The first week is done! Have you been able to write every day? How did that feel?
If you fell short of the goal, why did that happen? (If you blew off the whole weekend, please read Saturday’s post.) What can you do to guarantee yourself fifteen minutes a day for the rest of the month?
Today’s non-writing activity: examine your July calendar and write down your writing time every day, in pen. If anyone in your household gives you a hard time because you’re writing, just point to the calender and say, “I have to.”
Today’s motivation: this is starting to feel good.
Today’s prompt: Take a noun (lunch box or ladder or bus stop or make up your own) and expand it with three other nouns. Write about a character interacting with these objects EXCEPT (here’s the tricky part) don’t use your usual Point of View. If you usually use the third person POV, write from the first today. If you normally write from the first, today try the third. Also – please have the character be opposite of your gender.
Think of this as yoga for the writer brain. Gentle stretching is good.
Scribblescribble…
Endnote: a lawyer friend of mine poked me and told me I had to announce this: all of my blog posts are copyright Laurie Halse Anderson. Teachers may use these writing prompts and advice in classroom settings, but are asked to email me at laurie AT writerlady DOT com when they do so. Permission is not granted to anyone to reproduce these prompts and advice, repost them to the Internet, or otherwise distribute them without permission. Because lawyers are cranky like that.
Do I need permission to reproduce the legal notice?
If you give me five hundred dollars, I’ll ask a lawyer.
WFMAD
My first week was great and I love the prompts to play around with. I do a lot of those types of prompts in my classroom and it is usually some of the best writing that I get from my uninterested students. Thank you for taking the time each day to provide a prompt. I am going to try my hand at homemade salsa today and I plan to write my fifteen minutes after I have finished while I am eating my chips and salsa.
Done. My words were ladder, tree house, island, and newspaper. I have used three of them in the two pages I wrote, and know how I will use the fourth one the next time I write on this piece, which I WILL do. It might be the beginning of my next WIP.
Since I usually write in first person, I wrote in third omniscient this time, and about a group of kids…two girls and three boys, who will have a summer adventure together. We’ll see where it goes later.
I felt like such a bum that I didn’t get to writig anything all weekend, but I eel better now 🙂
I’m gunna write for the rest of the month.
A paltry 15 today (at least so far) but that’s 15 more than I would have otherwise written, which is kind of sad and pathetic. It’s a million degrees here, but I also like to make too many excuses. Maybe for week two I’ll bump it up to, say, 20 minute minimum or something.
Didn’t use the prompt, but it’s a good one that I’ll have to keep in mind for sometime I’m stuck.
I’ve done at least 15 minutes each day, and it feels great to write this much again! Today I tried a little activity: I put my iPod on shuffle, and for five random songs I just wrote. The idea is to expand the first ideas from each song into a longer story. And yesterday I finished editing my children’s theatre script.
Whew! A full day today. It felt good, but I’m also beat. *yawn* Off to bed now…
I did it! Seven days of WFMAD! So far so good. Making great progress on my WIP. Thanks for doing this.