Need a place to be a free write? Guest write on Sans Serif!

We all have times when we need to get something out of our heads or off of our chests. Sometimes our personal blog isn't the place to do it. 

Free writing is about getting that stream of consciousness down - not editing and spell check and worrying how our regular readers are going to take such an unrefined post. It can be a pre-write to get the ideas going or just to help get past the writer's block. Whatever the purpose, it's cathartic and moving. 


Sans Serif is about having a place to do all of these things. It's where there's no end to cap those thoughts  - just let them run free. It's a place I go to get thoughts out or even get thoughts started. It can be that place for you too.


The best part about a free-write is it only takes 5 or 10 minutes. It doesn't cut into the time your write on your blog or do you work. Instead of surfing the internet for an hour before coming up with the inspiration to post or staring at the blank composition box, do a free write. 


But these thoughts don't need to be hidden or re-worked. Contact me on the Guest page of Sans Serif by leaving me a comment about your topic or interest.

Writer's Itch

I'm getting that itch again. No! Not that one - that's disgusting. No - I'm getting the itch to start novel writing/world building again. My fingers have been itchily typing words like "how to build a world" and "map making schemes" into the google browser again. This is getting pretty bad. Luckily I have something that I've been working on for a while to go back to - now that I've had several months of hiatus from it. I'm starting to really get the want to create again. I never completely finished the world (not that you can ever completely finish a world) and my mind is really rearing to start filling in some of those gaping holes that I left the last time around. I think it all started with me trying to get my husband to take a break from thesis writing and to go back to story writing. That was a failure as a line of argument, but it got me thinking too. I also recently responded to a Red Dress Club prompt with a letter from one of my long term characters and I really liked the new take on this character. I found that I have lots of interactions, but only one of my other characters has written any significant amount of letters to what I call "off screen" characters - I'm such a movie influenced girl - who never appear in the book (or at least I'm not planning for them to do so). I'd really like to start back up - I've got to change my character's name though, which will either A) completely ruin said character for me or B) give me the new perspective on her that I need in order to focus on her movement as a character. I'm really hoping for the latter. I found her name was already used in a YA fantasy series, so I can't really go that direction, now can I? I mean, I innocently found that name at behindthename.com, which is where I go to find almost all of my names. And I found it several years ago when I started writing something completely unrelated to where I took the character. Either way, it must change. Interestingly enough, this character kinda already had two names and so I guess I could just focus a bit more of the second one. The thing is, if I start writing this world again, where am I going to post it? It's not the kind of thing that I'm sure I want to post in either of my blogs for anyone to go reading yet. It's just development projects at the moment. On the other hand, I don't want to restrict my writing to just my little books - I mean they're good, but the thing about writing in books is that it's not easy to move material around as necessary in order to organize my thoughts. Not that there's really any easy way of doing that. It's just frustrating as a thought. I've thought of story boarding. I think taking some things visual might really help me and get my creative juices flowing.

Time: 10 minutes

Choice of Words

Why do people choose the words that they do? Is it all just a part of where and how we're raised? Or do we develop distinct ways of deciding which words we use? I'm not really sure. I was talking about a friend responding to a question today and I replied in the words (and a terrible accent) of the response I thought he would use. My husband told me that my impression of him is getting better - meaning that while my accent was not on, my choice of words was exactly this person. Apparently, I'm either good at picking up on that or "I've just got enough British friends" to have some knowledge of these things. It got me to thinking about the words we use and while there are some distinctly British words, is there a particularly British way of choosing what words you use? My comment was that our friend would say "whichever you would like to do" - I happened to also get his inflection down quite nicely if I do say so myself. But is that how I would respond to "Which place would you like to go eat?" My indecisive choice of words would probably be something along the lines of either "I'm not going to be the decisive one again" which would shortly give way to me making a decision with my husband's health nut attitude in mind, or "I don't care, which would you like to eat at?" My husband (between the two places we usually would go) would quickly reply "Well, why don't we go get a Freshness Burger." Freshness Burger is the name of the place, but he also calls each burger that. I tend to not call them that - just plain "burger" works for me. But all this is in light of an editing job that I'm doing for my sister. She's written a paper and I have found myself wondering how she comes to choose the words that she does? I would write her paper (same topic) very differently than she would. And when she talks, she shows great grasp of ideas, but still chooses words to describe her ideas that I would not. I am biased toward the "academic/scholarly" tribe of writers (as I have been in college more recently and am encouched in the world that is my husband's philosophy department). She is much more practical with words, but is also nervous about sounding "more educated" in her paper (not that she isn't educated- she's got a Master's degree). It's just interesting the way that we use words and choose to use words when talking and describing thing. 

Initial thought: Word choice

Time: 10 minutes

Wow. That time went a lot faster than I thought it would.