Grab a cuppa and a comfy seat, and let’s chat a while.
It’s Monday again – time for Coffee and Conversation.
When I was six, my family was driving on a highway late at night. Streaks of headlights and taillights painted the dark. For the first time, I realized that each car held people living lives as important to them as mine was to me.
I wanted to know what those lives were, and to share my own...
After you achieve a long-term goal, do you take time to celebrate your accomplishment? Do you reflect upon its meaning? Do you find that it’s changed you in some way?
It’s been over two weeks now since I completed the Story a Day May Challenge, and I’ve been rereading, pondering, and growing as a result of having undertaken this project.
Participating in this challenge stretched me, in several ways:
-
I wrote in different voices and points of view than I typically do. I wrote to musical prompts, word lists, and images.
-
I got to play with two beloved characters, and their story netted me almost 70,000 new words.
-
I discovered several amazing writers.
-
I have a new passion for reading others’ Enterprise fan fiction, and this is feeding my imagination, adding to the stories I created.
-
I got to indulge myself and my imagination.
-
I found that I was not only capable of following the prompts and my own framework, but that the results were often unexpected and better than I’d thought they could be.
So, in celebration, I offer, a little belatedly, the StoryFest. I missed the “official” window, because I was away, but I can still share these stories, for your enjoyment.
And, hey, why I’m sharing, here’s, “The Logic of Emotion” one of my own favorites from my Story A Day WIP, The IDIC Romance.
Do you participate in organized creative challenges? How do you benefit from the experience? Pull up a chair, enjoy your cuppa, and let’s converse!
Aha! I finally discovered a major difference between us! In fact, I run screaming from organized creative challenges. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying the results of others’ participation, of course, but me? NANOthankyou. 🙂
Gretchen,
You are so funny! I can imagine you, head tucked, arms up above, yelling at the top of your lungs as a horde of us chase you, wielding our various NaNos, Story A Days, A-Zs and blogathons!
Okay, I may be a little punchy from the writing challenges… =)
For me, they give just the right framework to move projects I was planning to do forward. I use them like catalysts, for my own nefarious purposes…well, maybe not so nefarious.
What I don’t seem to get into nearly so much is the socializing aspect. I figured out, last month, why that is.
I’m already having family interaction, and then I add sharing in my characters’ interactions at an intensely accelerated pace. For myself, I tend to avoid conflict and the types of interactions that most often lead there. But that type of story would be pretty dull – so I’m living a conflict-ridden life with my characters, and there isn’t much left over for extraneous interactions.
Which might be why I don’t jump on every challenge that comes around…
I hereby promise on all the words I’ve written for various challenges, never ever to try to make you play. =D