How I Got My NaNoWriMo 2014 Idea!

                I host a weekly online writers group, and assign weekly “Homework.”  These are prompts, usually from Writers Digest.  The rules are: 

·         You may create your characters

·         Brainstorm ideas

·         Outline

·         Prep other ways like setting

·         You cannot write on it until the night of the event, and you get 20 minutes to write on this (the other prompts are 10).

Usually I don’t get fully done, but I use other prompts to finish it within the same night, if I can.  Especially if I get a feeling it will lead to something better (or something I can work into publishable form).

This year, my assignment was to use the following:

You take a sip from your drink and feel different. That may be because your torso has an extra arm protruding from it. Another sip, another arm. Then a wing. What happens if you finish the drink?

    I brainstormed after writing the prompt out, and started character creation.  Following Joseph A. Campbells “A Heroes Journey,” I chose my MC (main character) mentor, which is her grandmother, and built an antagonist, things and beings who will be the positive influence. 

    I did a basic outline, but that is always fluid thing, because without fail, I have the story refuse to follow it.  Which is basically a good thing, the story is changed for the better, stronger even <insert bionic sound effects here>.

    I won’t tell you what it is about, because it will change in the writing, the first draft, and maybe totally different after editing.    “It’s the Journey, not the Destination,” to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway; and that makes all the difference!