Writing prompt 53

I figured I had a go with a funny prompt this Sunday. Not my usual style, but why not? I think it’s suitable for fantasy and humour writers alike. I hope it helps you create some nice stories.

“Ouch! Ow! You punched me in the nose! That hurts, you know.”
“Get back!”
“What is the matter with you, human? I’m a friendly orc. Do you see me squashing your meaty parts ’til your eyes pop out? You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“Die, demon!”
“Hey, I have feelings too, okay? Just ’cause I’m an orc, doesn’t mean your words don’t hurt me. Or my nose. Look how swollen it is now.”

Crutch words – WENT (part 2)

You didn’t think I forgot part 2 for this crutch word, did you? In case you missed part 1 you can find it here.

When we draft our stories, we want to get them out as fast as possible. Which tends to make things sloppy and messy. Non-writers, don’t get us wrong. It’s a need all writers have; get the story out of our heads immediately. Unfortunately, this comes at a price.

Crutch words.

When we finish our first draft, we haven’t exactly “written” anything. Technically, we have, but practically, well… it’s not readable. When we draft a story, what we’re really doing is putting our thoughts down. Writing comes after we’re finished with the first draft. That’s when we have to turn our drafts into something that won’t hurt the eyes (or the minds) of our readers. Part of this process involves removing crutch words.

One such crutch word is the past tense of the verb go (went). We love using it (and other crutch words), because it’s always available and it does the job. The thing is, readers want more than a word that just does the job. The problem with went is that it’s not descriptive enough. And so, we have a huge list of synonyms to consider. Below, is a small list of some of the available synonyms for WENT. Keep in mind that every synonym has a meaning of its own, so make sure you use the right word. And yes, I know there are more synonyms available. I will cover those in future posts.

 

I am a…

It took me a while to accept it, but now that I have, I feel so much better: I am an artistic and creative person. That’s probably why I never liked most of the things I tried. None of them were related to arts. Except telling stories, creating worlds and settings, turn lies into reality, and writing fiction. Mind you, most of my academic background, with the exception of my Masters degree, is related to hard sciences (physics, chemistry, maths, geology – my first degree – cosmology, astronomy etc). Which was okay, but it never really thrilled me.

But now, I have discovered another form of art that I seem to like. Okay,ho am I kidding? A form of art I’m enthusiastic about!!! See how many exclamation marks I used there? There are a select few of you here who have had the great misfortune to have me as their beta reader. They know how much I hate exclamation marks. The words “kill it with fire, then cast it into Mt Doom,” come to mind. I believe I wrote that to the side of a friend’s manuscript, pointing at an exclamation mark he had used.

Anyway, being a writer on an extremely tight budget forced me to learn to use Photoshop. Okay, let me rephrase that. It forced me to learn to use one or two things from Photoshop (is there anyone out there who knows how to use the entire program, I wonder). And I realised something: I really like using it! (You see that? Another exclamation mark)

I enjoy creating stuff with it, and I enjoy learning new things about it. At the moment, I’m more like “monkey see, monkey do,” as far as knowing how to properly use it goes, but every single time I create something, it’s like having finished writing a new book. Like it’s Christmas all over again! (Wow! I’m going crazy with the exclamation marks today)

So, to make a long story short, I decided to start selling the few things I’ve created with Photoshop. I started an Etsy shop, and I invite you all to browse through my wares. There are not many things up yet, mainly because to create something it takes me as long as it takes me to finish editing a book. For the record, now I’m editing my cyberpunk novel AND my horror post-apocalyptic novel – yes, again – so this should be ample proof that it takes me A LOT of time to edit something.

Anyway, you can find my Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/DreamInDigitalDreams. I hope you like what you see 🙂

The journey goes on

2017 is ancient history! Well, maybe not ancient, but history nonetheless. Who would have thought, huh? It seems so long and far ahead to go from January to December, right?

When a new year starts, we usually groan about how far ahead the next Christmas period is, and we take things slowly when it comes to goals and things to do, because, hey, we’ve got a whole year ahead of us; pff! Plenty of time. But come December, we groan about how fast time went by, and darn it, another wasted year where we didn’t do any of the things we wanted to do. Does that sound familiar?

I never make any new year’s resolutions, mainly because I’ve come to accept that no matter how much I plan things out, life will always find a way to mess things up for me so much, that I might as well have been transported to a parallel universe, where nothing seems to work the way it should. There’s a saying here in Greece, which loosely translates to: when men make plans for the future, gods laugh.

Personally, I much prefer to look back and take note of all the important things that I managed to do. A lot of the times I do that for more than just the previous year. It gives me a better perspective. For me, 2017 was the year that I officially embarked on The Journey, as the title of this blog suggests. It took me four years to prepare things, but I did it in the end.

And now I’m getting ready for the next part of The Journey. There’s a vast ocean ahead of me, with few landmarks ahead to guide me, but something tells me I’ll make it to the next destination. I hope it takes me less time to get there, though I’m certain I will arrive at exactly the right time.