I’m not a person who gives all that much credence to the idea of star signs. I can see some logic in the idea that when you’re born shapes aspects of your personality but not enough to ever choose partners or make other decisions based on this info.
That said, I’m very much a Virgo. I also identify strongly with the Vulcans on Star Trek, and for many of the same reasons. Which got me thinking: with the plethora of different species that have graced the screen across the Star Trek universe, there has to be one that aligns with all the other signs, too.
I recently got back from my cross-country adventure to Yosemite and back to Pittsburgh by train. Trains and buses are my preferred method of traveling when I have the time. Planes are efficient, sure, but there’s something special about seeing the landscape go by while you’re passing through it that’s inspiring for me. The constant stream of inspiration and potential new ideas going by outside the window makes it easy for me to get my head into a creative space.
In that spirit, I thought it might be fun to write prompts based on the things that gave me ideas or piqued my interest during the trip. Here are 3 writing prompts based around travel.
I’ve been working on a few new projects lately, including many short stories for a linked collection as well as two independent novellas (or what I think will be novellas, which is maybe a discussion for a different post) and that means coming up with lots of character names. This is something of a problem for me because I’m historically quite bad at it.
Character names are one of those details that feel incredibly loaded and important and can utterly derail me from making progress on a new draft, no matter how much I tell myself I can always go back and change them later. Hell, even real humans have that option down the line, and it’s much more complicated to alter a real-world personal identity than to simply Find/Replace in a Word document.
I’ve been relatively stationary in Pittsburgh for the first half of 2023 but I’ve got a couple of trips coming up in the next few months. My first trip of the year starts in a week, and it’s a new one for me: a visit to a national park (Yosemite) followed by a cross-country Amtrak excursion back to Pittsburgh.
I’ve done long road trips in the past, but typically the destinations have been urban areas—places I thought I could count on getting easy access to things like power and Wi-Fi. I didn’t always plan ahead properly, and as a result I learned:
Outlets can be a hot commodity when you’re working out of coffee shops or other public spaces
Just because a place offers free Wi-Fi doesn’t mean it works
Long-distance Amtrak routes don’t have Wi-Fi, and Greyhound Wi-Fi is spotty
These things are annoyances for typical travelers, but can be huge sources of stress for working writers who have clients waiting for responses and assignments that need to be completed by a deadline. Being prepared for potential snags can save you a lot of headaches and wasted time, letting you actually enjoy your travels and keep up with your work at the same time.
Like most things in the world, the publishing landscape has changed dramatically since the dawn of the internet. That change has happened at an inconsistent pace, though. Some established publishers stuck by their old school print-subs-or-bust guns until the 2010s (and print subs are clinging on by their fingernails even today), while other journals have been online only since the early aughts.
This inconsistency has led to some conflicting advice for writers submitting their work. Some things that used to be must-include formatting or info is now seen as antiquated, and including it makes you come across as out of touch or ill-informed.
I went to two conferences for the first time in July. One of them has been happening for years, the Confluence Sci-Fi and Fantasy Convention. The second just started this year, the Wildcat Lit Fest at the newly-renovated Wildcat Mansion in Franklin, PA.
I took part in workshops at both events, and between those and the panels I filled up a quarter of a notebook with awesome tips and ideas to improve my writing. Here are some of the highlights that especially resonated with me (and will hopefully be useful for other folks looking for writing tips!)
Any writer who regularly sends out their work has no doubt come across a few contests along the way—and some of these don’t come cheap. The typical entry fee I see for contests is in the $10-$20 range, but I’ve seen entries as high as $50 a pop, and it’s fairly common for contests for book-length manuscripts to have entries of $25 higher.
This leads to the natural question: is it worth it? Sure, someone’s going to walk away with a pretty good payday—but that’s true of Powerball drawings, too, and no one’s ever said playing the lotto regularly is a smart financial decision.
Stories can come from the most unexpected places. Training yourself to pay attention to these small moments of inspiration can help you to find the stories that are floating around you in everyday life.
Case in point: even just your regular trip to the grocery store can be a goldmine of potential stories. Here are three prompts to help you develop that paying-attention-to-the-mundane muscle.
