Day #19 – 400 for Today

Today’s assignment – Today is a free writing day. Write at least four-hundred words, and once you start typing, don’t stop. No self-editing, no trash-talking, and no second guessing: just go. Bonus points if you tackle an idea you’ve been playing with but think is too silly to post about.

To be honest I hate the free writing thing. I think it’s because I’m way too analytical to write aimlessly. But then again, I like sitting down and letting words just flow. I enjoy doing this when I have a topic in mind. I explore the topic by writing it out then I’ll figure out where I want to go with it as soon as I sit down. My mind runs and the words follow.

With that said, I think it’s best if I find a topic.

I think I’ll post about blogging.

Why did I get started and why do I continue?

I work in a very non-creative job. My day involves shirt & tie, cubical, emails, transferring calls, two monitors and battling poor posture. My job isn’t mind-numbing or boring. It’s very fast paced and the workload is unending. But at the end of the day, after I’ve recovered from work and a long commute, the analytical side of me is kind of spent. But the other side – the creative side –is kind of restless.

There’s things it wants to explore and make and design and just play around with. So I read. But that only worked for so long. Soon I wanted to start writing, so I did. I decided to write a novel. And I loved it.

It was hard work. It was challenging. It was the nine-to-five job for my creative side and soon I found myself looking for overtime. I started the blog as a recommendation for self-pub authors. I started blogging. Then I wanted to talk about other things. Soon it came a place for me just to put up whatever was on my mind.

That’s how Thinking Out Loud came about.

Whatever I was thinking or whatever I was curious about, that’s what I’d post. Some of it was funny. Some of it was more serious. I tried to make posts be one of three things or be comprised of all: entertaining, informative, and honest.

I’ve tried to do the same since. If I had stumbled over my blog on the internet would it interest me enough to read it? I think it would and I hope others feel the same way.

But in the end, I don’t write for readers. I write for me. I don’t have a “target audience” or demographic I shoot for.

I just put words together and think out loud.

Day #18 – Point of View

Today’s Assignment – The neighbourhood has seen better days, but Mrs. Pauley has lived there since before anyone can remember. She raised a family of six boys, who’ve all grown up and moved away. Since Mr. Pauley died three months ago, she’d had no income. She’s fallen behind in the rent. The landlord, accompanied by the police, have come to evict Mrs. Pauley from the house she’s lived in for forty years. Write this story in first person, told by the twelve-year-old sitting on the stoop across the street. Build this twelve-year-old as a character. Reveal at least one personality quirk, for example, either through spoken dialogue or inner monologue.

As the little old lady was assisted down her steps I remember sitting across the street and watching the whole thing. It was in the middle of summer and I had just finished playing basketball and on my way home. I was covered in sweat and holding my ball. She seemed so small when they helped her into the back of the car. I remembered watching her from across the street and only thinking of one thing as they drover her away.

I never liked her spaghetti.

Day #17 – Your Fears

Today’s assignement – Address one of your worst fears. If you’re up for a twist, write this post in a style that’s different from your own.

 

 

Day #16 – Lost and Found

Today’s assignment – Imagine you had a job in which you had to sift through forgotten or lost belongings. Describe a day in which you come upon something peculiar, or tell a story about something interesting you find in a pile. Continue our serial challenge, also reflect on the theme of “lost and found” more generally in this post.

I did the serial challenge earlier with Regarding Loss and Found It. In those posts I talked about completing a project I had worked so hard towards and finding inspiration to move to something else.

When I thought about this post I had one image that jumped into my mind. I couldn’t picture the job I had or the pile of objects I’d sift through, but the object I would find came quickly.

A hammer.

It’s old, worn, heavily used and made with a wooden handle. When you hold it in your hands you realize it’s much heavier than it looks. You can see the cuts in the wood and the scrapes on the head. You wonder what this hammer did?

Did it build or did it break?

Did it craft something beautiful that required a fine touch at just the right places or did it take a wide, hard swing and bring things crashing down in destruction?

But the hammer didn’t know, because the hammer didn’t care. It did whatever it was asked to do. It was amoral to it all.

In the end, you wonder more about the hands than the hammer.

Day #14 – To Brute

Today’s assignment – Pick up the nearest book and flip to page 29. What’s the first word that jumps off the page? Use this word as your springboard for inspiration. write a letter to the word or an image, or an open letter to the world inspired by the word.

The book I have closest to me is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming and thankfully the Kindle App shows page numbers. Here’s page 29:

The one word that jumps out to me was brute. So here’s my letter to the word and I thought I’d do it with a rhyme.

To BRUTE

When I was a kid, you were the first cologne I wore,

Not because I liked you, but you were the cheapest in the store.

Your name invokes images of different things,

Mancho, manly stuff, like boxers in rings.

And even if it’s not pronounced the same way,

You’re mentioned in a popular line scholars often say,

when reading those immortal words, “Et tu, Brute?”

If you liked this post you may also enjoy:

• Uh-oh Haiku
• Uh-oh Haiku Too
• A Graph-ic Post Too

Day #13 – Found It

Today’s assignment – On day four, you wrote a post about losing something. Today, write about finding something. Use this one as the second installment.

In Regarding Loss, I wrote that the only loss I’ve had recently is the trouble I had letting go of my first novel, Gather Sticks Along the Way.

The way I’ve now begun to get over this is not by something I found, but something I found out about myself. What I found was acceptance of the past. 

The problem I had was that I felt whatever I did in the past defined who I was or what I could do today.

What I found is that whatever I’ve done before is only a reflection on what I could do then. I need to be looking forward and focusing on what I can do better now.

It was that realization that started urging me to develop my second novel, as I mentioned in a previous post.

And it’s making me look forward to what else I might find.

Day #11 – The Long & Short of It

Today’s assignment – Tell us about the home where you lived when you were twelve. Use short, medium, and long sentences as you compose your response.

When I was twelve, I grew up on the steep hillside of a county road that cut right through a rural Alabama valley. Our house was surrounded by woods. In the summer, it’d make a little green pocket that hid the house from the road. Out of sight from the world but open to all the noise it had. Birds sung in the trees. Bugs buzzed in the grass. They’d make noise all summer long. Cars would go flying by taking the winding road to and from the lake. From our house on the hillside we could see the firework show on the fourth of July. We’d see the explosion miles away but could still feel the blast in our chests.

In the winter, the trees would fade. The green would give way to brown and gray. The wind would blow hard and rattle the last remaining leaves that clung to their branches. The noise outside would soften as the woods around us seemed to go to sleep. The traffic on the road below would return to its normal pace.

It was a pretty quiet place to grow up.

When I was old enough I moved away.

Then I moved back. I moved back as close as I could. To raise my own kids in way as close to the one I had. Now I’ll wait to see, when they are old enough, where they’ll go and if they’ll return.

Post #3 – Three Songs

Today’s assignment – Try free writing. To begin, empty your mind onto the page. Let the emotions or memories connected to your three songs carry you. Commit to this practice for at least 15 mins each day.

Okay . . . so free writing.

To me it basically begins with this . . . a total blank.

But maybe that’s the point. Start with a blank slate and see what you put on it. So let’s start.

Three songs that come to mind are ones that I usually find myself listening to constantly because they are on every playlist I’ve created.

• Time by The Greencards – I don’t know how you can describe this one. I’d say it’s closest to bluegrass. But cool, slow bluegrass. No spoons being pounded on someone’s knee while someone else blows over a whisky jug. Slow and sad, it makes me stop and think. It makes me think of home. Not the place, but the feeling. Whatever feeling you get when you are out in the world doing things; commute, job, traffic, grocery shopping, standing in line, sitting behind a computer at work, talking to coworkers. This song is the exact opposite of all that. It’s sitting on a front porch, drinking a cup of coffee, and feeling the wind blow.

• 3 Rounds and a Sound by Blind Pilot – I can’t sing. I can’t play an instrument. If I could do one or the other or both, I’d play this song. I’d sing it to my wife. It’s speaking a slow dance.

• Oceans (Where My Feet May Fail) by Hillsong UNITED -There’s worship songs that speak to your faith because they make you want to clap your hands or stand up and acknowledge your creator. Then there are others slowly make their way deep inside you because their words shake you to your core. They let you know what you are feeling before you have a chance to realize it yourself.

These three songs. Their words in my ears make me want to put words to paper.