If you fire up the time-machine and travel back to August of 2012, you’ll notice that about this time of year my life gets increasingly hectic. Weekends that used to be free for writing and bloggery get siphoned up by Writers Festivals, Conferences, and other work-related things. I start spending more time in airports than usual. Projects that have been ignored for a little too long start lurching their way to the top of the to-do list.My brain, known to be unreliable at the best of time, starts misfiring like you wouldn’t believe.
I’ve discovered, from hard experience, that it’s best not to set my own topics in this period. No-one is particularly interested in reading an endless cycle of well, guess how I fucked up today and seriously, me and airports, it’s like I’m cursed; I’m not particularly interested those posts either, but I know I will if I find myself ready to blog and unable to think of something.
Which brings us to this post: the beginning of the second ever Dancing Monkey Post Extravaganza series.
Once again I’m throwing open the doors of Man Versus Bear and crowd-sourcing topics you’d like to see me tackle in the coming weeks. Give me topics. Set me challenges. Fire away with single words that can be used as a writing prompt, if you want, and I’ll store them in a file and use them to fill the empty hours when the writer-brain is willing but the thinky-brain is weak.
If you’re interested in seeing the type of things we covered in last year’s series, you can find them archived here. I’ll note that the response to John’s question about plot is still among the most visited posts I’ve ever written; I may be brain-dead for these, but I do try not to half-arse things.
So, pitch away, people. Drop you questions, words, and ideas into the comments and I’ll get things rolling in the coming weeks.
I’ve ended up taking a short, unscheduled break from writing newsletters over the last fourteen days. Regular GenrePunk Ninja transmissions will resume
Like many of you, I have good weeks and bad weeks on the writing front. This week has been rocky, and if
Welcome to GenrePunk Ninja supplemental, where I occasionally post foundational essays written before I launched the GenrePunk Ninja newsletter, especially if they’re
3 Responses
Follow up https://petermball.com/2012/09/26/gaming-is-no… with a list of the common pitfalls of rpg-based writing (e.g. round by round combat : ) ) and the strategies you plan to use to address them in that novel you haven't had time to write 🙂
Also, all those Trashy Tuesday based posts you promised but haven't written yet.
Perhaps something about re-working or following up an existing text? (e.g. licensed properties, adaptations, etc, especially since its something you need to think and talk about soon for the BWF)
How about writing accents? Or language in general. If someone is foreign, how often should you pepper their conversation with words from their native tongue or misuse a word?
Describe three beards. Any three beards.