In place of this week’s Wednesday Writing Challenge, Typescript is now offering Writing Challenge Roundups, a compilation posted the last week of each month. Check out the challenges that were offered during the month of July and feel free to share your work or talk about the challenges in the comments section below.

July Roundup
Word Play III
Third time’s the charm! Have a little fun with words and see what new ideas you can discover.

Song Lyrics
What lyrics will help tell your next story?

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Typescript posts a new challenge each Wednesday to encourage creativity and inspire conversation. Feel free to talk about the challenge or share your writing results in the comments section below by leaving an excerpt and/or a link to your own site or blog.

The spark of inspiration can be found anywhere you choose to look. From a title of a song to a sketch found on a napkin to music lyrics, these stories are waiting to be discovered and told.

In a similar challenge based on song titles, we talked about how words and music can be a powerful form of creativity for their ability to evoke emotion and create experiences. Music speaks to the same part of our soul from which words stem, delving into a part of ourselves and calling forth sometimes stagnant emotion that can then be poured onto the page. The music you’re listening to can even shape the tone of your writing. A peppy pop ballad can make for an upbeat, feel-good story filled with humor and chaos. A slow ballad can cross boundaries and create melancholy and passion. However, it’s the lyrics that tell the story.

Song Lyrics
While the music itself can lend to inspiration, often the best lyrics are full of character, setting, and plot of their own, bringing to life a story. Very much like a poem, lyrics have power in their words, with imagery and rhythm guiding the tale. Pay attention when you listen to the radio or browse through the selections on iTunes. Your next story may be waiting in the music.

What song lyrics serve as your inspiration?

Challenge: Take a look at your own collection or use some suggestions below to create a new short story or poem:

I fell asleep on a late night train
I missed my stop and I went round again
Keane, “Try Again”

Before you hit the highway
You better stop for gas
There’s a 50 in the ashtray
In case you run short on cash
Carrie Underwood, “Don’t Forget To Remember Me”

Another glass of Whiskey but it still don’t kill the pain
So he stumbles to the sink and pours it down the drain
Carrie Underwood, “Wasted”

By the light of the moon
She rubs her eyes
Says it’s funny how the night
Can make you blind
Rob Thomas, “Her Diamonds”

Was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fog
Became God
Coldplay, “Violet Hill”

Hitched a ride to the peaceful side of town
Then proceeded where thieves were no longer found
Collective Soul, “Precious Declaration”

I found God
On the corner of First and Amistad…
All alone
Smoking his last cigarette
The Fray, “You Found Me”

I woke up today in London
As the plane was touching down
And all I could think about was Monday
And maybe I’ll be back around
Three Doors Down, “Landing In London”

Friday night beneath the stars,
in a field behind your yard,
you and I are paintin’ pictures in the sky.
Taylor Swift, “I’m Only Me When I’m With You”

Thought I ran into you down on the street
Then it turned out to only be a dream
I made a point to burn all of the photographs
She went away and then I took a different path
I remember the face but I can’t recall the name
Green Day, “Whatsername”

I look out of my bedroom window pane
Every day, but the view just stays the same
Guster, “C’mon”

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Typescript posts a new challenge each Wednesday to encourage creativity and inspire conversation. Feel free to talk about the challenge or share your writing results in the comments section below by leaving an excerpt and/or a link to your own site or blog.

The spark of inspiration can be found anywhere you choose to look. From a title of a song to a sketch found on a napkin, from an overheard conversation to a jumble of words, these stories are waiting to be discovered and told.

Who knew that a jumble of words could provide such inspiration? That such a combination could spark creativity, begin a story? Two months ago, I discovered well over 300 spam comments infiltrating my blog folder, containing strings of words that attempted to sell the latest dietary supplement with links to unknown sites. However, after skimming through these, I discovered that, upon a closer reading, there was really a sense of poetry in the combination of words, hidden inspiration in what seemed to be an incoherent passage.

What emerged was the Wednesday Writing Challenge: Word Play, where writers had a bit of fun and let their imaginations wander, sparking creativity, igniting something magical…

After a second round of this particular challenge with Word Play II, we’re back for another try. What inspiration will you find this time?

Word Play

One of the most fascinating aspects of writing is the ability to manipulate words and language to convey your intended meaning. Words have so many meanings within their own definitions, and coupling them with others can produce something not entirely expected but altogether magical. There are a thousand ways to describe an object, person, or place, and so, too, are there thousands of stories just waiting to be plucked out of the imagination and put to paper. Sometimes all we need to create that initial spark of inspiration is a word (or three)…

Challenge: Use one of the following couplings of words to create a new story or poem
(Note: many of these have had minor alterations to make a little bit more sense):

That represents breath

Distance from errors

Named the sometimes hostile

Fetch some light streamed

Mind every watch

Swore the roses

Faded photograph had preserved

Courtly adieu slowed

She held ash

The misfortune stream

Cornered animal turn sympathetic

Better they are strangers

Bring the wind

Their two further doubts

The whole business was unlikely

After dinner dining

Mentioned seeing and crowds

Sometimes worked live musician

Charms promises for history

Recognize the recognized

She has his expression

What interesting combinations of words can you add to the fold?

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I have a confession to make…

I haven’t touched my novel since December. Haven’t written a word, haven’t read it through in a (seemingly futile) attempt to get back into that mindset, haven’t even opened up the document.

But I think about it. Nearly every single day the characters are there, residing in the recesses of my mind.

Silent.

I’ve stalled. Writer’s fatigue, writer’s block…Whatever you want to call it, I’m admittedly stuck.

I’d been working on this novel for a number of years, though I keep hitting roadblocks with it, unsure of how to navigate the prose. Sometimes I put it away for days, weeks, months. Last year, I barely touched it at all.

I constantly ask myself why continue with it if it seems like such a burden, if the writing just isn’t coming? And I hem and I haw and I consider nixing the whole thing and then continue to make excuses.

The truth is, I love it. There’s a story in me that wants to be told, rising from a part of me, part of my imagination, that I can’t explain, yet it’s yearning to be put into words. That’s why I love it, that’s why I write it.

Only, I haven’t been writing it.

Although I tried time and again, I just couldn’t seem to find the story anymore.

And that was exactly the problem: I had the characters, I had the setting, but I didn’t know where the story was going in terms of plot. Instead of trusting my intuition, instead of letting my characters lead me, I began to panic. And in that panic, I began to plan.

I have another confession to make…

I am not a planner.

At least, not when it comes to writing. Part of the joy in writing, for me, is the discovery, the anticipation of where the characters will lead you and what you will find.

So when I panicked and started to outline, I knew that I was in trouble. A thousand and one possibilities flew through my mind, pieces of scenes being written that didn’t seem to have a context. I crossed out and deleted scenarios, copied and pasted bits of dialogue, wrote character profiles and drew timelines. None of it felt right, and in that process, I became overwhelmed.

So I stalled. Then I stopped completely.

And I stuck all of those materials in a folder on the desktop and didn’t open it again for months.

It has been my inspiration and my Achilles’ heel. I love it and I dread it all in the same breath; I’m excited and I’m scared.

Of what, exactly, I keep trying to ask myself. Of a few words down on paper? A few characters typed on the screen?

Of not having a direction. Of having my characters suspended, indefinitely, in a time and a place with nothing to move them forward. I’m afraid of not knowing where it’s going to go next.

But that’s part of the excitement, I’ve realized, and why I’ve suddenly become inspired to open up that document folder and rediscover that small town on the harbor, the rambunctious and curious little girl for whom I have such affection, and the story that surrounds both.

Sound advice says to just keep writing, to put the words to paper without worrying about the finished product. The idea is to start somewhere and keep writing. There’s a magic in words, in writing, in the story. If you keep writing, keep going, you’ll always end up somewhere.

So that’s exactly what I’m doing…Simply writing — without an outline, without preconceived ideas, without interruption. The magic is in the making, in the telling, in the trusting.

I’ve begun to have faith in the story within me again, and I have hope that we’ll both end up somewhere.

What problems have you encountered as a writer? Do you have any similar experiences? How do you combat these concerns?

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Every month, Typescript posts a new giveaway, with recipients chosen at random on the 15th of each month. Submit your name and email in the comments below and you’ll be automatically placed in the drawing. Please only submit once; if you’re chosen, you’ll be contacted for your shipping address.

If you have a book or product you’d like to see featured in a future giveaway, feel free to contact me.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith

“There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.”
- Betty Smith, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

My most treasured book has a green hardcover with yellow engraving on the spine. The street address from where I was born is stamped on the inside cover, and my grandmother’s name is written in elegant script on the title page. It’s an old book, with crinkled paper edges and dog-eared pages — a reminder of something that sparked truth, imagination, or that spoke to the heart when it was first read. And then re-read. And read again.

There’s something about books that is so comfortable, so familiar, that call upon a fondness to which no other object can really compare. Some call books their old friends, and I think that’s a pretty accurate description. Favorite books are the ones you return to time and time again for their wisdom, their solace, their nostalgia.

I first read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I was eleven or twelve years old, but the affect of those words on the pages has remained with me ever since I closed the book for the first time, never the last. If books can have an influence on the reader, as a writer, this book certainly had the greatest influence on me. A coming-of-age story unlike any other, Betty Smith captures the beauty of the simple moments that bind us all together, weaving her characters’ story around these moments as they experience the themes of life to which every reader can relate.

For this month’s giveaway, I’m so excited to offer a new copy of the book that has had the greatest influence on both myself and my writing, a book from which I hope you can find a similar inspiration.

To learn more about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, check out the Wikipedia entry or Amazon reviews.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Congratulations to Greymous, recipient of Typescript’s July giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who entered and spread the word about the giveaway!

Check back soon: giveaways will be back in early August with a new selection.

(Note: recipients are chosen based on a random drawing.)

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In place of this week’s Wednesday Writing Challenge, Typescript is now offering Writing Challenge Roundups, a compilation posted the last week of each month. Check out the challenges that were offered during the month of June and feel free to share your work or talk about the challenges in the comments section below.

June Roundup
Word Play II
Experiment with language and play with words. Again.

Dr. Seuss
A little whimsy and a little rhyme, what inspiration will you find this time?

Character Interview
Let your characters guide you as you write their story.

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