The Procrastination Train. Choo choo.
Yesterday was a bad day. I won’t go into it but you know a bad day is bad when getting a ticket doesn’t make it worse.
In good news I think I had such a bad day yesterday so that today could be so great. Like a giant karmic scale balancing itself.
(Although if that’s true I’m kinda glad I didn’t win the lottery today or there might have been an earthquake or zombie uprising yesterday to balance it out. And while I’d still enjoy the lottery winnings I’d feel a bit bad for the people being turned into the horde because the Universe was doing me a favour.)
The real point though is today was a good day.
- I was productive at work.
- A friend asked me for advice on how to get into the Communications field (totally means you’ve arrived when people want to be you). And.
- I got free yoghourt on the way home.
(Before you judge I didn’t just find it on the street. Mmmmm street yoghourt. Liberté was handing out samples of their new flavours. Probably with the intent of wooing new customers. Sucks to be them I was already a customer and I still took a sample. Mwaaaahahhaha. This may be why bad things happen to me. Sorry.)
Yoghourt aside, the best part of my day was that I finally got off the procrastination train (it never leaves the station) and wrote. It wasn’t Riveted but it was good productive time. Yay me!
Writing Exercise:
The project I wrote today was the beginnings of a graphic novel. It’s a new experience for me, but I’m stretching myself because the story idea suited a graphic novel and there is potential interest in publishing the story.
When I sat down to write I had a little difficulty getting started. I’m not an amazing artist so at first I thought I’d just write the text and work with an artist on the visuals later. That plan failed.
I put pen on paper but I couldn’t get the story to develop. I realized that with graphic novels the pictures really do tell at least half of the story. Of course I couldn’t write the story without the images, but I didn’t need to draw them I needed to imagine them.
Rather than thinking the story through and writing it down in words I had to write down the pictures. I imagined myself looking at the novel. I imagined the flashes of hands and rooms and facial expressions that would add meaning to my words and all of a sudden the text came and I could write. I knew where I wanted the story go so I let my mind go there and documented what I “saw” along the way.
Today, give thinking in pictures a try. Think of a scene you’ve wanted to write. Who’s in the scene? Where are they? What in the environment would give you clues about the story. Don’t try to write just let yourself see and as flashes of images revel themselves to you begin to write down what you see. After five minutes read what you’ve created and try to fit a story into those pictures.
Happy writing.
