It’s week two of April and I am barely keeping up with my Camp NaNoWriMo goal. I chose what I thought was a low goal of 25,000 words, but it has proven more challenging than I had hoped it would be. My hope is to have a completed first draft of a middle grade adventure story that takes place on a spaceship. I’ve had a lot of fun learning about spacecraft, space travel and all things robotic. And my story is beginning to take shape. There is still hope.
Inspire
Your writing exercise for this week is:
Take a decorative calendar, and pick an image from one of the months. Create a setting based on the image you select. Choose randomly, or do this exercise for each month.
I love this prompt. For the last several years I have sought out a new calendar by the artist Ciruelo. His work includes a lot of dragons and fantasy artwork, and it is stunning. Many of the pictures evoke a story, and would work well for this prompt. Whatever calendar you choose, have fun, and be creative!
Encourage
I think the essay “Write Anyplace” from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones just might be my favorite. In it she says:
Okay. Your kids are climbing into the cereal box. You have $1.25 left in your checking account. Your husband can’t find his shoes, your car won’t start, you know you have lived a life of unfulfilled dreams. There is the threat of nuclear holocaust, there is apartheid in South Africa, it is twenty degrees below zero outside, your nose itches, and you don’t have even three plates that match to serve dinner on. Your feet are swollen, you need to make a dentist appointment, the dog needs to be let out, you need to defrost the chicken and make a phone call to your cousin in Boston, you’re worried about your mother’s glaucoma, you forgot to put film in the camera, Safeway has a sale on solid white tuna, you are waiting for a job offer, you just bought a computer and you have to unpack it. You have to start eating sprouts and stop eating doughnuts, you lost your favorite pen, and the cat peed on your current notebook.
Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of the chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.
Life gets crazy. Breathe. Write.
Equip
For this month’s grammar lesson, let’s take a look at a few commonly misused words and phrases from the Strunk & White style guide.
Allusion. Easily confused with illusion. The first means “an indirect reference”; the second means “an unreal image” or “a false impression.”
Anybody. In the sense of “any person,” not to be written as two words. Any body means “any corpse,” or “any human form,” or “any group.” The rule holds equally for everybody, nobody, somebody.
Care less. The dismissive “I couldn’t care less” is often used with the shortened “not” mistakenly (and mysteriously) omitted: “I could care less.” The error destroys the meaning of the sentence and is careless indeed.
Effect. As a noun, means “result”: as a verb, means “to bring about,” “to accomplish” (not to be confused with affect, which means “to influence”).
Imply. Infer. Not interchangeable. Something implied is something suggested or indicated, though not expressed. Something inferred is something deduced from evidence at hand.
Happy writing!
Please consider sharing your response to the writing exercise. Got a question? Just ask! Put it in the comments below, or send your question by email here:
TAwrites 