Walk the Talk

In the last post ‘Cooking the books’ I gave a list of ideas/games for writing practice. I hope you were able to try them out.
Or at least some.
One?

Anyway, I thought I’d better show that I practice (!) what I preach.
I have a wonderful friend who indulges me my writing quirks and he gave me a list of three items. (Thanks MJ). The three items are included in the ‘story’ and the story is just over 3,000 words.

You might want to pour a cuppa first.

Keep in mind that this was never suppose to be published, it’s just a practice ‘story’, one of many I have in my files. It beats a blank page any day.

Just for this practice run I watched car racing, both Formula 1 and the V8’s, got hooked on ‘Top Gear’ (the price you pay for your passions), and took a little from real life when I used to work in the Taxi Industry and we had a workshop out the back. I also researched the elemental compounds of crystal. All for a short 3,000-ish word story that wasn’t supposed to be published.

Time in practice is never wasted. Okay, so it may not go towards ‘The Story’, at least not in plot or character development, but the foundations you learn, writing practice runs like this, builds your arsenal towards writing ‘The Story. Just as a player of a sport spends time in training, developing muscles and techniques, which he then uses to play ‘The Game’ – the ‘muscles’ and techniques you develop here will be used when you write ‘The Story’.

Oh, and don’t forget to have some fun while you’re at it.

Ready?

Here goes.

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Cooking The Books

Photo: Source Unknown.

Once, in another life – one that I have gladly escaped – I was a bookkeeper.
I had intended to go all the way to become a fully qualified accountant but when I started learning the loopholes of the tax law, I knew it wasn’t for me. It was during this time in my life that I became acquainted with the term “Cooking the books”.

I still ‘cook the books’ but it has nothing to do with tax law loopholes these days. It does, however, have an awful lot to do with words. One word at a time. Words become sentences. Sentences become paragraphs. Paragraphs become chapters. Chapters become stories. Stories become books. Hopefully.

Before I give you ingredient lists, tidbits and tastes, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.

This friend of mine bakes. She’s a mighty fine baker too. She’s the Cupcake Queen in our area. Whenever she’s stressed or emotional, bummed or ecstatic…she bakes.

She tells me that she likes baking because there’s a method. You add this amount of this to that, a dash of this and an egg or two. Follow the recipe and you’ve got yourself a cake.

Obviously she’s never baked in my kitchen.

20 Minutes; Writing 101 Challenge – Day 1

Day 1 – Today, take twenty minutes to free write. And don’t think about what you’ll write. Just write.

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I took today’s challenge on the day of the challenge (a little later than some because I’m in a time zone which is half a world away from the time zone of the challenge), but delayed posting it. The result turned out to be quite personal and surprising. In the end I’ve decided to post a little of my experience in doing the challenge anyway; even if I’m not going to post the actual response.

It wasn’t about what I thought it would be. I thought something like this would produce a page of absolute drivel. Not at all.

It was interesting. At first it was the usual things when one is told to write for twenty minutes.

“So twenty minutes to write. That’s actually a lot of time when you think about it. What do I want to write about?…”

It Starts; Writing 101 Challange – Prologue

I’ve decided to take the Writing 101 challenge. It’s a 20 day course on ideas for blog posts. (4 weeks, without weekends) Hopefully it’ll send my hesitant stabs at writing blog posts into a whole new world of ideas, expressions and interests.

This means that for 20 days (hopefully) I’ll be posting something. I know this is going against my claim of posting every Wednesday; however this is where I remind you that my blog is ‘Updated Wednesday…generally’. This challenge falls into the ‘generally’ clause, but don’t fret too much. I promise that things will go back to normal soon. Well, as normal as they get for me anyway.

30 days, 20 blog writing challenges.

It’ll be nothing, if not a ride.

 

Who’s afraid of a Big Blank Page?

 

Somewhere in my history, an English teacher once said something like “Get it down on paper, it’s not a story while it’s in your head.”

Yes this was the days before laptops at schools, back when we used pens and paper (but after the time of chalk and slate – I’m not quite that old!).

These days I’ve paraphrased her words into something which motivates me.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with a blank page. You just can’t edit it.”

 

If you haven’t figured it out yet…I’m telling you to start writing.