Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

Tag: challenge

Get on over to the CCC!

Hello there!  Today I wanted to write about a great little site that I go t introduced to by Aaron Pogue over at Unstressed Syllables.

If you are a writer and haven’t checked out Aaron’s stuff, do it.  He is very talented at teaching writing, which is good seeings as how he teaches writing on the college level too.  He also has an incredibly easy to use ebook out about how to write an ebook!  It is called How To Build An Ebook (affiliate link).  Check it out, you will be impressed.  I have another post that my lazy butt has to write about this book.

But today, I want to talk about the CCC, which is the Creative Copy Challenge.  This Site is run by Shane Arthur and he is a nut for some good writing.  Every Monday and Thursday he posts a new challenge.  Yesterday, May 20, he posted #42.  what you get is a list of 10 words or short phrases that you are challenged to “create a cohesive, creative short story tying all the words together!”

Sounds daunting doesn’t it?  Honestly I don’t think so.  I have been waiting for the words to be posted  and then writing my stories.  It has been kind of wild to see where my story goes based on inspiration from some randomly selected words.   What is really interesting is how many different ways that authors work with the same 10 words.

I started writing over there just for fun but it is addictive and I just keep doing more.  There are short self contained stories, there are really short works that ONLY use the challenge words, and then there are some silly people that feel compelled to put up a new chapter for their novel twice a week.

I am almost one of those.  Mine are not as long as Aaron’s up there but they are coming.  There are a few people in the challenge that are writing long stories, still using the challenge words but building on what has come previously.  Shane has graciously put up a page linked to each persons longer story so it can be read all at once.

Some others, like me, have created their own sites to show off all of the challenges.  You can see all of my stuff at my original Blog at http://delphiusbogue.wordpress.com.

Head on over to the Creative Copy Challenge and check it out.  If you have writers block this can help force you to write something.  If you just want to put something out to the world that has nothing to do with your blog, do it.  If you want to read some great stories head on over and do it.  There are some good things going on over there.  Just be warned, it is addictive.  The FDA may have to regulate it at some point.

Have a great day!

-Justin

Digging for and Dusting Off Post Ideas

hey folks.  Today is the day.  Well technically Friday is the day the Pre-Writing Challenge starts.  Today I plan to raid my old notebooks and search out all of the bits of paper that I can find with any sort of writing idea on it.

I should have enough ideas to fill my challenge list and much more. I was reading through some papers that I had in a box a while ago. Most of them were drafts of projects from high school and different writing projects that I have done. I looked at these and said, “I should rewrite this one”. I have a few stories like that. I am going to rework some of them and maybe they can be published.

I have one set that I have always loved. It is a first person detective comedy that is filled with rampant sarcasm but not very good writing. I have 4 stories in the series that get better and better. I always thought they could be published together as the ZXC Chronicles. I have notes for part 5, I think I am going to rewrite that whole thing.

If that same box there are several little notes with band names, story ideas, snippets of song lyrics and words that sounded good together at one time.  Many of these snippets could be blog posts and some could be quite good or quite profound.  Maybe just something funny.  I think that as part of the Pre Writing Challenge I will try some different styles of posts.  Funny, ironic, list, classical hungarian, ok maybe not that one.  I am going to use this challenge to not only write more, but to expand the depth of my writing, which is one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place.

Short one today, have to get the munchkin to the hospital for tests.  Kidney Transplant doctors are paranoid when fevers top 102 degrees.

Until Tomorrow,

Justin

PS Did I mention my Pre-Writing Challenge Page???  check it out!

To Pre-write, ahh the value

So we are starting this Pre writing challenge (see my page here) and today is one of those days that it would be incredible to have a few posts lined up I could just hit publish and be done with it.

This morning, I went out and turned on the car so it would be warm when I took my kids to school.  I do it most every morning because it is cold.  A few minutes later, we went back out to the car to go to school and it was making some strange sucking, bubbling sound.  Of course the kids start to panic and I did a bit when I looked under the car and there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid!

Now I am paranoid about transmissions.  They break way too easily in my opinion and are incredibly expensive.  I do a lot of repairs on the cars and can do most things short of tearing down the engine or fixing the transmission.  I did a bunch in high school shop but it didn’t cover transmissions.

So we took the other car to school and I am dreading what I am going to find.  I hope it is a gasket on the pan, or a screw has fallen out, something I can repair.  I finally get the car jacked up and get under it and guess what.  It wasn’t the transmission after all.  I almost peed myself with relief.

Come to find out, Chrysler had some brilliant idea that the power steering fluid needs to run through a small cooler like a radiator.  One of these hoses had burst and the power steering fluid in a Dodge Caravan is actually transmission fluid.  There were several unprintable 4 letter words used to describe the lineage of certain engineers and their anatomical deficiencies.

So this is an easy fix for the car.  If it were not for the internet and auto repair forums I would not have known all of the things that I needed to fix it.  The net is like that.  Out there and waiting to suck us in.  Larger point, I have a bunch of stuff to do today and i am putting some of it off so that I can write this post.  My normal writing time was spent outside under the car.

This brings me to the value of having a few posts in the queue waiting anxiously to emerge.  I have been thinking for the last couple of weeks that I would like to have 3 posts available for this because there are days when Doctor appointments and other things just prevent me from writing.  Then along comes Carlos Velez at Conscious Me.com; with this guest post about how Pre writing is your friend.  Struck a chord with me and over a few days the Pre-Writing Challenge was born.  See my Pre-Writing challenge page for more info on how to join.

It would have been nice today to say, “I just am not going to write right now.  I’ll post #7.”  Didn’t happen but at the end of the challenge it will be so.

Thanks for being here!

Justin