Wildwood Writers

Tonight was the second meeting of our Wildwood writing group of the new year. It was a fun night - it always is. At the last meeting, we used the Story Spinner to come up with a writing prompt. (I wrote about it in my "Writing Anyway" post.) We had to write a story using the starting phrase "The smell of," the setting "on a new planet," and the word "muscle." Lisa said her story became very long, and isn't ready to read yet, so she's going to bring it next week. But she did say it starts out with "The smell of possibilities..." It sounds really interesting. I'm looking forward to hearing what she came up with, because she writes a lot of sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction. Some of my work has fantasy and speculative elements, but I've never written hard sci-fi before. So it was a challenge to write a story set "on a new planet." I wrote about a woman space shuttle captain - she and her crew have just landed on a new planet, and as she steps off the shuttle stairs onto the ground, her foot sinks into the surface. She can't get free, and realizes the ground will swallow her up. She yells to her confused crew for help, and they all work together to finally pull her free. As they take off, she crosses the planet off from a list - another uninhabitable planet. She decides to resign - she's sick of the space program, and thinks the focus should be on trying to save Earth's environment rather than trying to find another planet to live on. The story was far from great, but it was good to try something different, and Michelle and Lisa both thought so, too. Michelle even sketched the astronaut in her notebook, as she was listening! One good thing about these prompts is you can just have fun with them and see how your writing turns out. It's a good exercise in creativity, even if a prompt doesn't lead into a serious piece of writing. And you can interpret the prompt any way you like. Michelle didn't take the setting "on a new planet" in a literal sense - her setting is high school (which might as well be another planet!) and her main character is a girl who feels like an outcast. Her story starts off with "the smell of" sweatsocks in the gym locker room, and moves to the cafeteria, where the boy of the girl's dreams makes friendly comments about the sketch she's drawing in her notebook. Michelle thinks this is the beginning of a teen novel - she's an idea factory, like me! The school setting, the characters and their dialogue were very true to life, and Michelle admitted the boy character is based on her high-school crush! That led us all on a conversation about unrequited high school crushes. Michelle and I both wondered why we never did anything about it - I guess we were both too young and too scared of rejection to let the guys we were interested in know it! Lisa was the crush of a guy in high school who turned into a stalker - there must be a good story she can write from that experience! Lisa read the first half of a story she's been working on for awhile - about a young woman struggling with mental illness and the guy who stays by her side. It's really good - her characters are so realistic, and she writes with such vivid detail. Her main worry about this story is that it seems too long for most short story markets. I couldn't find anything I thought she should cut from the part that she read to us - maybe after hearing the whole story, I can give her better advice. I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of it next time. Our new prompt, derived from the Story Spinner, is to write a story with the starting phrase "Dear Mom and Dad," the setting "on a city street," and the words "blues," "bare," and "motel." I'm pondering it now, even though I should be getting to bed. But it should be easier for me to write than a science fiction story... unless... it turns into another novel. No! I won't let that happen! I'll post more about the Wildwood writers after our next meeting.