Saturday, April 19, 2014

A-Z challenge for L, M, N and a bunch of other letters . . .

Wow, I’ve been falling behind in this A-Z challenge. But just like in writing books, falling behind is okay. What matters is that you keep trying.

L is for luck. Ever since I was a child, I’ve had this strange skill—finding four leaf clovers. When I was little, I could put my hand on the ground and there’d be two or three four leaf clovers there. I must’ve found hundreds of them as a child.

M is for Missouri. I grew up in Missouri. I can still remember the summers that were so hot that it felt like your face melted off when you stepped outside. (Imagine sticking your face near an oven). And the winters with the snow that never lasted long enough for more than a few snow days. I remember chasing fireflies and the sting of mosquito bites. The lapping of water and the smell of worms and mud as I sat at a lake, fishing with my parents. Remember, the more details, the more real your setting will be.

N is for notes. I don’t do this as often as I should, but sometimes I take notes about life events to remember how that moment in time feels. When I read the seventh Harry Potter book for the first time, I ended up staying up for like 40 some hours because I had to work and then had other plans and then stayed up all night reading. After I finished, I wrote down how I felt so that if I ever had a character who was exhausted, I’d know what it felt like.

O is for oops. I’m accident prone. I’m messy. That’s life and I’m okay with it.

P is for pearls. I love pearls. I wore them at my wedding. It was a strand of pearls that my mom always wore and she gave them to me a few years ago. I think pearls are so classy. Does your character have any favorite jewelry? Do they have something special that was given to them from a loved one?

Q is for quiet. Do you write in silence? I can’t. I have to have distractions or I can’t focus. If I’m alone in an empty room, I don’t write, but if there are people coming and going or a tv on, I can write a lot. Do distractions help your writing or slow it down?

6 comments:

  1. I do take notes in a journal for those special times. I try to write things down when they're fresh in my memory.

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  2. Well, guess that's a way to do the challenge. LOL. Pearl is my favorite color, btw, and I'm a total fan of quiet. I've always got an orchestra in my head, so it's nice not to have any competition.

    True Heroes from A to Z

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  3. Love the way you covered a lot of territory in one full swoop! You go girl! ♥

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  4. A clever way to combine the letters and catch up. Love the post. AtoZer http://www.writer-way.blogspot.com

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  5. Loved your post! Ha, I just did my P,Q and R post tonight. ;-)
    S and T tomorrow. I also loved your approach to the challenge. I too, used to fish with my Dad. Great memories as well...

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  6. I can't stand noise when I'm writing. Drives me out of my mind.
    Pearls...they can pretty. I don't have much opinion here.
    O - yeah, just hand me a bib.
    Notes, I'm drowning in them! Little slips of paper sticking out between the filled notebooks and crammed under the 3.5 floppy disks with files I need to hunt down a program to convert to open them.
    I wonder why some people say fireflies and others say lightning bugs. Is it like coke, pop, and soda?
    My grandmother is good at finding 4 or more leaf clovers. She has a 16 leaf one pressed in wax paper. (Yeah, I know... mother nature went a little crazy that day.)

    Stopping by from the #atozchallenge !
    @JLenniDorner

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