A Five Day Writing Challenge Rocked My World

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555 Story Challenge Logo

This is not a paid endorsement. This is me publicly thanking Nicole Breit and Spark Your Story for hosting a fabulous 5-day online writing challenge.

I am wrapping up an MFA writing program this summer. My thesis project is a paranormal mystery. I love my thesis, but after a couple of years of thinking about the project 24/7, my brain has been feeling tired and uninspired.

I am not even sure where I found out about the 555 story challenge? I’d love to give a nod to the source if only I could recall who that was.

Five days. Five writing prompts. Five submissions into a contest for gift cards and a snazzy writer’s subscription box from GoScribbler. I like prizes. I’m not ashamed of being open to bribery for my writing.

What reeled me was the daily output: 100 words of creative non-fiction. Writing about my own experiences and only 100 words? I’m in! Heck, I could do that on my phone on my notes app…and spoiler: that’s precisely what I did!

Know that writing 100 words is easy. Know that writing 100 good words is the challenge. Capturing a moment or a feeling in so few words is tough.

I could do the writing on my phone, so I didn’t have to pull out my laptop. Keeping my laptop and its unfinished grad school project out of sight kept my stress level low.

The prize drawings were random. Knowing I could win just by completing the daily writing was a great motivator for me. There was no pressure to be perfect.

I didn’t win any of the prizes, boo hiss, but congrats to those who did. Nicole shared with all participants that they could continue their writing journey with her Spark Your Story course, and it sounds fantabulous! It’s outside my budget right now, but based on how helpful just five days of prompts and guidance from Nicole were, I wouldn’t hesitate to sign up for more learning with her in the future.

The challenge let me revisit my creativity in a non-threatening way. Anyone, even someone with a full-time job and looming grad school deadlines, can get one hundred words done in a day. Hitting “submit” each day gave a little dopamine burst, a little feel-good way-to-go mojo that put some spring in my step.

Having a short but sweet date with my creativity for five days has given me my spark back. I’ve given over three hours today to working on my thesis novel, feeling good about it again.

My creativity wasn’t a shriveled up old raisin, long forgotten in an old lunch box. My creativity is a vineyard full of grapes, each having their season to grow, recover, and do it all over again.

Thank you, Nicole!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stir of Echoes: thoughts on the movie

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“I never wanted to be famous,” Tom tells his wife Maggie in the beginning of the film Stir of Echoes. “I just never expected to be so ordinary.”

 

After being hypnotized by Maggie’s sister, Tom is gifted with a psychic connection to Samantha, the ghost of a neighborhood girl gone missing. His son also has a connection to Samantha and converses with her throughout the movie.

 

Initially his gift and his visions distress Tom. As the story unfolds, Tom gets more obsessed with what happened to Samantha. He receives a message to dig for her.

 

When his wife finds Tom in their backyard digging, Maggie wants him to stop.

 

Tom is angry and begins shouting at her, “This is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. This is the most important thing I have ever done in my life.”

 

This sense of purpose is what moves Tom forward. If a different man, a more accomplished man, has become a “receiver” of ghost noise, I’m not sure they would have tuned in and followed the leads. Furthermore, if we consider that a person with less physical strength than Tom had been the receiver of the ghost messages, they might not have been able to do the digging and demolition that went into following through with the discovery of Samantha’s corpse.

 

Tom is the perfect receiver, the perfect candidate, to take on this mission. It made me wonder if Samantha, our ghost girl, had tried to reach out to anyone else prior to Tom. Tom’s son Jake communicates with Samantha, but not about finding her killers or her body. Did Samantha try to find other adults that could act upon the visions she showed?

 

Alternatively, maybe she didn’t try to connect with other adults. Perhaps Samantha was waiting patiently to give her messages to Tom, knowing he was strong and yearning to be extraordinary. Was Samantha waiting for a bump on the head, a burning fever, or some other pivotal moment where his guard was down enough to tap into his mind?

 

As the film wraps, we have a moment of Jake’s perception, and he is privy to all kinds of psychic noise. It’s unclear whether Jake is only hearing ghosts or if he hears the living as well. In either case, it’s crystal clear that Jakes’s gifts stay with him.

 

What was not made as clear to me while viewing the film was whether Tom’s ghost communication skills would continue. We see Samantha put on her coat and walk away, presumably to the afterlife, but maybe just to a more interesting house to haunt. Samantha’s murderers are identified, and her body found. Will Tom encounter other ghosts in need of a resolution in the future, especially since his son is also open to receive spirit messages?

 

I would like to believe now that Tom believes in ghosts, he will be more open and sensitive to spirits going forward. I want him to see ghost birds when he’s working on phone lines. I want him to be a warmer, more compassionate human because he understands even an ordinary life is still a life, a finite and lovely opportunity.

 

 

 

Why aren’t you wearing a werewolf hoodie?

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Werewolf Jersey

There you are, staring into your closet, wishing for a fashion miracle to happen.  “Why oh why don’t I have a shirt with a werewolf on it? How will I ever be cool at the craft brewery/tailgate market/gym if I don’t stride in wearing a werewolf on my shirt?”

This is a common concern here in Asheville, NC, and all around the world.  I’m here for you today with a solution.  You can have werewolf-wear delivered right to your doorstep.  Need a jersey? A hoodie? A t-shirt? I’ve got you covered.

All you need to do is skedaddle on over to my merch store on Cafe Press and go wild!  If you join the Cafe Press email list, they send out great coupons all the time that can be used in my store so you can come back and get that werewolf shower curtain, too!

Let’s Be Creepy Together

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Creepy Book Cover

This is a super short read, but it is one of my favorites.  These are true stories from my life experiences with ghosts and other things that go bump in the night.

I asked an artist to do the ghost design for the cover based on some ideas I had, and I love the design she created.  I love this design so much it’s available on mugs and t-shirts on CafePress.com.

I think there will be more of these stories to come, or perhaps I will share bonus stories to my website followers!

 

How to Be a Crappy Boss

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Cover of Crappy Boss Book

Wow, I have had some seriously crappy bosses over the years.  I had notes about some of these bosses because someday I may turn these notes into a work of fiction.

For now, you can figure out what not to do in your new leadership role from this book.  Being a supervisor, manager, director, or whatever is not free license to be the Mayor of JackAssville.  Micromanaging, taking credit for the work of others, and being a horrible human in general: these are not good leadership traits.

10 Ways to Work Yourself to Death

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10 Ways Book Cover

I love James Altucher and his book Choose Yourself.  He suggests a daily practice of making lists to keep your creativity and ideas flowing.  He posted a challenge to his social media followers to write a short book in a weekend based on one of these lists.  Challenge accepted!

You can follow 10 Ideas to Work Yourself to Death as a manual if you would like to run yourself into the ground…or you can do the opposite if you would like some balance in your life.

Love Unstitched

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cover of Love Unstitched

This book was unplanned!  I rented a hotel room for a couple days to work on some short stories set in Asheville that had been bouncing around in my brain for several months.

I sat down with my notebook and pen to write, and the characters of the Asheville short stories were not what flowed onto the pages.  Instead, essays and thoughts around love came tumbling out.

When I finally put the pen down, I didn’t have what I expected at all.  I also had a weird feeling about it, like I needed to do something with this pile of words.

Driving back home from the hotel, I decided I would type everything up and publish it on Amazon as Love Unstitched.  It felt cathartic to publish it, like by posting it online, I was putting some ugly feelings down and walking away from them.

Those Asheville short stories still aren’t finished, even after all this time.  I pick them up, noodle around a bit, then put them back down.  I may revive that project, or like so many projects, it may rest half-written in one of my zillions of spiral notebooks.

Truth and Fiction in Ashevegas

Cover photo from Truth and Fiction on Amazon
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Cover photo from Truth and Fiction on Amazon

This was my first book on Amazon.  When I put Truth and Fiction in Ashevegas together, I was trying to learn how self-publishing worked.  I wanted to understand how to get a book on Amazon. I learn best by doing, so I put this small book together and started the process.  It didn’t take long to get it uploaded and approved; the turnaround time was shorter than I expected.

This one was available as an eBook and as a print book.  When I held a copy of this book in my hands for the first time, it was an amazing feeling! I felt on top of the world.

It was also a thrill to see it on Amazon.  I was a published author on Amazon! Woohoo!