WWYWWQ #4

This week, I sought out one of the classes I've worked with on Skype to see if they might have some questions for me to post on my WWYWWQ. Ms. Jurkowski has been very kind to send me a list of class questions. I will post several of the questions at the same time since they are basically the same question but phrased slightly different.

I would like to address one question on its own first, since it was already answered.

K.B. asks - What do you do when you get stuck in the middle of a story?

The simple answer is walk away. The more complicated answer is to do another writing activity that takes you out of the story but still keeps you writing; do some random writing - have someone give you a random word and write a paragraph or page and hope that maybe that will spark something in your story. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is totally scrap the story and start something different. This really happens more often than we authors want to admit. (I've personally started many short stories that I've never finished. At the time I've started the story, I felt it had merit or that it would be a good story, but would get less than a fourth of the way into the story and decide that it wasn't really happening - and this can happen due to lack of facts or evidence to back up your story (if based on a historical event - I started a Civil War story based on something my grandmother "confessed" on her deathbed, but after retelling the story to several people, the conclusion I had to come to was that I couldn't really research it nor could I verify what she said since my grandmother wasn't born until 1898 - yep over 30 years after the end of the Civil War, and what she was telling was something that had been passed on to her from her mother or women related to her who were alive during the Civil War; so basically I have several versions of the story started but haven't really taken them any further. I have a small collection of said stories, so if you really get stuck in the middle of a story and feel that it can't continue, it's okay; you can start a new story and work on that. You might come back to the first story and sometimes you may never come back to it; just save all those started stories because you never know when you may take parts of what you've already written and turn out something totally awesome.)

Now for the really similar questions:

R.P. asks - What do you do when you are writing an new story and you can't get it out of your head onto the paper?

E.N. asks - What do you do if you don't know what story to write?

A.M. asks - How do you get ideas for how to write a book?

K.L. asks - How do you think what to write about?

A.P. asks - What should I write for my next story?

G.V. asks - How do you get your ideas?

T.F. asks - How do you think when you write?

N.M. asks - How do you plan your writing? as does D.J.

As Mrs. Jurkowski pointed out, she felt that all of the students were struggling to come up with ideas for their stories for the Lunchtime Writing Club.

Okay kiddos, here is the simple answer - Ideas for your stories are all around you. Just keep your mind and eyes opened and you will see you have lots of stories to write. I can't tell you what to write about but keep those little notebooks handy and everytime something catches your interest, jot it down and viola, you have an idea for a story. Those little jots are to remind you of possible stories, and remember, they don't always lead to a story. A lot of what happens in our everyday lives really makes good fodder for our stories. We take something simple and turn it into a story, and sometimes we turn several of those small ideas into one story. So don't get discouraged and keep jotting little reminders and keep on writing. If one doesn't turn into a story, something else will -

Thanks for your questions; keep writing and who knows - one of these days, you may make it with your stories - Mrs. E :)

PS - If I've left anyone out with a similar question to the ones above, I apologize and your initials will be added to a future posting. Mrs. E :)