Prompt Me!

I am girding myself for my September folly of writing a Story A Day. I have been wanting to write more flash and this meshes perfectly with my flash fiction tutorial with Cat Rambo (or hopefully it will!). I have a few ideas waiting in the wings. I'm really not worried about coming up with ideas as they do seem to multiply the more I write. That said I will not risk being unprepared on some September day when life is crazy and I feel like throwing in the towel. Here are some of the things I use in general and will have on hand next month.

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field. Each short chapter is by a different flash fiction writer or editor. One of the strengths of this book is that it presents a multitude of approaches to thinking about and writing flash fiction. Every chapter has a writing prompt at the end.


I've always been fascinated by the Tarot and find the cards particularly well suited to fantasy ideas. Tarot for Writers is a fun and useful book for working with the deck for story-making. If you want to delve deeper into the Tarot Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot by Rachel Pollack is one of the best


Every weekend io9 posts its Concept Art Writing Prompt, which is both visual and genre friendly. Also, I have several camera apps loaded onto my iPod, which have been woefully underutilized. I will be taking more pictures and using at least a couple for prompts. If I get a good story out of it I'll have an illustration built in.

Brainstormer is a beautiful little app and I've been using it for a while. Mostly when I have a random 10 or 15 minutes to write but am away from my desk and computer. I'll pull this up, give the iPod a shake, pull out my pen and journal and go from there.

Rory's Story Cubes is marketed as a game for kids. I have it as an iPod app and have played it with my girls. At first I found the images a little limiting but that only made me realize that I shouldn't be quite so literal. Using it as directed is a good way to practice coming up with beginnings, middles, and endings.

Poetry Spinner I think I've made my feelings about poetry clear. This app is inspirational and you should have it on general principles. You never know when you'll get stuck in the doctor's office waiting room or at the bus stop. For writing, I find a good poem has so much going on that it can suggest any number of stories and/or characters.

TV Tropes   Pick two or three random tropes and join them in a story. Beware the site is labyrinthine and oh so inviting. Roll out some string on your way in so that you can find your way out with enough time to write. Oh, they have an app too.


There are quite a few writing idea generators, but my favorite is 7th Sanctum, both for it's ample list of generators and for its sense of whimsy. Their newest generator is a SF Tarot card generator. With a couple clicks I got: Six of Trains, The Artificer of Space Stations, Eight of Singularities, The Android of Cogs. The story just about writes itself!

Chaotic Shiny is new to me but I can't wait to explore their categories such as: culture, people, places, names, accessories, evil, plot/writing, and silly.

Creative Writing Prompts.com also has a lot of material and I like how you can scroll over the number blocks like your playing an enormous game of concentration.

Story A Day posts prompts year round every Wednesday called "Write on Wednesday." During story challenge months she promises to post a prompt every day. I've signed up for them and will see how they are.

I think I'm ready. September is just around the corner. Wish me luck!

Writing Flash with Cat Rambo!

Since Armadillocon I've had a hard time TAKING time to write (I so want to say "finding" the time to write, but there's no such thing as finding time, you can only take it).

I won't roll through all the usual excuses, let's just say summer is awesome when it comes to trips and out-of-town visitors and camps and camping and swimming, but much more challenging when it comes to finding the peace and quiet I need to lay words down on the page. I can't wait for the first day of school and the return of our more established schedule.

I've got plenty of story ideas bouncing around but with less time to develop them, most days I resort to writing exercises to get keep myself in fighting shape, and that's fine except that they tend to generate MORE ideas which  cry for even more attention...

I am still working on my process for getting stories from idea and draft to revised, focused and finished works. It's a lot of steps to juggle, but I guess I'll just keep juggling and hope that one day I'll figure out how to stop dropping the balls.

I signed up for a tutorial with Cat Rambo to work on writing in general and flash in particular. Cat was one of my pros at the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop and we got to visit a little bit at the con. I think she'll be a great teacher, and I love that she offers a variety of classes online.

If I had six weeks to burn I would apply to go to Clarion or Odyssey. I don't think I'll even be able to get a single week for Viable Paradise or NASA's Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop in the next couple years (maybe someday). But that's okay because as much as I kvetch about squeezing writing into my life things are pretty awesome with my little bug-loving garden gnomes.

So, Cat's class is a great fit. And now that she's a World Fantasy Award nominee I feel like I got in on the ground floor!

Carried on this wave of frustration-driven enthusiasm, I am beefing up my commitment to wild, possibly irresponsible, creation and am signing on for the September Story A Day marathon.

I hope by the end of September to have 30 flash fiction stories. If even a fraction of them are decent then I'll consider it a roaring success. I promise to post at least a couple here next month. Wish me luck!

The Joys of Flash Fiction

Lately I've been adding flash fiction to both my reading and writing. A good flash piece can set a scene, tell a story and pack a punch. It doesn't take as long to write a flash fiction piece as it does to write a five to six thousand word short story, but it's just as challenging.

I'm reading and writing my way through The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction,

Which is the best book I've found so far. Like flash fiction itself, instead of one long multi-chapter text, it is a series of essays/lessons about the form from different authors and teachers who specialize in writing flash fiction.

There are a lot of interesting sites around the net to read flash fiction and some that provide weekly or even daily prompts. Personally, I'm going to step up my flash fiction writing for publication. I'll also be writing and posting one flash piece a month here.

Here are some of the places I've been going for my flash fiction fixes. They are genre friendly places to read, share or submit* flash fiction.

Abyss & Apex: Magazine of Speculative Fiction

FlashQuake

Every Day Fiction

Flash Fiction Online

Daily Science Fiction 

And here are some sites that provide flash fiction writing prompts. I plan to try them all out in the coming months. Be aware that posting your writing to these sites or on your own blog is generally considered publishing it. So if you write something you feel might sell don't post it, submit it instead!

Flash Fiction Friday

According to their site: "Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly writing project to encourage new thought and writing by providing a weekly story prompt for writers of all levels....Once you’re done post the story to your blog, website, or some place that you can share. Return to the original prompt post and submit the link in the comments."

io9 flash fiction

io9 posts a visual prompt every Saturday and encourages people to post their flash stories in the comments section. I love writing from visual prompts so will definitely be trying out some of these. (The picture above is just one example of their prompts.)

Chuck Wendig's site

Chuck Wendig's site has tons of fun and useful writing advice, so it's worth the trip even if you're not interested in flash fiction. Every Friday he posts a flash fiction challenges with interesting twists geared to make you think about and improve your writing. Do be warned his language is spicy.



*Many markets are open to flash even if they're not looking for it exclusively looking for it.

Godzilla King of the Monsters

io9's Concept Art Writing Prompt

While my writing is going well, none of my longer pieces are submission ready, and the clock is ticking on January. So, to keep my Write 1 Sub 1 promise here is a flash piece I whipped up and posted to io9's Concept Art Writing Prompt. 

Godzilla King of the Monsters

I almost didn't recognize the old neighborhood when I came across it, stopping mid-stride and stepping back to avoid obliterating the neat, working-class houses, crushing something else instead. I crouched over the rooftops, the buildings snuged together on the street in what looked now like a pathetic show of solidarity. And there it was, my fiancée's house. My ex-fiancée. Fled from me, and wisely so.

I remember the first time we stepped out together. A picnic. She, a proper young lady in a cotton blouse, slacks and a belt cinched around her impossibly slender waist. Giving me her elbow, she smiled defiance at her disapproving father as her brother snapped a picture of us. Me with the pink parasol she insisted I carry. She knew how my skin burned even on a cloudy day.

It burns now as I rein death and destruction down upon Tokyo. I stand up, carefully step over her house, and put the days before the radiation out of my mind. I turn to the ocean to cool my skin. It's the sensible thing to do; it's what she would have suggested.