"If you've FINISHED ..."

Thankful for minor disasters

If your character experienced just the worst parts of Thanksgiving day, he or she would need a week to recover from the holiday. But all ended happily.

What was the surprising good that came from each incident, or the really big good that came out of the whole series?

If you find a more inspiring order as you're writing, go for it, but make it easier on yourself by using the order given or choosing randomly rather than seeking some "best" order. Your character didn't get to choose! ;-)

• lost keys
  
• burnt dinner
  
• missing relative
  
• flooded basement
  
• hail storm
  
• broken finger
  
• lost power
  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dr Wicked

Do your fingers pause over the keyboard as you try to decide what to write next? Do minutes pass where words could have been pouring out and the cursor is still blinking in place like a caution light at 2AM?

Do you need five thousand words today to catch up and you know most of the day will be spent with your fingers in hover mode?

Then try Dr. Wicked.

Put in your word count and the time you want to spend and click Write. You'll get a box to type in. If you stop writing for more than a few seconds, there will be ... Consequences. What consequences? You get to decide what level:

• Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
  
• Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
  
• Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself
  

Watch a demo on YouTube :-)

When you're done, remember to copy and paste from the box. (If you try to navigate away, a reminder will pop up.)

Great for NaNo crunch time as well as daily writing exercises. You can set it for 10 minutes to 2 hours.

Heavenly appeals

You're being sued by God.

It can, of course, be any god, past, present, made up. The Christian God has the story advantage of a good track record for patience in recent millennia and what you've done can be so over the top that God just couldn't let it slide. Or perhaps what you did is relatively minor but you're the final straw and being used as an example.

Or perhaps a god who realized years of plagues and pestilence and other Acts of God were just not getting the point across.

Or maybe Zeus, who just lost his last supporter.

Or a very litigious god and you're beginning to wonder what the upside of worshipping this god is.

"You don't start out ..."

Some kind of English

While's she's too easy to poke fun at, I was fascinated by the following quote by Sarah Palin that was in response to her apparent confusion over Africa being a continent or country.

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

Dick Cavett remarked in the NY Times, "It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any."

I think she was just doing verbal NaNo. But, even if she was, no matter how badly you write during NaNo, know that you can write better and have a better command of the English language than someone who was 8.5 million votes and a heart attack away from the presidency.

And when you have a few minutes after you've completed your day's words for NaNo, there's the Sarah Palin baby name generator where you find out what your name would have been if you'd been born to Sarah Palin whose kids are named Track, Willow, Trig, Bristol, and Piper.

I'm Lock Pepper Palin.

The Beetles

The Beetles were formed at the same time as the Beatles and musically they were equally good. The problem was they were really bad lyricists and couldn't come up with a good song title to save their lives. And in fact they were held hostage by their record company to come up with some decent verbiage. Tragically they never did and they're still sitting in the conference room writing.

Here's a random list of best Beatles songs titles. Come up with the really bad title versions written by the Beetles.

Eleanor Rigby
Strawberry Fields Forever
All You Need Is Love
Let It Be
Hey Jude
I Am The Walrus
Come Together
She Loves You
Eight Days A Week
Drive My Car
Here Comes The Sun
With A Little Help From My Friends
Hello, Good-Bye
A Day In The Life
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Yesterday
All My Loving
In My Life
The Long and Winding Road

Fateful pizzas

"Is fate tied to a pizzeria in Wisconsin?"

That's the fortune in the cookie your character just broke open. It's confirmed the nagging feeling they have and they're off to Wisconsin to find that pizzeria.

Will fate lead them there? Maybe they should check in with another fortune cookie once they get to Wisconsin ;-)

What will they find? True love? The fate of the universe? Something less cliche?

(Can you work this into your NaNo? If it's too left-turnish for your main character, you could send off an annoying character on a quest. Or someone walks in with the fortune looking for their fate. A character could leave it on the table then the server finds it and gets wildly excited. Possibilities limited only by imagination :-)

(This is from an ad for Lucky Brand jeans and Wisconsin musician Cory Chisel. The back story is a bit more mundane than the quote but still interesting. It's in the comments if you want to read it when you're done.)

A flood of consciousness

Begin with an event and then let the thoughts carry you where they will. Have your character start a story and let the story stray off to other stories and events. Let it take off on a walk about, straying and wandering from thought to thought. This can be one way to up your word count for NaNo and also a way to allow thoughts to stream out that might spark something unexpected.

This is from #123 in Unjournaling: Daily Writing Exercises that Are NOT Personal, NOT Introspective, NOT Boring! by Dawn DiPrince and Cheryl Miller Thurston. Here's a piece of her example of Uncle Milhouse's rambling stories:

Back in 1972, you wouldn't believe the tornado that hit our town. That was the year my dad got laid off at the factory ... the pickle factory, it was. They were called Fickle Pickles, and they were the best darn pickles you ever ate. Well, maybe my grandma's were a tad better, to tell you the truth. She said her secret was to add a little cinnamon to the jars ...

Eating as a full contact sport

Your character is having a problem with another character. He or she wants to talk it over with a friend who used to know well or work with the problem character. They meet in a restaurant for lunch and the friend unexpectedly brought their very tactile child who not only touches and tastes but needs a full body experience with the world, especially food. The friend is used to this and seems oblivious to what's going on, only aware enough to keep the child from physical harm.

This is a one shot opportunity for this discussion so your character can't reschedule. ;-) Write the ensuing meal, either as a stand alone or as a scene in your NaNoWriMo novel.

"There are three rules ..."

A wild and wooly gallop

Challenge: to use as many descriptive words as possible. Play with them. Don't edit. Let the words flow.

While writing books will admonish you not to prop up weak nouns and verbs with modifiers -- eg, don't "walk quickly": stride, jog, prance, gallop, march, pace ... -- modifiers can bring life to a concrete noun. Hair is just hair, but "a white poof of lamb's wool that rested atop his head" is an image (and 9 more words for NaNoers ;-)

Try the exercise on some mundane words and see if you can paint a picture. (And a picture is worth a thousand words!) Feel free to use any words you want, but here's a sample to choose one or two from if you'd like to get started writing rather than thinking up words.

spaghetti
cat
cavern
path
candle
tattoo
truck
blanket

Pink elephants

More lists? Yes, more lists! I got up a late and stumbled across this.

(5000+ words. I was trying to do 2000 a day but couldn't quite make it last night as my characters bumble into each other, trying to get sparks to fly and illuminate some secrets they aren't revealing to me yet.)

These are from the NaNo forums somewhere. If you're doing NaNo, use the first on your next page. Each time you start a page, use the next in line. Do that through out the book. Feel free to adjust as needed (add words, change tenses). (Of course, you can cut them up and draw from a bowl if you wish.)

If you're not doing NaNo, begin at the top and incorporate as many into your writing piece as you can.

If you haven't already...
Ten Types of Awesome.
the wind's will
We're without magic.
It's getting awfully cold.
Don't. You. DARE.
Stop That
if this is all
Uproar.
if all that matters is
make it through the past
walls falling down
of your dreams
if you want to
Did you try...?
In Triumph.
It'll be- wait...
the reason is I don't know why
That's Classified!
it's at least
in feeble hands
What are you gonna do?
hold still!
it all go wrong
Hang on for your death
so distracting
go forth
a matter of pride
Who stands before me
Unknown wisps
the dead dying
What's right is wrong.
I'd rather be
not a reason
because you can't.
wimps and posers
just take forever
a glimpse into the future
Invisible or alone?
refusing to lie down
I hope, but I know
if you've never
I fall apart
You're the only one.
a new day
died happy
What you've never needed
If you can, don't.
WHAT was I thinking?
don't think of a pink elephant.
if you want to
scare yourself.
make it or not.
to live forever, die.
empty mess
anything at all
let go and hang
stop only me
rocks fall, everyone dies.
we're not dragging the dragons.
Heck does that.
into the death
what a to do to die.
son of a marigold
anytime I want. Really.
eternity of metamorphosis
everything adds up to nothing
meek and bold
alone, the bold
I can't be you now.
At a loss for speech- not words.
one more outburst
go around again
Magic believes in you.
strong against yourself.
parade of trees
What you never wanted
live up to nothing
Hang on loose
you're still kissing him.
you can't always count on me
To be young, nervous breakdown.
Soul over heart
Dead again?
creature of light
walk on me.
leave my dreams behind
ensue a rebellion
The land's a survivor
wheel of strength
fight for wrong
let it die
unneeded puzzle piece
Gunning for Truth
stay whole, bleed the soul
his memory now
broken, not dead.
Incredible isn't.
smile against it all
Ignorance for hope
stop, turn, take.
everything away- I'll hurt it.
each other, alone.
God doesn't decide this.
take me for everything
alive in here
no is for those
oh yeah, HUGE success.
to save me, face me
all together, all alone
whatever you don't.
tomorrow is yesterday now
what you must, you can't
thunder from the trees
ask your questions now
gift, not competition
waste your precious
happy kick in the nuts,
seven stories in
the question- but.
uphill downhill sick
breathe for me
stay calm and PANIC!!!
none able to tell
when your all isn't enough
hold my soul
figure it later
light fears darkness
nothing's gonna change
the darkest light.
watch this time
As we knew it
rest is wrong.
I Will Rise Again.
When the spindle wheel turns
dying, not dead
I know a place where we can hide out.
You don't have to know the truth if you believe it.
This tiny voice in my head starts to sing.
Came along one day...
Looks a mile to my feet.
When I open my eyes I'm still taken by surprise.
You don't have to know the truth if you believe it.
Some people want to be heroes, others have to be asked.
My Body was not moving on it's own after all
inside mountains
nothing to say to each other
just take it!
Because it is my birthday!
Not close enough.
It's not peanut butter.
Just talk yourself up.
Try and stop me.
I'm just saying...
He knew there was a reason why he hated snow

"If you don't allow ..."

Sparklers

Random words to spark your NaNo or other writing.

Most of these came from 15 Minute Ficlets, a site for writing fiction in 15 minutes using word and picture prompts. The site is no longer active, but there are other, similar sites around. (The rest came from 15 Minute Fic, though the words weren't quite as good.)

I like to think of these words as lenses. The word has colored how your character views his or her world and they're seeing or feeling or remembering something about the current scene you're writing that relates to the word. Unlike words randomly chosen from the dictionary, these have more flexible definitions. Feel free to play with word forms and tenses. They're supposed to spark creativity, not chain it :-)

I've divided them up into chunks of 8 if you'd like to spread them out over the next 30 days, but feel free to use them however you want. (Hmm, if each word sparks about 208 words, there would be your NaNo! :-)

farewell
discovery
deluge
renewal
fool
explosive
heritage
screen

thunderous
mystic
lovely
moon
mediocre
open
peppermint
anxiety

exhausted
brisk
knave
electric
congratulations
misled
sophisticated
gateway

ambition
envy
premature
memory
catastrophe
blush
hold
transition

addiction
scorch
rescue
piercing
independence
fight
honor
discord

mockery
impatience
justice
fatigue
gloomy
reunion
unexpected
absent

nurture
unknown
blessed
rushed
congeal
youth
sin
growl

gratitude
overwhelmed
whispered
routine
kaleidoscope
resolute
scared
gluttony

festive
tidy
feast
tired
silence
chocolate
flood
connected

thick
odious
legacy
jubilant
acceptance
glisten
fever
anticipation

pinnacle
fretful
linked
sentimental
savory
vacant
inside
tail

deaf
zaftig
young
xenophobic
wondering
mother
tattered
challenge

transformation
missing
searching
karma
gourmet
juvenile
undeniable
limp

vitriol
contagious
discombobulated
quest
strike
translation
anguish
true

complicated
interrupted
giving
painful
freeze
stretched
consumed
mimic

complete
elegy
haunted
deserted
jealous
oblivious
frustration
natural

harvest
empty
falter
extra
abstract
capricious
pause
pawn

devotion
impression
bathtub
bloody
redeem
aggravation
father
replacement

drenched
tender
noisy
practical
incomplete
evasive
disaster
solid

deeper
abandoned
spring
collection
quirky
competition
misdirection
unusual

intoxicating
disguise
submission
examination
flaky
obsession
chilling
tweak

perfection
marvel
nostalgic
cookie
snow
forgetful
surrender
chicken

broken
gathering
dream
forgiveness
unfinished
late
humorous
form

conclusion
dust
alias
match
bright
abomination
slowly
question

salvation
prison
vacation
desire
loss
expectation
sign
shiver

fantasy
baby
light
apology
uncomfortable
happy
bridge
essential

relief
daze
frantic
bathe
sink
disconnected
training
impose

burrow
sketch
unforgiven
vanquish
flair
wave
blue
spell

bear
refine
hassle
fire
wait
engrave
leech
unbidden

hang
guilty
bank
quirk
blatant
honey
destroy
messenger