I'm not sure how many of you are here from my earliest days as a writer or are new to the blog, but along time ago, I used to be rather prolific. Then some things happened that made it rather difficult for me to do what made me happy, which was to put fingers to key or pen to paper.
This next period of time will be dedicated to explaining the exercise I plan to do. Whether or not I'm successful will be determined entirely by my health, and I think that I will build that into the rules; otherwise, it would be an exercise in futility from the start.
So quite a spell ago, I started a writing exercise called 365 days writing in the void. It was essentially just to write every day on the blog to be held accountable, but I was getting sicker at the time and didn't know what was wrong with me and wasn't taking my meds, and I think I made it less than two months before I fell off the bandwagon. At the time, I would write at home and then do a daily rundown of what I had written and a few short excerpts of my day in general.
This time, however, I want to try to do it a little differently.
There is a book floating out in space somewhere. I believe the title is called writing down the bones. I'm not sure who the author is, but I'll find the link and post it, along with the links for the two books above, if you are inclined to play along with me. I won't be getting kickbacks for anything; I'm not that cool...
Back to the point, in writing down the bones, there is an exercise called free writing where you just get out a big yellow note pad because you're not supposed to care, and you just write for ten minutes every morning. At least, that is how I remember the exercise twenty years on since I've read the book.
They were like morning pages. You just write. Now, when I just write, it comes out more like a journal. I start bitching about all the things that I don't like about my situation, which doesn't really help me get my creativity back, and that is where my problem lies.
I had some bad things happen around my writing, and essentially when I sit down to write, I can plot and stuff, but the act of writing the actual story gives me a panic attack. So, I thought I would try to do exercises in desensitization and do things that I don't really care about where there wasn't any pressure.
This time in 365 days in the void, the plan is to write in the actual blog. Take a story prompt from the book, either of the ones in the picture, and then write the story until the steam runs out on it. It might be one day; it might be two days or more, then move on to the next story. If I like the story, it might get an edit or something ( in the distant future), but essentially they will all be raw stories written in journal format on the blog, like a blog post. It should be fun sweats... I haven't decided if I'm going to just do the prompts page by page or random.
I will likely set up a page on the blog to host the stories and then link back to it and try to make an index of sorts to make things easier to find. That's the plan for now. I don't own a copy of writing down the bones anymore. I used to, but it ran away, as good books so often do, those things seem to grow legs I sware. So, as of right now, I can't say the correctness of my memory, but this is what I'm going on.
1. pick a prompt.
2. set a timer for roughly 5 minutes to sketch up a vague plot to go with the promo ( free writing ideas that come to mind when you read the plot)
3. write for 15- 30 minutes on the prompt
Goal: by the end of a few weeks to start finishing some shorts based on either the prompts or my own work without having panic attacks or getting caught up in what people will think.
Work directly into the blogger program post when done.
Make part of the morning routine...
The whole reason to go to all this work is to heal and get back on the horse to finish my books that I have out there and be comfortable writing again.
Which if there are any of you left, you might be happy to hear. I'm not sure if I'll start today or not. I might eventually migrate my website from blogger since it's not really easy to design the page's look and add links and stuff the way I want it to look.
Also, I might start writing stuff on royalroad.com again; the panic has been stopping me. The fact that I couldn't sit up for the last two years was also a significant factor, but mostly the panic because I could always use a pen and ink and have someone else type if I really wanted to work that hard.
Anyhow, I digress.
That's the plan for now I very much expect the first few to be very rough. Thanks for taking the time to be here
I'm not sure if you know, or not but my author name is Adriane my actual name in Michael, and I am a female. I have more then one author name, but a few things happened with one of them and I'm not sure what to do with it, so I might be merging all of them on to this site at some point. Having so many author names is exausting and annoying. When you have your author name stolen by a multi level marketing spam author and can't decide what to do about it.
I write in a few genres and it's recommend practice that you split that into different author names, or at least it was when I first started writing. I'm not sure what the advice is anymore since I've been out of the feild for a few years.
Any whodoo voodoo I need to take my morning meds and a blood stick. Eat something and try this first exercise of doom. See how it goes.
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