More dreams and stuff

So I woke up at 4am after having a very odd nightmare. I was on a train with my mom, and on this train was a band of thugs, each carrying an implement of bludgeoning – large wrenches, lead pipes, etc. The thugs went around the train and demanded all the cash every passenger had. I somehow wound up sitting next to the ringleader, who was very scary and mean and was yelling at all of his thug pals. I had several hundred dollars in cash (oddly enough that I’d gotten from President Obama for promoting a children’s book he’s written) that I was supposed to hand over to the king thug, but I only pulled out a few bills from my purse, trying to pull one over on him.

This scared the bejeesus out of me, I woke up trembling and had to go have a cigarette to calm down enough to go back to sleep. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a dream that woke me up like this. I’m finding it interesting that I’m now remembering many more of my dreams since I started writing again. Even though I’m not really writing a lot of fiction yet, my brain is in that mode, constantly looking for story ideas, and I think they’re starting to come out in my dreams. Because they’re certainly not coming out in my waking hours – I’m struggling to formulate even one reasonably good idea worthy of putting down on paper.

I had actually considered joining NaNoWriMo a touch late and just jumping in to see how far I could go with it, and what stopped me was the fact that I had no clear-cut idea for any story. I’m trying to remember how I gathered ideas for stories in the past, and it’s eluding me. I guess this is something I’ll have to work through in this literary journey I’m taking!

Another week…

Time Flies

Another week has gone. Another month has gone. Another year has almost gone. I’m actually a little depressed by this. I feel as though I haven’t accomplished anything of worth this year. Not exactly true – I’ve read a lot of books, taken a lot of great photos, learned to crochet, and started this writing project. Those are all worthwhile accomplishments. I just don’t feel like I’ve made any great strides in “Life.”

When I think about it, I don’t really know what I want to achieve in “Life.” I’ve never really set any goals like that. I’ve just sort of moved through my life one day at a time without really working toward anything, just working to survive. I guess it might be a good idea to work on developing some goals for myself.

A long time ago I gave up making New Year’s resolutions, because I always broke them. That was when I was young and pretty immature, and didn’t understand that any goals I wanted to achieve required that I actually put time, effort, and work into making them happen. It was that time in life when I thought I was entitled to the things I wanted and they should just fall into my lap, just happen because I really really wanted them to happen.

I think that may have something to do with why I quit writing. It was work. It required effort. And I was pissed that it wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to be. So I gave up. Now that I’m older, more mature and have a lot more life experience driving me, I’m willing to put in that work because it’s something I really want. And something that’s worth the effort to me.

It’s November 1, and the start of this year’s NaNoWriMo. I gave some thought to participating this year, and decided I’d be setting myself up for failure. I’m having a hard enough time writing 300 words a day, let alone writing 50k in a month….and to come to the point of all this blathering, that’s what my goal is going to be. Next year, 2010, I will participate in and complete NaNoWriMo.

So…I’ve got a year to get my writing chops back and in good working order, and to come up with enough ideas to be able to run with something for a month.

A stroke of genius…

While enjoying my first cigarette of the morning today, looking out on my back yard with its frost-covered multi-colored ground cover of leaves, I had an idea. Fiction Fridays. I’ve always enjoyed flash fiction, both writing and reading it, and not only is it a great format to stir up the creative juices, it is also a perfect format for a blog!

Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300, while others consider stories as long as 1000 words to be flash fiction.

So, as a way to force myself back into the world of fiction, every Friday I will post a short (or not-so-short, if I so choose) piece of fiction. This may be in addition to my normal journaling philosophical blathering, or it may stand alone. I will probably use writing prompts at least to start out, and many of my beginning efforts will probably suck. But, as my favorite inspiring writer (Mur Lafferty) says, “It’s okay to suck.” As I continue this journey, I will suck less and less, and more importantly I’ll be writing more and more.

Now that I’ve figured out the link feature (not that it’s that difficult, but yay! I have links in my posts now!) I’m going to work on figuring out categories and tags. Categories won’t be difficult – but tags…holy crap I really don’t know how to tag my posts! How do you choose what words to tag with? How do you know when to stop? Why do *I* have to do the work to tag my posts???