I’m taking a fiction writing course at the moment (F2K by Writer’s Village University). I’m really enjoying it, even if some of the lessons drive me a little nuts. The point is, I’m writing something, to specs, every week. As the course mentor pointed out to a couple of students: the word count and directions matter. When you go to submit your work, you need to be aware of those things.
But even more than following guidelines, this has gotten me writing on the edge of sanity again. You know, where you do something wildly different from the norm, love it completely, then stress until you get a response? That’s what happened to me this week.
Do an interview/conversation with 2 characters. All dialog, no tags, no directions… just go with it. You can be as creative as you want, but you have to hit the word limit and the other restrictions.
I did it as a story. Almost as if you’re just waiting for the details to be filled in, the actions, the descriptions, none of it is there except as in the conversation. I love it. I could go back and write it as a traditional story, but I think I’d loose to much of what I love about it. The raw emotion.
So. This weeks lesson blew my writing doors wide open. What do you do to get your creative juices flowing? When your muse has high tailed it out of state, gone on vacation, entered the witness protection program, what do you do to get her back to work?
I recently gave another MMP writer a story starter (prompt). I love what she did with it. You can check it out over here.
The prompt itself was: a zombie, a vampire, a druid and a werewolf walk into a bar…
It’s interesting to see where other people go with what you throw at them. All of us could sit down with the same prompt, or the same first sentence, and get something so completely different.
That’s pretty cool.
What do you do to kick start your writing?
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