Twitter tales

I haven't posted any Friday Phrases ficlets here recently. Except for the last two Fridays, I wasn't posting them on Twitter either. In the words of Adrian Monk, here's what happened:

The Friday of the Fourth of July, the prompt was "The quandary of the inebriated mariner" (aka "What shall we do with a drunken sailor?"). This prompt made me laugh very hard. It made me sing the song ("Hooray and up she rises!") over and over. It made me think of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" ("Water, water everywhere..."). 

It did not inspire ficlets. 

Then we all got sick. 

Then I forgot.  

But! I am back it. Here are two weeks' worth of Friday Phrases offerings. 

From this past Friday (prompt: The sky is falling): 

Her personal universe collapsed around her, and she screamed inwardly in rage & grief...and smiled at him and said, "I'm fine, thanks." 

He felt like Chicken Little, warning of some far-fetched impending doom. And when it all began, he wished he'd been just as wrong. 

Operation Get Out Now was a last-ditch emergency plan. It would never be needed

It went into effect with a text: "The sky's falling."

They called it the Poison Sky as it rained down its death, disease, and destruction on all of humanity. If only they'd listened...

From the Friday before that (prompt: reflection):

Everyone said she was beautiful, kind, funny, smart. She didn't see it. She only saw her flaws, magnified through the lying glass. 

She no longer recognized herself. Childhood dreams and innocence were long gone. Only brokenness remained--shards of a past strewn about. (This one actually got a "very nice!" from the Friday Phrases Twitter account, which tickled me to no end.) 

That's all for now. Anybody have a favorite?

Twitter tales

 Friday Phrases gives a prompt each week for people to post "micro-fiction" on Twitter. You can use the prompt or not (so far I've always used it). When I click through the #FP hashtag, I find it fascinating how different the stories all are. Some are light and humorous; some are dark and haunting. I'm often amazed at what people can fit into so few words. Being rather verbose by nature, I often find it hard to condense my thoughts down enough to fit into a tweet, but I think it's good for me to have to do so. And I pick up new followers each week I participate, and my tweets are being retweeted and favorited. I'll admit that those things make me smile. :)

Here are some of my Twitter tales:

She seemed so sweet and innocent at first, needing his help and protection. She robbed him blind. He forgave the theft but not the lies. (prompt: at first blush)

She wished she could go back, make different choices. But it was too late. She'd dug her own grave and had no way to claw back out now. (prompt: grave digging)

She scowled at the scenery whizzing by. He was excited about a new start; she already missed home. She'd make sure this never worked. (prompt: through the glass)

He watched through the glass. She never let up, bad cop all the way. He should go in, rein her in.
 He didn't move. This was too fun. (prompt: through the glass)

She'd seen it all through that dirty window.
She could never forget.
But he wouldn't either, and that's why she was still running. (prompt: through the glass)

If you find these interesting, let me know. I'll try to share here each week, for non-Twitter family and friends.

If you get a chance and are on Twitter, check out #FP. The creativity of the participants is really astounding!

I get by with a little help from my friends...

So I talked a bit about faith communities in the previous post--about how we spur each other on (or sometimes carry each other along--I need the latter a fair amount if I'm honest). Sometimes we need someone quite literally to take our hands and guide us along the way. Other times it's more metaphorical.

A few weeks ago, I was the lucky recipient of a more symbolic hand-holding.

On Twitter, the hashtag #amwriting is a fun one to visit.  You can swap advice and tips, share a bit of your current project, or vent a little. On this particular occasion, I was most interested in the first and third of those things. It wasn't exactly going well. I had reread my work thus far several times, trying to get an idea of how the next scene should play out. I had turned on my favorite writing music. But nothing was coming to me.

Finally, in exasperation, I tweeted, "At the moment, #amstuck feels more apt than #amwriting." 

I think that is my most popular tweet to date. It was retweeted and favorited by several writers who could relate to the feeling. And I picked up several fellow writers as followers. 

But...my lovely online pal (whom I'll call Campy) immediately responded. She offered to be a cheerleader, beta reader--whatever I needed, whatever would help. I didn't even know what would help at that point, but I appreciated her willingness to step in.

She then came up with the idea of doing a writing sprint together. We'd both set a timer, set our writing play list, and just write for that amount of time. Whatever came out. 

It honestly wasn't terribly different from what I'd been doing (or trying to do, rather) up to that point. And yet...it worked. There was something so powerful about knowing someone was out there, writing with me. I started typing...and I kept going. I ended up with over 800 words when all was said and done. And I know it had everything to do with the power of knowing someone was out there, doing it with me. 

The power of community--of being in this thing together. I love it. (Thanks again, Campy!)

technically speaking, part 2

My laptop is still on the fritz, and the part Nelson ordered for it hasn't come yet.  Stealing time on the iPad is something of an iffy proposition, because I share it with the girls and they use it for school a fair amount.  This adds up to not getting as much writing done as I'd like this week.

But an interesting thing happened yesterday.  Although I still use and swear by a paper planner (much to my techie husband's chagrin), I do all of my writing on a computer.  I have since college.  Even before the the technology snafus of the previous post, I was in a bit of a writing slump.  Call it writer's block or whatever, but nothing was flowing all that well.  I was stuck. 

Writing gurus often recommend mixing things up to get the juices flowing again.  Sometimes that might include a change of scenery, but for me a change of medium did the trick.  Since I was on the outs with technology, I went old-school and grabbed pen and paper.  

And I became unblocked.  I wrote a quick blurb for pay for Textbroker, which I typed up this morning.  I outlined an idea that I might pitch to Relevant.  And I got some work done on my fiction.  

Apparently technology isn't always all that's it cracked up to be.  I'll still probably do most of my writing on the computer once everything's working again, but I'm definitely open to changing it up more often.  

Getting unstuck is nice.

And pen and paper doesn't quit working on me.