100 Theme Challenge - 1: Introduction

Welcome to my new writing venture, the 100 Theme Challenge.  This was originally a drawing prompt that appeared on deviantART but it's taken on a bit of a life of its own, especially since it can be applied to pretty much any creative work.  In my case, obviously it's writing.

Part of the reason I'm doing this is to continue building daily writing as a habit, but unlike the course I was doing that's not the only reason.  I also need more experience in dealing with characters rather than plots, since I really need to make my characters stand out more as people.  So I'm combining the 100 Themes with Tracy Culleton's List of Character Traits and giving each character in the scene three random traits that I need to show through their interactions.

Don't expect any of this to be great literature or anything, it's mostly going to be 1000 word or so drabbles.  I think of it as something like a sketchbook, where I doodle around with ideas and see what comes up.  Maybe eventually I'll pop out some decent ideas that are worth putting in longer stories, who knows?  Even if I don't, it's worth the effort.

Walls and Character

I've gotten to the point in building a habit where I'm resisting the daily prompt to keep going, and beginning to look for excuses.  It's the weekend, I'm tired, I have no inspiration, etc.  This is the inevitable monster I must slay, to use a horribly overused metaphor that I frankly hate but is appropriate in this case.

But onwards, the best way to be inspired to write is to actually write stuff.  I originally wrote "crap" there because I expect that's how it'll turn out, but I don't exactly go into it intending it to be crap.  "Adequate" would be quite nice at this stage, although the course prompt today tells me not to just settle.  We'll see how that goes.

Shall We Play A Game?

It's one of those really blah days out there, the kind where it's raining all the time and generally bleak and you really can't get up the energy to do much of anything.  Not that I haven't done a few things. My daily exercises, my daily drawing practice (one page of Bridgeman every day - why did that bastard put the stuff about hands at the FRONT?), unloaded the dishwasher/cleaned out the sink, started supper (BBQ ribs, thanks for asking) and did my daily meditation.  But I can't seem to focus enough to really get writing.

Besides which, I haven't been able to think of a topic for today, so let's go with what video games I'm playing right now.

Worldbuilding Thursdays: Land Beast III

It's Thursday again, so that means it's worldbuilding time.  I seem to have this weird blind spot about remembering to do this on Wednesdays for some reason, so why not move it.  What I lose in cute, alliterative names I gain in actually getting the damn thing written on a consistent basis, and given that my big focus is "write every day" right now, that'll do nicely.

Onwards!

Readiness

Today's writing course lesson is to do something I've been doing since the start, using a timer.  Given how early on it suggested having a minimum unit of time, it seems a bit redundant to talk about it again more than two weeks later.  Which leaves me at a bit of a loose end, given I don't have anything today that really grabs my attention.

Let's see what I can come up with using a random writing prompt online.  "Language Is a Virus", I like it already.  Lessee...."Describe ways in which your character does or doesn't show readiness."

Exercise and Me

Today I'm going to talk about one of the dominant features of my life lately, pain.

No, that's wrong.  I'm going to talk about exercise.  Pain is just the primary by-product so far.

A Study In Studies

It's a bit funny, whenever we see studies mentioned in the media, even small media like blogs, almost 100% of the time those studies are going to be misinterpreted or misrepresented.  The problem, usually, is that the writer really doesn't know the field very well and either reads it not very carefully or assumes there is some implication to the study that the author didn't actually write, then runs with that as the point.