Writing prompt and stuff

This morning, I *really* didn’t want to write. I did *not* feel like sitting down and working. But I have this commitment, so I made myself do it. Today’s prompt was “Write about a year ago.” I tried to get into the headspace of Alice, and her looking back over a year’s time. And it’s a good thing that I think I do need to write for that story, but it’s only going to be about a paragraph of story. I looked for other fictional avenues, but — it was about a year ago that I left Mike. And that just overwhelmed everything else. ‘Nuff said.

Yesterday’s writing was *much* better. The day before yesterday, I sat down and started the timer to begin rewriting something. I glanced at the novel, wasn’t interested. So I stared looking at the neighborhood stories. I realized that while I knew all about the other character in the first story, that is, Tomas, I knew nothing about the POV character, that is, Hammond. So I spent some time (bit more than 30 minutes) brainstorming about Hammond and his life and times.

Then yesterday morning, when I woke up, there was the first scene of the Hammond and Tomas story. It was the weekend — I wanted to sleep in. No such luck. I had to write that scene and I had to do it *now*. So I fed the cat, picked up the computer, and wrote the first scene of that story. I’m really unhappy with the end result, on the one hand. It needs to be redone. On the other, I’m so incredibly pleased that I felt that urge to write, that I had no choice but to write, that I wrote something that was more finished. Overall, I put it in the plus category.

I did my morning pages after that, played some with the cat, then I did the timed writing prompt. The prompt was, “One thing can’t be denied. . .” I ended up writing a story about the dogs in the neighborhood, how they loved Ester’s Park, and the magic they performed there for one of their pack. I didn’t plan on using present tense — didn’t even notice I was doing it until I was over halfway through the story. But I think it worked, particularly given that the whole story was told from the POV of the dogs.

I was only able to write for an hour and a half or so. Then I had to run to a late brunch with a bunch of friends. We did a little shopping afterward, ending up, of course, in bookstores. I made that part of my afternoon into my artist’s date for the week. I spent the time looking at art books and magazines, filling up my eye pallet, discovering some *neat* jewelry (covets), as well as a lovely used Georgia O’Keefe book that has tons of full-page prints of her paintings, as well as commentary by her about her work.

I decided that the work I’d done in the morning counted as the rewrite work for the day — I didn’t need to do anything last night. Besides, I was *exhausted* and there was a co-op meeting (I own a condo in a co-op.)

Now — to the insanity of the day job! Soooooo busy right now.

::random smooches and hugs::