shanjeniah

Coffee and Conversation: Up for a StoryFest?

 

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?

Hooray! Confetti Time! =D

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!

 

2 comments

  1. 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

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