Writing prompts can be downright weird. There are idea generators that will suggest plots for you (actual result: “A model has 24 hours to use the information given by their dying guide to find an overgrown garden.”) Some will try to write part of the story for you after you make a few selections (actual result: “Robert Cox looked at
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I didn’t sleep very well on Wednesday night. I kept waking up at 47 minutes past the hour. I have a cold that’s almost gone now, but on Wednesday night, it kept waking me up with the hacking and the sneezing and the phlegm. There’s no reason why this should lead to waking up at 47 minutes past the hour
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I don’t remember ever being bored as a kid. At least, not for very long. My own kids, though… oi. If I had a dollar for every time one of them said, “I’m bored!” — and then repeated it eighteen million times over the next couple of hours — I’d be writing this from Nevada. (Yes, my dream-retirement plan involves
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I was rereading a series recently, and by the time I got to book 4, I’d noticed something that had escaped me the first time around. Every character was described in terms of their weight, usually before anything elseĀ about them was even mentioned. Overweight men were “beefy.” Or “solid.” Women, on the other hand, were nearly always “fat.” Men who
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“Publication ready.” Sometimes it’s those specific words, and sometimes it’s words to that effect. Going to send a manuscript to an agent, or submit a short story to a competition, or show it to anyone at all? “Make sure it’s publication ready.” When people say that, most of them mean that your work should be free of typos and misspellings,
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Heather Masterson 