With that written but unfinished book of mine loitering around wondering if it counts or not, I'm putting in the effort to tidy the dern thing up and see about publishing. The thing is, I wrote all the stories and proclaimed myself done. But as I drifted off one night I thought of a much more interesting way to describe an aspect of one of those stories. And if I took that and ran with it, it created a theme and a point (which my musings never have) and an entirely different story told about the same events. Basically, I drifted off coming up with a better story, so I rewrote it and now it's much funnier and more informative. Later, I drifted off drawing a parallel between three separate stories. So the next day I mushed them into one longer essay that, with a little more musing and joking tossed in, became more dynamic and interesting. I realized I could and should rewrite every story. I needed to look at them through this more professional filter. And I also realized this could go on forever and that no essay is ever truly finished.
So I've given myself until April. I will edit and rewrite and connect dots on all of my irrelevant tales and then I'll finally send them to an agent so that they can break my heart. Doesn't that sound fun? Creating a deadline has made me sit down and do my work. I also found out that if you, like... practice? writing? you kind of like... come up with better stuff?
"What's your favorite room in your house?"
"Write a journal entry from the point of view of your dog."
I've also employed some other tactics I used in school when my creativity needed a nudge. When I couldn't come up with something to write about, I had a professor that told me to pick a newspaper headline and use it start a story. Ahem...
"Woman Catches, Kills 13-foot Alligator."
She insisted he came to her in a dream. His forty bottom teeth exposed in a gentle, leathery smile; the coo of his oblong, lip-less mouth gently lulling her into a deeper sleep.
“He asked for freedom!” she exclaimed from the courthouse interrogation room. Jingles, the beloved mascot for B. Hardy FumiGator Services spent his afternoons lounging in the sunshine on the banks of the stagnant pond that festered outside of Mr. Hardy’s office building.
"Police Seek Darth Vader Masked Suspect."
“Perhaps this was a bad idea,” she suggested dryly, as though she hadn’t said it before. She’d had enough of his foolish schemes, each one more appalling and dubious than the last. After last month’s charade with the banana taffy and the eye-patch she'd thought the worst was over. But this, well this just tops them all. He pushed past her into the living room. Sweat beading on his forehead, he had that wild look in his eyes as he frantically gathered newspapers and plastic bags. His boot laces trailed behind him and his childhood Darth Vader mask hung from his belt.
"Five-Year-Old Boy Wins Alaska Moose Calling Contest"
Martin Shrouder was large for a five year old. His tremendous arms had him splitting wood by the time he was in preschool. Perhaps it was his appalling diet. Or maybe the bizarre rearing tactics used by his “parents” for lack of a better term. Either way, his peculiar habits had the town in a frenzy half of the time. The other half Martin spent in the woods searching for bugs and climbing trees; the same as any other kid, if in fact other kindergarteners were allowed to wander unescorted through the wilderness.
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