Exercises!

So I've given myself about a week to think of ideas for my poetry/story writing. What did I come up with? Honestly, not much.Or at least, not much that was really that out of the ordinary. Perhaps it's because I was trying to think about it instead of just letting the ideas come to me. Life is weird like that sometimes. Anyways, here's what I got.

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The Exercises

Exercise #1: Four Words

I write a list of words on a piece of paper. I tear up that piece of paper and put the pieces in a hat (which I will call the "Four Words Hat"). When it's time to do a poem or story, I draw four words from the hat. As you might have guess, I have to use those four words in a poem. If I get three four of the same type of word, I will keep two and put the rest in the hat and re-draw. Like if I drew three nouns and one verb, I would keep two nouns as well as the verb and redraw one word.  The words will be chiefly English, though I may throw in a few words in a different language for the hell of it. Whatever words I draw will listed before the poem.

Exercise #2: Paint a Picture

As the title suggests, I will write a poem to describe a scene in a picture.To determine which picture, I will draw one word from the "Four Words Hat". Then I will go to deviantart.com to search the word. Before I actually search for an image, I shall roll a dice. If it is odd, I search with the "Popular" filter and if it is even, I search under the "Newest" filter. Whatever the third picture on the second row of the search results are is the picture I shall use.  

Exercise #3:Use That Quote!

Using my Youtube subscriptions page, I shall close my eyes and click. First, I will click on a Youtuber, then on one of their videos, then I will click at somewhere on the time bar on the video. The full sentence close to or at that point of time is the sentence I must use. Then I roll my dice. If it's even, the sentence goes at the beginning of my story or poem. If it's odd, the sentence goes at the end of my poem or story. Videos that are not in English will not be used. Also, the sentence has to be spoken. So any video without someone talking or singing will not be used for this exercise. If a Youtuber's name is mentioned in the video, I will allow myself to change the name to better fit the story or poem. 

Exercise #4: Give it Words

Going onto Youtube, I will search for songs that do not contain lyrics (for example: The Volcanic Jig). Picking one song, I shall create a story or poem to fit the song. How will I pick a song? I'll either search for  a song I think of at the moment that doesn't have any lyrics or an instrument I think of.  Either way, it's more or less picked off the top of my head. 

Exercise #5: Tell Me More

Craigslist has quite a few listings under the "Missed Connections" section. Going through the states, I will select one city and go to its "Missed Connections" section. Then I shall scroll down to find the date closest to a month prior. For example, if I did this on the 25th of June, I would scroll down until I found the 25th of May. If there is nothing for May 25, I shall select the closest entry for that date. After selecting a post, I shall create a poem or story based on what that person posted. I do not have to use the person's exact wording in my story of poem; however, I do have to use all the details mentioned. 

The Rules

1. All content I use from the internet for my exercises must be cited. If I can figure it out, I will also post the actual video or picture as well. The sentence or posting used will be written out for "Tell Me More" and "Use That Quote!" and will appear before the poem or story. The citation will come after the story of poem.
2.  Poems can be no longer than 350 words. Stories can be no longer than 500 words. Why? Because they sound good to me.
3. Every poem and story must have a title. The title should not exceed six words. Anything longer than that seems too long for a title (in my opinion).
4.  Poems are to be posted on Thursday every week. Stores shall be posted every other Saturday. I can pick the things for the exercises the day or two before. 
5. Though these stories and poems are exercises, I still must edit them to the best of my abilities. 
6. The exercises will be picked by what I roll on a six-sided die. If I role a six, I shall re-roll. Each exercise's number is the number they represent on the die.
7. Each entry will have the number of which excercise it is based on and a link to this post. 
8. New exercises that I come up with will be added on as I go along. If I have more than 6 exercises, I shall use a different kind of dice or two six-sided die (then I'll figure out how to decided between a number lower or higher than six with the two dice).
9. Unless the video or picture is of a characters, these stories and poems will not be fan fiction. Even if they have a character, fan fiction will be my last resort.However, it can be inspired by something that happened in a game/anime/comic. For example, I wouldn't be able to write a poem about Green Arrow being shot in the head. However, I could write a poem about the shock and suspense of being shot based on that scene. Crappy example but I hope you catch my drift. 
10. Any comments of mine about the story or poem I wrote will be written on a different post. That way it's easier to focus on the poem or story. 

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So you might be asking yourself, "Suzanne, what's with the dice?" Well, I've got some pink dice I was going to use on a role play. Sadly, the role play ended before I got to use them (I somehow felt that it would happen when I was looking at them in the store but I bought them anyways. Dammit.) So the use of the dice to make my purchase worth while. 

Just so you know, I will probably will not write genre pieces. Just because those are easier to write and I haven't really tried to write a short genre piece. However, if I get an idea for a horror or sci-fi short story, I will probably write it. 

What else is there to say other than I'm excited and nervous about this little project of mine! Excited because this sounds like it'll be fun and nervous because what I think will be awesome work might actually be crap. But I always think that about whatever I do. Stories, drawings, anything. I guess whenever you set yourself up for failure, it feels even better when you succeed. So it's very probable that I'll actual post stuff that's good. Don't worry peeps.I think that's all I got. 

~*~Until Thursday, my friends!~*~

How's it going? I deleted all my old posts.

Including my attempt at a crochet pattern that I linked onto one of my DeviantArt posts.

Why? I felt like I needed a new start. 

Since my summer break has started, I have been thinking about writing. I took a poetry writing class about a year ago. Also, I have just finished a fiction writing class this semester. I love both writing stories and poetry  when I was in the class but I'm not as motivated to write either poetry or stories unless I have someone or something to write for. I think the reason for that is because (as my teacher always said), writers write to share with others and not just for themselves. So I sat around thinking of ways I could perhaps motivate myself to write poetry and some short stories. Then I remembered that I had an account at Blogger. Which got me to thinking, "Hey, maybe I can post stories and poems onto there!" 

So to my Blogger I went.When I logged in, I noticed that I haven't touched the bloomin' thing in like two years. That's a long time! Looking over my old posts, something just felt off. Not sure why. Perhaps it was because it didn't seem to have any reason other than to get ideas out or because it didn't match my new ideas for my blog. Either way, I felt the need to delete those posts for good. So I did. Then I realized that I didn't want people to think I was a RED Engineer. Don't get me wrong, I love the Engineer. But for some odd reason, I felt like I didn't want him to pose as me. Thus instead of having a smiling Engineer, I have a nice little blank spot on my profile (until I get a good picture of lil' ol' me). The only things that have been left intact are my profile information, the blog title, and that cool koi fish thing on the bottom of the page. Now I feel that I am able to start my new blog.

Does this mean I won't blog about my life at all? Not really. I might blog a little just to change it up a little and so that you people will know a little about the person behind these creative writings. My life isn't the goal of my blog though. It's to get myself to work on my poetry and story writing skills so they don't go stale! Also it's so I feel like I have something important to do over this summer break. So it's important that I get my works onto this blogger before my life.

I'll figure out the details about when I post stuff later. So far I'm thinking of maybe one a week posting a poem and a short story every other week. Not sure. I'll figure that stuff out then discuss it on a new post. I want to play Dungeon Defenders now. So I'll hopefully I'll stay more commented this time and post again soon.

Until next time, my friends.