medieval art

November Writing Prompts

November 1st has arrived and with it my decision to skip NaNoWriMo this year.  Part of me would love to join that crazy writing world for a month. I enjoyed the process a lot and loved tracking my wordcount and watching others work toward their goals. But, I feel like I’m in survival mode with a lot of other work and things on my plate, so no NaNo. On the plus side,  I have a new writing gig to keep me busy and I’m planning more brainstorming sessions for another project I want to work on, so some creative work is ahead for me.

I did something totally different last weekend and put brush and paint to paper at an art workshop.  I’m always fascinated with things medieval and the project was based on a medieval herbal. A sample of my efforts is in the photo. I really enjoyed the day. I used to paint “a bit” many years ago and it was fun to get out the paints and play again. The nice thing was that the final products were very small–something you could finish in an hour or so and they didn’t occupy much work space either. I find it very calming, too. While I’m painting, my brain really can’t cope with anything else but deciding where I’m going to put the brush next. Time passes and the to-do lists and have-tos recede into the fog–and I get a pretty picture at the end. Gotta love that!

Instead of writing prompts this month, here are links to two writing prompt creators that provide endless combinations of ideas to spark your imagination. I challenge you to try each of them just once.

The Writer Igniter: http://diymfa.com/writer-igniter

The Brainstormer: http://andrewbosley.weebly.com/the-brainstormer.html

Have you found any great sources of writing prompts that you’d like to share? I’m always looking for more links to add to the blogroll at my book’s website. There are nearly 80 of my own writing prompts on that site, too. Hope you all have a creative month ahead!

The Lure of Research

I have discovered an extremely effective delaying tactic–research.  As long as I’m reading about the work my character will be doing and the setting he’ll be doing it in, it’s still writing time. Right? I’m making progress on my story. Right?

Wrong.

I love opening my resource book and scribbling notes from it in my journal, or scribbling in the margin if the book is mine. I print articles and file them in cheerful folders for highlighting and more margin scribbling later. And I learn so much, too!

Did you know that a medieval scribe might have to sharpen his or her quills sixty times during a day’s work? (Yes there were female scribes and illuminators, too.) Did you know that pages in today’s books are rectangular because the parchment that was used in most of the pre-Gutenberg books was cut that way because of the shape of the animal’s skin from which the pages were made?

All very useful information, but it’s not helping my story get written. Why the procrastination? Simple answer: because I know how hard the writing will be. I know that what’s ahead will be a slow and often dissatisfying process, and yeah, I find launching a new project scary, too. What a wuss!

I like to think of myself as a writer, so enough whining, reflection, justification, procrastination, whatever you want to call it. Time to ‘writer-up’ and get to work. I have an appointment with my treadmill desk this afternoon. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Do you procrastinate? What lures you away from the blank page? What helps you get the writing done?

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