visual writing prompts

I have big plans for January.

Image: benmarshall-wordpirate.com

Whether or not my energy levels will allow me to bring all these plans to fruition, now – that’s a different thing. For a variety of reasons, I’m starting this New Year already feeling a little tired and under the weather, but I can’t let that hold me back. I’ve got to find the rhythm of the year, and fall into step with it.

Just like everyone else.

One of the things I’m determined to do is get back into my habit of writing fresh short stories every week; I’m fairly good with keeping up my Wednesday Write-Ins (Christmas Day and New Year’s Day excepted), but I’ve totally let my Flash! Friday stories slide in the last few months. One of my resolutions for 2014 was to get back into the habit of challenging myself every week with their fiendishly difficult picture prompts, made even more fiendish this year by the addition of a mandatory word prompt, too. Luckily, I’ve just managed to complete my first Flash! Friday challenge of the year, so things are off to a good start. I’ve just got to remember not to drop the ball again.

I haven’t so much as thought about ‘Emmeline’ since before Christmas. Other stuff – life stuff – took over my brain and squeezed out any chance I had of worrying about my story. So, right now, I’m going through my usual terror at the thought of opening up my Word file again and rummaging through my WiP, looking for the severed threads of the story in order to pick them up and start the tapestry afresh. I’m pretty sure I’ll manage to get started again, but I have to navigate this no-man’s land before I can reach that blessed point, and I hate that part.

I have books to submit to agents. I have agents to follow up with. I have a book to finish. I have competitions to enter. I have opportunities to explore.

I can do this.

If Katniss can fight off more baddies than I can even imagine, I can so fight this piffling little battle. Right? Right!
Image: thenovelettesblog.wordpress.com

Oh, and just in case you were curious, I’ve shared my Flash! Friday entry below. This was the image prompt:

Image: en.wikipedia.org

Anatomy lesson being given in 1829 by Antoine Clot (Clot Bey) in Egypt

The prompt word we were to use, along with this prompt image, was ‘Discovery,’ and all we had was 140-160 words, exclusive of title, to do it in.

And here, without further ado, is my entry:

One Red Finger

The anatomy room was hot, expectant. All had come to see the wonder of Clot Bey, to learn from the master. I had secured a front row seat, and I fought to hold it amid the jostling.

The subject – barely dead – lay mere feet away. Silently, I thanked him for his sacrifice.

Then, dreamlike, our teacher appeared. My body strained, keen, eager. His very stride was an instruction. His fingers touched the scalpel and raised it, bright as heaven’s dart.

But the blade trembled as it fell, kissing the corpse’s skin uncertainly, tentatively.

Confused, I searched our teacher’s face. Too late, I saw the unnatural flash in his eyes and the cracking, lolloping grin.

Shouting, I rose to my feet, pointing at the impostor in the body of Clot Bey. In a single blink, the human shell fell away to reveal the fiery carapace beneath.

Amid the screaming tumult, the demon smiled at me, beckoning with one red finger.

…the harder they can be to write. Don’t you think?

But seriously – how cool is this?
Image: themarysue.com

I’m not talking about the physical act of using tiny writing or minuscule* print, of course. But you knew that. I’m talking about short stories, and – firstly – how hard they are to write, just in general, but also how hard it can be to switch your brain between different types of work.

A while back I wrote a piece about my brain ‘switching gear’ and beginning to think in terms of short stories, having been programmed up to that point to think only in terms of book-length projects. I thought, in my naïvety, that this was a huge breakthrough. I was under the impression that my brain would now find it easy to hop between the two, and I could happily change gear whenever it liked.

Nothing’s ever as easy as that, though. You’d think I’d have worked that out by now, wouldn’t you?

Anyway. I’ve been writing short stories for the last few days (I wrote three yesterday, so editing will be needed today), and it’s been a very strange experience. The first story had to be 500 words long, and for whatever reason I managed that reasonably well. Writing it was a bit like watching a gas in an enclosed vessel – it expanded to fit the the space available to it, settling into the nooks and crannies without a problem. The idea for the story (as with a lot of the flash pieces that I write) was centred around a particularly emotional, dramatic event in a person’s life, and I felt like the 500 word limit was tight enough to focus the story on what was important, and long enough to hint at the character’s history and future. So, that was fine.

Then, I moved on to another story, also flash (just about) at 1,000 words. The story, in this case, had to be prompted by an image, and as the idea began to grow in my mind, I sat down to start writing it. And, completely without warning, I started to feel dwarfed by the immensity of the 1,000 word limit. It was like I was standing in the centre of a huge, frozen field, so large that I couldn’t see the ditches on any side – the white, hard land just rolled away out of my eyeshot in all directions. I felt marooned, and a bit scared. And I’m a person for whom finding words has never been a problem. Normally, I run to the verbose. I’ve written novels! I’m used to the long form.

But 1,000 words scared the living daylights out of me, yesterday.

I couldn’t understand this. I’d never felt anything like it before. I mean, think about it. Being afraid of a word count? Completely unsure of how you were going to structure a story in order to fill the word count adequately? It sounds ridiculous, because it is. But there you are. That’s how I reacted yesterday to the task of writing a piece of long flash fiction. I did write the story in the end, and I’m going to revisit it today to see how I can improve it; then, I think I’m going to have to write another, just to get my brain to limber up. Perhaps it’s not so much the differing word counts that bamboozle me, but the rapid swapping from one to the other. I guess, just as your muscles start to seize up as you get older, so does your brain.

Do you think it’s possible that some writers are naturally better at short stories than novels? Or, even, that some people who write short stories are better at certain types of short story than others? Logically, there’s not a lot of difference between short stories and longer pieces. You need character, plot, motivation, drama, crisis and resolution in a written piece, no matter how long it is. So, it shouldn’t really matter. But I think it does.

The important lesson I learned yesterday, anyway, was this: don’t assume that because you’ve done something once that you can do it again, effortlessly, whenever the mood takes you. Writing, like everything else, needs practice. You need to switch it up – change genres, change styles, change narrative voice, change authorial perspective – to avoid over-developing a particular writing muscle. I tend to get stuck in first-person narration, so it takes a huge effort for me to use third-person. I tend to use present tense, so I need to work on that. And, I’ve learned, I tend to get comfortable in a particular length of short story; getting out of that comfort zone can leave me very disoriented. So, to avoid that, there’s only one thing to do.

Write more.

Image: oxbridgeessays.com

Happy Thursday! I hope, wherever you are, that life is treating you well.

*Not in the palaeographical sense, either! I just mean ‘really, really small.’ There was a style of handwriting known as minuscule in the Middle Ages – click here to read about it. I’m too much of a nerd to write this post without mentioning it, and making the distinction. And, yes, in case you’re wondering, sometimes it *does* hurt to be this pedantic.