Free The Words

If like me, you’ve spent some time looking at a blank page, hoping for, WILLING some inspiration into being, have a look at the ten tools below, designed to fire up the dormant creative juices. Some, I’ve made up and some I’ve read about, as being beneficial to other writers caught in that awfully scary place, where words fear to tread.

1. If you can, visit a real graveyard, preferably an old one and using the oldest inscription you can find on a grave, construct a first person, present tense point of view paragraph about the person during the time they lived. If you can’t visit a real graveyard – close your eyes and imagine the words that would appear on an imaginary gravestone.

2. Sit in a room, with the window open as wide as it can. Listen. Just listen. Switch off your other senses. After five minutes, write a paragraph about the sound that resonated most with you during that time.

3. Take the opening paragraph from your most recently read and loved book. Change the POV and rewrite it, seeing if it frees anything – an idea, a character?

4. Using a favourite lyric e.g ‘Been down to the bottom of every bottle’ and write a third person past tense paragraph on a person who might have said those words.

5. Imagine your favourite male and female celebrities. Write a love scene – One page of dialogue only which must end on a cliff-hanger.

6. Light several candles and sit in a darkened room. List the first thirty words that come to you e.g. haunt, flicker, light, scared. Choose your favourite, most evocative word and write a flash fiction story of only fifty words. It must have a beginning, middle and end!

7. Conduct a Parky style interview with a pretend celebrity. Ask the questions you know no real host would dare to ask! Make the celeb’s responses honest and instinctive.

8. Examine a photograph - preferably one from a magazine and preferably one with unknown people in it. Write a list of the personality traits of the person you feel to be the main character in the photograph. Now describe him/her physically, write down their birthday, birth sign, favourite food, the job they do. Enough at least for a short story!

9. Write a love letter. It must start with ‘My dearest...’ and end with ‘sending you all the love in my heart’. Other than that, let your fingers tap the talking.

10. Pick your favourite word in the dictionary. Mine is ‘serendipity’. Read and re-read the dictionary meaning. Look it up on Wikipedia. Google it. See if there’s a google image for it? Write one paragraph where your favourite word appears, either in script or in theme.


See now, I’m all inspired. I feel a tale coming on. One of a serendipitous meeting of an ex alcoholic D list celebrity falling for his dead lost love... Only it’s all in his head, see? Oh and it takes the form of love letters heading each chapter.

Been done before? No problem. Change the POV. Make it emails/texts/ Facebook status reports instead. OMG, imagine a ghost that can only communicate through Facebook! Love it!

As usual when I write posts that are aimed at helping - moving people along, I end out worrying for myself...

FLASH!

Am totally and completely immersed in new project.
Like a new love affair.
Not much room for anything else.
Hence no inspiration for today’s post.
Lay on my bed (Works for Rod?)
Thought of posting first chapter of new WIP?
Then thought against it.
Decided to post a flash fiction piece so you would have something to read.
Something sensible.
And not disjointed like this drivel.
Challenge was to write a story in less than 250 words using the word ‘skinny.’
I love flashing.
(Don’t be rude)
This one is called “Skinny Genes”


I peer around the curtain. Sarah, who should be out there now, giggles and wobbles on her platforms. She’s been on the Veuve. I point her in the right direction and off she trots.

Showtime. My dresser is a rotund motherly figure who looks nothing like my own mother. Her greying hair holds a medley of spare clips on one side. A pin cushion sits on her ample bosom.
‘Have you eaten?’ she asks, her eyes locking mine.
I shrug.
‘You need to eat. Here.’ She offers a sandwich with a creamy mixture that smells fishy. Tuna, sweetcorn and mayo I decide, ignoring the saliva gathering in my mouth. I stare at it, then wait. Tiny little maggots, white wriggly ones appear in the oily filling. I push it away.
‘You’ll get brittle bones and never be able to have children,’ she shakes her head.
I laugh as she pulls the corset stays, tight, like she’s making a point.

My pony walk perfect, I head down the runway. Flashbulbs. My mother smiles from the first row, though not at me. She looks good, her natural skinny genes aided and abetted by Harley Street’s scalpels. The swarovski crystals on my corset glitter like a mirror ball. I am dazzled. As my mind fills with flesh eating maggots, I seek her out again. Mum? Mummy? She stands up as I fall down. The last thing I see before blackout is her white skinny jeans.

Don't tell me to write for fun

I have never written for fun. That doesn’t mean to say I don’t derive pleasure from my work. I simply don’t write for pure enjoyment, to practice my sentence structure or to fill an empty half-an-hour. I write because I want to get published. I write with that as the sole goal. Always have done. Always will.

Yet in some literary quarters, ‘The Market’ and ‘Target Reader’ are dirty words. They are considered somehow less noble than ‘writing for me’ or ‘following my heart’. As Moliere once said:

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

Goodness me – financial reward has always been my goal! But why, I hear you cry? Because I seek fame and fortune? A big house? A celebrity lifestyle? No. Because, quite simply, I need - I crave - an audience. The story is in my mind, so I don’t need to reproduce it on paper for myself. For me, things are better if shared. When my husband is out I find I cannot watch a film. I cannot cook a meal. It’s channel-surfing and snacks on the sofa – alone. And that’s how satisfying I would find it to write a story and never show it to the world.

Initially, I started my latest novel, Lunch Date with a Tomb Robber, with no reader but myself in mind. I indulged my every fantasy. I ignored the current chick lit trends. But only a few chapters in I was considering market niches and looking up agents who like quirky literature. I’m not wired to create stories that no one else will read. And yet I’m aware that I might be a better writer if I was. I truly admire those who craft short stories and poems without the end goal of a competition or publishing deal. I truly admire those who don’t seek validation or approval.

But don’t suggest I write Flash or a Haiku just for fun. Don’t turn up your nose at authors who, some might say, only ‘write by numbers’ to get their work sold. If you write as a hobby, because it’s therapeutic or simply to please yourself, I’m in awe. But I need any talent I may have confirmed by a publishing deal. I need to hear the clink of sales. My apprenticeship is in the business of writing commercially viable novels and that’s all I intend to do. And if the day comes when I admit defeat and jack it all in, you won’t find me in my rocking chair, writing wee tales for me and my dog. I’ll find another obsession – like re-learning how to do housework or getting through the day without a blog search.