Tag Archives: planning

Adventures of a Pantser (no, it’s not like that)

I came across this on twitter:

p-vs-p

screenshot taken from twitter

Yeah, that pretty much describes me, or more specifically, this does:

meme

Indiana Jones meme

It’s come back to bite me in the butt more than once.

Okay, here’s the deal. I have the first draft of one novel fully finished, I’m stalled in the middle of the first draft of the second, and several others are in a quasi-state of existence (and I’m terrified of actually beginning the novel editing).

After about the first five chapters of my fantasy novel, I started using the Thursday #writephoto prompts on Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo as the motivation to complete one chapter a week. It worked pretty well, and I actually got to the end with the story being semi-internally consistent.

It still needs a lot of work.

Continue reading →

Planning and Timing

wheatgrass

© Ronda Del Baccio

“Wheatgrass might even kill cancer cells. You should try it.” Jack Murphy proudly displayed his small window box garden to his friend Martin Katz.

“I appreciate your support, but…”

“But nothing. Couldn’t hurt.”

“What do you do with it?”

“I’ll show you how to…”

“Oops. Got an oncologist appointment. Be back soon.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Martin stepped outside and walked the two blocks to Telegraph Avenue. Dashing across the street toward the bus stop, he didn’t see the speeding driver running a red light. Martin didn’t make it to his doctor’s appointment.

“Man plans, God laughs.” -Yiddish Proverb

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields flash fiction challenge. The idea is to use the image at the top as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 98 (including the proverb).

I know this one is a little dark, but while it is prudent to plan for the future and to take all reasonable steps, ultimately, we don’t control the universe.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.