Having had two good nights of sleep, my brain is once more overflowing with story ideas. So many this morning that I definitely can’t write them all. What I will do today is write various story starts, then I’ll work on the story I started yesterday. Having several starts should help me next time I dry up and will be really useful when I travel.
John David Payne suggested I read the other microsettings in the Micronomicon (you can still get a copy if you’d like) to get ideas. I may take him up on that today. Since my mind appears fertile, any bit of inspiration is likely to give me ideas. Steve suggested I look at the RPG scenarios he’s writing and I may do that as well. Steve’s imagination often fuels my own. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him.
One of the tricks of continuous productivity for me seems to be hoarding my story nuts while the story tree is producing, then using the nuts when story famines occur. This has been quite helpful during The Great Challenge. I’ve turned in 36 stories to Dean and some of those wouldn’t have happened at all if I didn’t have failed story starts to go back to. So, it makes sense to gin up several 400-500 word story starts that I can use in the future.
I’ve asked to be part of the 2021 Anthology Workshop put on by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean said he thought I was ready and placed me on his list. Which means that between now and November 2020, I need to learn how to write reliably to an anthology themes. That’s hard for me. My brain just rebels against being told what to write. What I may do is pick several anthologies to focus my weekly short stories at as a personal challenge to myself.
This week I’m working on an Urban Fantasy Romance for an anthology call. The story I started yesterday happens in my swamp magic setting. My character is married to a local swamp/bottomland forest and you know how it is with mixed marriages, trouble springs up and misunderstandings abound. Add in a handsome man and the question becomes, sparks of love or just fireflies?
I hope things are sparking for you today. Be well, friends!
If it helps, when you write to an anthology theme, start with asking yourself what everyone else is going to write. Then don’t write that. It’ll get you away from feeling like you’re restricting yourself. Once you’re freed of what everyone else is doing you’ll be able to embrace the theme. My piece in X Marks the Spot is pirates + ghosts + tidying. I guarantee no one else tried Marie Kondo is a pirate story!
That’s a really great way of approaching it. Now I’m anxious to get the book just to read the Marie Kondo pirate story.