Posts Tagged ‘adding to your story’

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Joy Of Writing

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

There is a joy in writing about things that are going on in your life or in the lives of others.  It is all about the sharing.  Think of the feeling you get when you get a card, a letter, an email or hand written note shared across coffee, lunch, dinner or even across time.

In a few days it will be Valentine’s Day.  Typically that is more of a day to share with written remembrances but recently as I moved and sorted through boxes I found notes from my mother who has passed away and it was really special to go through those notes and remember what was going on during the time she wrote the note to me. What a great way to connect with her memory.

Think about those special communications you have received over your life and maybe even write a short story sharing your thoughts about what you got.  You can tuck it away or you can share with others. 

 A very popular movie that I see being shown on television is The Notebook which is about love letters written that the man now shares (by reading) with his wife who has Alzheimer’s and is having trouble remembering sometimes even her husband.

How can you brighten someone elses day?

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Finding Time To Write

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

 

 

Learning From The Prairie Dog

Learning From The Prairie Dog

 

 

Prairie dog families live in underground colonies called burrows. The burrows can be more than a hundred feet (30 meters) long and have many different compartments (at bottom) where the prairie dogs sleep, raise their young, and stay safe from predators. They are part of the squirrel family and multiply very quickly.

When I was growing up on a ranch in eastern Montana we began to have large colonies of prairie dogs begin to build what were called prairie dog towns.  As you looked across the land you saw many holes where the burrows opened and they came to the surface above ground.

It was very dangerous for the animals who could fall into the holes and injure their legs.  A very costly problem for anyone who had livestock , in my father’s case, horses, sheep and cattle. 

So what does the prairie dog have to do with writing? 

Life can become so busy trying to handle the things that pop up, like the prairie dog popping out of it’s burrow unexpectedly, that it can become like a giant game of  Whack-The-Dog. Every time you solve a problem, two or three even more stubborn challenges pop up to distract you and try to pull your attention away from your life and writing to problem solving mode. 

This can seriously hinder your ability to think about how you want to communicate unless you are jotting down the steps to how you are solving the problem.  Those steps can really help others if you will share what and how you handled the problems you encountered. 

Knowing how you solved a problem that you dealt with can save others many hours of trying to figure out what to do. Think about a solution you came up with when someone else was sharing how they solved a problem.

On the other hand, your mind continually pops up ideas for you, that if you jot down at the time, you can go back to later and add more content to expand on the idea.

 Be pro-active at keeping those dogs (problems) at bay and be diligent at spending a few minutes a day at your writing. Those 5 minutes here and there can even produce a nice income for you.  Click Here!   for more information about how you can do that.

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Writing Can Equal Remembering

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Whenever you are going through old stored things that you haven’t seen for awhile you find written items. It can be  correspondence in the form of old letters, job reviews, invitations, newspaper or magazine articles or a variety of other documentation.

Some of these items can bring back many memories both good and bad.  You might not want to remember the grades you got in the 7th grade but your mom saved the report cards and gave them to you along the way.

On the other hand you might be delighted with a newspaper article about something you really were, at the time, interested in pursuing.

For example: My father’s ranch in Montana was the type site for the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  That means it was the first full Rex skeleton found in the world.  Recently I found an old National Geographic that had a long wonderful article about the discovery and process.  I also found a newspaper clipping about when my mother found a large number of Triceratops fossils.

As a small child, I wasn’t aware of many of the details but found them quite interesting when I read about them as an adult.  I do remember the paleontologists that came every summer.  We used to call them the bone diggers.  They had such cool tools and were so patient in uncovering the fossils. 

Now, you find something that has been put away for awhile and see if you can bring back some memories worth remembering.  You might even stir up a renewed interest in doing something about the information you uncover.

Will I get something going in fossils and dinasaurs?  Probably not, but, I can get the bones I have to the nearest museum so others can enjoy them.

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Let Writing Look Back Over The Holidays

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Now that the holidays are past and we are beginning to get back to normal schedules is a great time to think about some of the events that you could use to tell some short stories.

You could break down the categories into EX: travel, friends, events, experiences shopping or any others that apply to you.  You might even consider including all of the holiday events and happenings and putting them into a book for yourself or your family as a keepsake.

Everytime you remember a special event when you have not recorded the details you might leave out important facts about what happened.  I know most of you have good memories but when you try to remember everything about everything sometimes things get jumbled and left out. The diary concept was a good idea that you can start using again.

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Weather To Write About

Friday, January 15th, 2010

The weather is making headlines all over the world.  From very difficult situations to very wonderful situations, we have the opportunity to watch and experience the changes the weather brings to us each day.

For me, it has been much colder than normal and I have been moving things so the extra clothing required to stay warm has been quite interesting. 

As you know, when you are moving and active you are warmer.  When you are still, you are colder.  Adjusting to the level of activity and the amount of clothing needed to remain comfortable while I have been completing this task has been at times funny and at times quite annoying.  Thankfully, I could layer the clothing and monitor the task activity level.

Find a weather event and see if you can write a short story about the details and your experience.

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Write About The Most Memorable Gift

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

We all have gotten some memorable gifts over the years, some we would rather not remember and some we value  the memory of even if it is many years after receiving it.  It could be the person or people who gave it to us as well as the gift itself.

Select a gift and the time around when you received it and  write a  short story about getting the gift, how you felt and what you liked best about the way you got the gift.

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Moving Adventures

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Last fall I was notified that I had to move both my business and home so the complex I was in could renovate.  Not much time to sort and go through the things I had accumulated over the time I had been there so it was off to find a new location and begin the project. 

Many funny as well as annoying stories occurred as the process unfolded and is still going on.  I am seeing an end though and the extra effort that I put into going through and sorting and seeing what could be thrown away has been worth the effort.

See if you can think of  the last time you moved and select a topic to write about.  It can be any slant you would like to use funny, sad, disgusting, etc.  There are always assorted ways to look at things as you recall as many of the details as you can remember.

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Writing About Celebrating Special Days

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Everyone has an assortment of special days.  They might be birthdays, anniversaries,  graduation days, family reunions, days special events occurred in your life or holidays.

Pick one for yourself and record how you spent or spend your special days and see if those events make the event more memorable to you as you review what happened or who you were with at the time. 

If they are days that you celebrate every year, see if you can increase your memories by adding something else to the celebration.

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Writing When Excited

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

I am over the top excited about some things that are going on in my life and remembered the feeling and how easy it was in the past to write when I was experiencing this  feeling.  I felt like I just had to share what was happening with the people in my life who could get excited with me.

Try thinking back and see if you can tap into a time when you were experiencing this same type of  excitement energy and use it to write a story about an event or happening.  It can add so much to the story and help your reader experience the same thing  as if they were with you at the same time it was happening to you.  The connection to the reader gets better as well as stronger when you can help them experience this same kind of energy.  It is fun to be excited and it is fun to be around excited people or attending exciting events.

See what part of the event stands out, what part of the events are more of a blur and those parts of the event that happened but you do not remember them at all.  Capture the same feeling for a character you are writing about in a fiction story.  Put in the same things you remember that your character can experience.  It adds so much to your story line when that excitement can be shared through writing about it and then, as an extra bonus, including how you felt about it from an observer point of view.

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Write A Story That Starts With “I Always Thought That…”

Monday, May 11th, 2009

There are many times in our lives that we have said to ourselves. “I always thought that I _______ (you fill in the blank).  I know that I have certainly said that and when I look back, I can see a fairly consistent pattern of what I did and what I chose not to do. 

Valuable information to look at occasionally in determining directions for your lives to see if the opportunities being presented might have made a difference in where we are today had we selected them instead of the opportunities we did.

Writing them down in the different scenarios also will give you a way to add these kind of beginning, middle and endings to other stories you are writing.  They often say truth is stranger than fiction  (don’t have a source for that quote or saying) and I have found it to be true.

It just makes such good content for your storytelling so try it out as a resource and see what you think.

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