Day Two of My500Words

Task for Day Two

For today's My500Words challenge, the task is to simply write down the goal I have in mind and what I hope to accomplish by the end of the thirty days. 

My goal for the My500Words challenge

I would very much like to work on a one person show, as I had originally aimed to write, at the beginning of this year. However, I then got an idea for a story for a stage play, that I just could not let go of until I got it out of my head and onto paper. I became so passionately engrossed in researching the background for the play, creating the characters and it all became part of my Master's creative project. The idea of the one person show faded into the background. Probably for the best as I've decided the subject matter I was going to base it on doesn't fill me with enough fire to pursue it. 


For this challenge I am not looking at writing the play at this stage, but I am going to be aiming at getting into a habit of creatively writing every day to generate ideas. I will have that goal in the back of my mind but I won't let the ideas be restricted by thinking, for example, that it must be a monologue and not prose. It must/must not be be serious. It must/must not be funny. It must/must not rhyme etc etc. No creative restrictions within the parameters of my prompts.

I want to generate ideas so I will try to explore as many different ways of writing from prose to poetry (potential songs) to free writing and as many different prompts, written, pictorial or real life as I can. 

So my overall goals are to:
Write creatively every day
Generate new ideas every day
Throw nothing away 

How am I going to do this? What will I write each day?

The task for today said that I should decide in advance what I am going to write so that there is no writing time wasted on thinking and planning. But I can't realistically plan in advance at this stage, because one of my major goals for this challenge is to write creatively and generate new ideas. 

I don't want to restrict myself to a "writing theme" for the entire month as suggested in the notes for this task. Only in so far as it should be something I could creatively perform by myself. Who knows, maybe I will find a theme somewhere throughout the process and decide to stick to it. Or maybe I will see one developing by the end

What then?

Whether I have or haven't decided on a definite theme, when I finally reach the end of this thirty day challenge, I will pick one of the ideas, make it my theme and write a show based on it. That is my promise to myself. No pressure!

Creative Writing for Today

Far more interestingly, I went to a workshop this afternoon, run by Molly Naylor for the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. The workshop was held in the, very chilly, Church of St John the Baptist, Maddermarket. The reason it was held there, being the theme behind the writing workshop, the Talking Statues trail around Norwich.The statues have QR codes displayed on them and when you scan the codes, you get a telephone call back which plays you the story of that statute. 

There is an empty plinth at the North end of the St John the Baptist Church that once held a statue. No one knows who once stood there or why. There is a competition asking for local writers to tell the story of the statue that once stood in the Church in a short 350 word monologue. 

It was an inspiring couple of hours working on writing exercises and prompts to generate ideas for the monologue. I am going to endeavour to get an entry submitted before the deadline, which closes on the 30th November. I must pop that in my diary now before it inevitably gets eaten by brain squirrels. If you fancy having a go yourself, pop over to the National Centre for Writing's webpage for details of how to apply.

Word count 680