still been writing, the stories just haven't gotten beyond an extended drabble yet, and it feels weird to post something that isn't finished. Today's is a little odd, as well. I'd mentioned that I had a story not so much take a left turn as a pirouette and then fall down the stairs, and I decided to write down the discussion I may as well have had with the character who led the way on that particular journey. So enjoy day 12 - Character Field Day I flip through the notes on the page in front of me, then address the blank screen on my computer. I have a rough idea of what kind of characters I want to write, and how they may play out. The first character type has wings, some sort of musical ability, maybe a bard or troubadour type in a fantasy setting - let's put them over here and see how- -*poof* Nope! I don't sing, I don't tell stories, and I'm not in a standard fantasy setting. In fact, I show up as the anchor f...

Today's story is a little different. Earlier today, we learned of the death of a member of our community, Jeffrey Cook. Eric (my husband) knew Jeff better than I did, having met him many years ago and gaming with him for several years. They hadn't been close in a while - life moved them in different directions physically, and scheduling became less feasible for everyone - but Eric always considered Jeff a friend. I knew Jeff primarily as a writer, as that was where I had met him. Jeff was an author for Clockwork Dragon , where he wrote several books and stories for their Writerpunk anthologies. I saw him at nearly every convention I went to, as he would man the booth in the dealer's room for Clockwork Dragon, and he always made a point of chatting with me, asking how I was doing and how my writing was going. His presence will be missed in our communities, and I hope my small tribute will be read with the love and respect with which it was written. (And for those interested ...

This one got away from me a little bit, and so while I'm at a good stopping point, I think there's going to be at least a part 2, if not more. enjoy day 10 - God of Something. I stumbled into the atrium of a building that didn't look familiar at all, though to be honest, nothing looked familiar yet. I didn't look familiar to myself. Up until a breath ago, I hadn't existed in any form, and suddenly, there I was, standing in a room surrounded by pillars, trying not to fall over, and really wishing I had some idea of what the hell was going on. And what the hell "hell" was. And who was talking when I was hearing all of these things. "Hello?" I called out, and jumped. My voice was...unexpected. It was high, and there was some kind of accent, but I couldn't place it. (I didn't even know how I knew it was an accent, to be honest...) My voice echoed around the room, and somehow seemed to get louder as it echoed. I didn't think that was how e...

I've always loved seeing how movies interpret books, and how they change things/get them "wrong" in the interpretation. Naturally, I needed to play with that. Enjoy day 9 - Next Big Thing. The conference room was in the process of getting set up when all hell broke loose. Again. This was my first time getting to actually be involved with the movie tie-ins, and I was extremely excited to get to meet everyone and see how things would go. We all knew that a new movie was coming out shortly, and with each new preview, a little more about the movie was being made public. The series had been around for decades, encompassing five core books written by the original creators and at least a dozen more books that were part of an expanded world, written after the original series and focusing on different parts of the lore that hadn't been explored in the original books. The Powers that Be that owned the rights to all of the series had decided that those expanded world books were ...

This is what happens when I spend too much time thinking about biographies and historical fiction, I think - I start wondering what happens when new information about a person comes to light, and someone takes another stab at writing their biography. This was fun. Enjoy day 8 - The Many Faces of August France. The room was starting to fill up, but there were still a few empty chairs closer to the front of the room where the dais stood. The audience was made up of people who looked roughly the same, if you glanced quickly - it would take at least a second look to notice that some people had longer hair, or darker hair; some wore clothes that were a bit more tailored or more tattered; some had skin that was a shade or two lighter, or had notable scars on slightly different parts of their faces. Overall, there was a strong resemblance between everyone, but not enough to say exactly how they were related. Cousins, perhaps, or aunts and uncles. The audience was fairly quiet - that, at least...

(I'm still going with day numbers, even though that obviously no longer matches the dates of the month. Consistency! Or something.) Ever since I thought of this story title, I've had the song stuck in my head. Specifically, I've had a version done by Rockapella stuck in my head, and it's a version I have yet to be able to find. It used to live on my now long-dead iPod lo, these many moons ago, but I haven't been able to find it since. Alas! At any rate, please enjoy day 7 - Zombie Jamboree. The ballroom of the Library was one of the few large places that could host hundreds of people (or creatures, as it were) without causing a big log jam. Sheila still wasn't sure why there was a ballroom in a library, or why it needed to be used at least once a month or so (at least, she figured it was about once a month - time ran strangely in the Library), but so long as there were events in the ballroom and she worked for the food service sector of the Library staff, she wo...