I sat down this morning with the idea of writing a quick Sunday Scribbling on this week's topic of "Time Travel." I was inspired to post this topic because of my own experience with memory-related "time travel" from the cartoon I babbled on about it my last two posts. I thought I would write about other things that take me back to childhood and teenhood, like Erasure songs and polka-dotted Benetton pants. But I didn't. I wrote the beginning of a science fiction story. It came out of nowhere the way only prompt-born stories can, and I got completely engrossed in it, saw it stretching itself to life, sprouting characters and back story and drama, and I knew I couldn't post it here after all. Because. . . I need to write it now, and I don't want to give anyone my idea!
I swear, it's a good thing I haven't been doing many Sunday Scribblings lately. I'd have more story ideas than I can handle! I am convinced that I (and you) can sit down with a one- or two-word prompt, play with it for a few hours, and have the seeds of a novel. Seriously. And now we've hit a hundred prompts on SunScrib, so many of which I've passed up in favor of staying focused on my novel, and I can't help but wonder: what stories would sprout out of each of those prompts if I gave them a chance? Yikes! What have I missed? It kind of makes me want to write all one hundred prompts down and go at them.
How does this sound: take a stack of perfect notebooks and a fistful of perfect pens on vacation somewhere wonderful, I'm thinking Mexico, and rent a pink house in a pastel-colored colonial city with jungles all around it, jungles full of waterfalls and monkeys, and spend the days strolling and lolling and eating and drinking and filling the notebooks with "scribblings" about all those prompts. Yes? Are you with me? How about a "Sunday Scribblings" retreat? We can get together in the evenings and share! Ah, sigh. Actually, I am conjuring up a jungly Mexico getaway for before my belly gets out of control. I want to go to Chiapas and hear howler monkeys and buy a Mayan bedspread and eat some kind of bizarre fruit that has no English name! I am hoping to dream it into a reality. Passport renewal is on my desk! (The shame of an expired passport! How I have let my travel dreams lapse!)
Anyway, so a new story has taken shape on my computer, but I will not share it here. I'll say this about it: it's not for kids. It's kind of "murdery," and it's a secret!
Oh, and although my last two posts prove that [almost] nobody cares about this but me, the Lady Oscar DVDs arrived yesterday! They're in Japanese with English subtitles, so it's not really the full nostalgia experience of hearing it in Italian, but now I can understand what they're saying. Nerdy fun!
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8 comments:
Just be careful what you drink! Water-borne ilnesses while pregnant would NOT be very good.
I love the idea of that retreat. I won't make Mexico, but have promised myself a few days over Easter, and now you've reminded me, I'll bring a list of the prompts you've offered in Sunday Scribblings. I've just posted about how Sunday Scribblings is one of my Time Machines. Thank you so much for that!
We went to Mexico when I was pregnant...sigh, our last real vacation...how I miss it.
Anyway, I love Japanese anime and listening to it in Japanese is the best. I'm trying to find one I used to watch as a girl...Swan Lake. So far, not on Netflix. We do watch a lot of Miyazaki films in Japanese, since I'm trying to teach Elizabeth the language a bit at a time. This way, she can absorb it without any pain!
Wow. That vacation sounds wonderful.
Hello sweets! I sent you a little email, but I might not have the right one for you? Did you get? I wanted to say thank you!
I don't even want to look at my own passport dates. *sigh* I think your Mexico idea is fantastic. Do that! Just put sun screen on your belly. ;)
ox :)
Oh, you're lucky, Laini, a bright, shiny, new inspiration!
I'm stuck again, after some smooth sailing where the water coughed up some nice rune magic, and a cruel jaw-like device with which to steal the runes, and huge reindeer, and the reason why the Flamekeeper had to rush off in such a hurry.
But now I'm stuck in the middle of a waffle house. I have to move on, have to, because my two years are almost up and I'll have to get a job again soon.
Butt-in-chair is now But!-in-chair.
But hey, Mondays are usually good. Must be all those years of school.
Maybe what I need is a retreat with you guys! I've never tried that before, working in a close creative environment. I think I might like it. And Norway doesn't exactly bulge with fantasy writers.
Sounds like a perfect vacation idea.
Congratulations again (I think I sp. it right this time:) on Sunday Scribblings' 100th - wow, how did that much time go by, so quickly?
I feel terrible guilt for letting so many Sunday Scribblings slip by without a single word. It's funny I just read this post today, this morning I was thinking that each prompt could become a book; there's so much possibility in each one.
Hmm...a Sunday Scribblings retreat sounds delicious. My writing group is beginning to plan this years retreat. Nothing as exotic as a tropical jungle, but very good anyway.
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