I wasn’t really going to write today, and then… while streaming I decided you know what… this is what I do, and so I did. And wouldn’t you know it, I ended up with a piece longer than I anticipated! It is amazing how sometimes, even when we don’t really feel like it, just doing it is the answer.
Today’s Prompt: Welcome to the land of Nightmares. Where terror reigns and the only escape is in your wildest dreams.
Today’s Story:
The Escape
It was time. I wanted nothing to do with this sleep project. At first I thought it was easy money. What they didn’t tell you though, was that you would never sleep again. Oh sure, you were technically asleep… drug induced, even. That did not mean you were resting. No.
Instead you were Welcomed to the Land of Nightmares, a sign welcoming you and offering, where terror reigns and the only escape is in your wildest dream. This study… a quick buck, so I could get across to the East Coast and my sister who was waiting for me, who needed my help, was the biggest mistake of my life. They studied your brain patterns as they sent you to another dimension. I don’t know exactly how they had managed to figure out how to send you there, but I do know that there was something sinister and wrong about it all. The orderlies just a little too sadistic, the drs a little too out of reach. Questions that would usually be answered, and seemed to be answered on the surface when I first started, were no longer even bothered with the pretense of an answer.
The others don’t really seem to care. They are sucking down the drugs and falling into exhausted heaps. I don’t know why my metabolism is affected differently, but I have heard the nurses talking to the doctors. They don’t like that the drugs seem to wear off on me much sooner than any of the others.
Today is the day though. If I want to make it out of this situation… I have to do something today. They are supposed to up the drugs tonight, and I don’t know if I can get clear enough of the fog if I let them administer them. Of course, they don’t know I know what they are planing. If only there was a way to save some of the others.
Sliding my jeans on quickly, I grab my gear from the small closet, leaving on the hospital gown, trying to blend in a little. Glancing carefully down the hallway, I watch as a nurse walks into the room at the end of the hall. If I have timed it right, I have around seven minutes to get past that room and out the front doors. Taking a deep breath, I scurry down the hallway, heading for the vending machines at the end, trying to make it look like I am just out for a snack. Ducking down the side hall, I see the front doors, a big desk in front of them. Three nurses standing between me and freedom.
Inching my way carefully down the hall, I try to be as quiet as I can, knowing I will only have a moment to scoot out the doors before they hit the lock down button I see on the desk. Hmm… I wonder how many have tried escaping that they have a lock down button!
No time like the present, I take a deep breath and run for all I am for the doors, sweet freedom bathing my face with the rays of the evening sun, setting on me. I gasp for air as I hit the outside, metal grates sounding behind me with heavy thumps. Knowing they will be coming I run for my car, jumping in I fishtail out of the parking lot, no idea where I am heading, just knowing I need to get away from here.
I wake up with a wail! NUUUUUUUUU.
I hope you enjoyed! More and more I am finding this challenge to be incredible! I encourage you… even for a month, try it out! Or even once a week, take a prompt, even one you find here and just write! Set a timer for 15-20 minutes, and just let the creative juices flow. It is worth every moment! Don’t be shy, share your thoughts, stories, and opinions in the comments below! I love to hear from you. And if you like what you see, I am, in fact, published! If you are interested, please pick up a copy! The anthologies can be found here; MN Emerging Writers and the National Edition!
We all have it, those dream desks, dream homes, dream offices. That dream environment where we feel if we just had “…” then we could write happily and perfectly! And of course we also know that is not true. Oh sure, for a while we can diligently write away and thrive in this amazing environment we have, but when it is ours, when we use it day after day, it all becomes the same!
Here are some of the things I think are most important to keep in mind when thinking about your creative space!
Define your space! No matter if it is just a little corner of a room, a closet or an entire office, etch out the space into what you want it to be.
Make sure there is plenty of Light! I know it may sound silly, but when we don’t get enough light we can become drowsy or even sad.
Keep it Organized! Now I know, not everyone is very organized, but we all have systems of organization that work for us. Utilize that! Know your system and keep things organized.
Have a comfortable place to sit! Without something comfortable, you are not going to want to spend hours creating in this space, so some form of comfortable seating is needed!
Decorate your Space! We all like to have things to look at that reflect our likes. We want to feel comfortable and how we decorate will affect that! Even if it is something as simple as a favorite throw blanket, add your own personal touches.
My personal writing space at the moment is just a little space in my bedroom, but I am hoping as I work hard to clean and organize my house to find a space that will become mine! What about you? What is your dream writing space? What do you currently use? Does it work for you?
So in honor of the New Year, I of course went off on a search… I stumbled upon this really great site, of reviewing your previous year and looking ahead to the new one. As that fit so well with me, and how I like to move forward I decided I loved it, and proceeded to find three of them!
Of course for me that wasn’t enough… I also went and found my all time favorite new site for moving forward with goals! It is of course a bucket list site, and there are many out there I found… but this one is special! It gives you “badges”!!! What could be more fun than leveling up on life and getting badges to boot?!?
So I thought today I would share these marvelous resources with you, so here they are:
Bucketlistly – for all that real life, badge grabbing, level up fun!
Susannah Conway – for unraveling the year ahead, a great resource full of thoughts from the year gone by and the year ahead of you!
Happy Black Woman – for an annual preview/review guide, similar to Susannah Conway, with some more great ideas!
Get Busy Living – for a great end of year review to help you look at your past year and make changes to move towards where you want to be!
That’s it folks, a few really fun resources I have found, that I am hoping to start trying out to really fully utilize in the years to come! What about you? Are there resources that you have found that help you move your life where you want to be? Please share them!
WOW! Can you believe it? Another year has passed. Here we are, starting a brand new year! 2015, welcome!
I have to say, I look back at the past year and it wasn’t everything I wanted it to be, but I did manage to start turning things around. My goals are more concrete and I know now how to move forward in the new year!
Here is to looking forward, at the new year before us and making dreams become reality! I am not much for making new year resolutions as I believe they fall to the wayside within a month or two, but goals, those I can pursue!
What about you? Do you have any goals to work on in the year to come? Any dreams you are going to chase? Please share them with me! Together we can achieve anything!
With all that I posted about in yesterday’s post I wanted to follow up with a glimpse at those goals I was talking about. I am not real big on resolutions, as I said. I really feel that people have great intentions, but they don’t choose to make life changes to fulfill those resolutions.
It seems to me that life always has this way of taking over, or maybe I just let it, who really knows. What I do know is that all I can do is continue to try and in that vein I am back again, maybe? hopefully? something.
Dreams, goals, all those things we want to achieve, sometimes life knocks them back and that is what happened. I often talk of NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNo, well I participated in the last Camp NaNo, and I even achieved my goal word count, that I had to keep lowering, until I had it at its lowest. I was somewhat disappointed in myself. He I went from regularly getting at minimum 50k words a month to just barely scratching 10k!
I spent part of that looking at what it was. Was it the genre of the story I was trying to write, I shifted it, nope didn’t help. Was it that I didn’t feel the idea, well, I really love it and think it has potential, so no it couldn’t be that either… In the end, I think it boiled down to being burned out. From so much in my life, from writing all the time and really pushing (which is how I really feel one achieves their goals), and just trying too hard. The last piece I wrote before I was so proud of, felt it was my best ever piece of writing to date, I just couldn’t compare to it, so in the end, I stepped back. I let life happen for a little while, I recharged.
Let’s fast forward to now… Knowing the only way to achieve my goals is to fight for them, I am back, more refreshed (I hope, *grins*), and ready to take up the gauntlet once more.
All that said and out there, I have been trying something new. I have been playing a video game *gasp* I know, shocking for me too! The game is League of Legends, and to be honest I suck! But, it has been a fun new learning experience. In trying to get better a friend directed me to a really great youtuber, and one of his video’s really hit me. There is much encouragement to be had in this world, and no matter your dreams; to be a writer, a gamer, photographer, or whatever they are you can take something from those around you! So I will leave you with this wonderfully inspiring video, and I hope it gives you that little spark that it gave to me!
Random Acts of Writing 