#104. How to Energise Your Writing Life and Manage “Bumps in the Road”

​Show notes: The list of categories for the second round of brainstorms (chosen with a roll of the dice) is: 1) a book or magazine 2) a job or role, taken on reluctantly, 3) a pub or café, 4) a portal or means of travel, 5) a piece of treasure or magical, sought-after object, 6) a monster or creature, 7) an invention, 8) a weapon, 9) a hidden identity or disguise, 10) a scar (physical or psychological), 11) a ghost, or 12) or a cocktail or special tea (which, let’s face it, is likely to be a magic potion or poison).

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Transcription follows below:

Hello imaginative people. I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 104 of Brainstoryum.
 
Today I want to talk a bit about the bumps and downturns in the writer’s life, and how, if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed or you’ve had to take a bit of a break, there are ways you can really perk yourself up and pick up the momentum once more.
 
My recent experience is—I’ve been going through some health issues, the details of which I won’t bore you with, but I’ve not been feeling that well, and to top it all, the medication I’ve had to take to try and combat some longer term issues has been making me feel unwell too, although I think I managed to resolve that now. (It’s complicated.) I’ve also had to make some adjustments to my diet which, naturally, means my meals are more boring. And with this going round in circles with medications and not feeling great, by the end of it I was suffering from a severe lack of enthusiasm.
 
But, you know, we all have lives, we are all mortal and fallible, and that can make you feel more determined than ever, to get better, to keep going, and keep writing and publishing and ploughing towards your ultimate goals. This is part and parcel of anyone’s life. We all have bumps in the road, swerves in the road, and places that feel like cul-de-sacs where you feel like you’re going round in circles: and that’s okay. Sometimes, you need to rest and step back, and, when you’re feeling in a better space, try something short and juicy to get back into the groove.
 
As it happens, over the Easter break I was in the middle of a break from my WIP, Weird Creatures, so I knew I need to take time away from my draft before I could return to it with fresh eyes for a full-on edit. But even so, I still wanted to do a bit more with those few weeks, and especially the time I had off work, which I’d extended to about a week and a half. Having a break is more than just about resting: I want to be somewhere different, to really hit the “refresh” button on my brain and body, and if I can’t physically go somewhere different, I definitely need my brain to go visit somewhere else, through my imagination. This is partly achieved through reading but, I can’t help myself, I also really want to explore somewhere else through writing.
 
Now, in the last show, if you’ve been listening, you might remember that one of the publishing call-outs was from an imprint called “Zombies Need Brains” (which is more than sufficiently crazy for me) and they are looking for slightly longer stories around 6K words on were-creatures, as alternatives to werewolves. And I just thought, I’ve got to have a piece of that action. I cannot let that pass.
 
I found myself dabbling with a story idea for that. In fact, the setting was inspired by an Exquisite Corpse on a previous show, “The brooding zombie indelicately invoked the hot butter spreader), which got me thinking about a character who works in a sandwich shop, and kind of hates it. You can find the original scene I drafted in episode 94. But this new publishing call-out took my ideas in a whole new direction. (Which is good, because they don’t accept reprints.)
 
But one day during my break, I got frustrated with myself just ‘dabbling’. I’d worked out the characters, I’d drafted a couple of scenes, but not one of them all the way to the end. So, when I was feeling just about well enough, I plonked myself down in my chair and went for it. I had breaks—probably every half hour/ forty minutes—but each time just kept ploughing on. As a longer story, I couldn’t do it in one day and ended up writing this in, I think it was three days in the end. “Just get the thing down,” I told myself. So that is what I did.
 
And that’s the perk, the uplift, I’m talking about. Finishing stuff gives you a special boost, it really does. And I probably needed that, before I can plunge back into my novel. There’s so much advice out there about not getting distracted by other projects, to just keep soldiering on with your one project, especially if it’s a novel, because of the amount of work that involves, but I say, no. With a novel it’s even more important to recognise when you’ve reached a natural break, like coming to the end of a draft, when you need to take time out. There is a long-term frustration you have to deal with when you’re writing a novel, and you definitely don’t want to get to the point where you rush the end part of the story just so you can get that satisfaction, of finishing it. The end part can be the trickiest section to write, so you don’t want to fall into that trap and potentially not make it the best it can be.
 
You can refresh your energy, not just through rest, which is very important, but through spending time on another, much shorter project that you can finish quickly and relatively easily. Get down the first draft, and you’ll have a little injection of that “finishing energy”, that satisfaction. Diarise to come back to it after a rest (while you work on something else, perhaps your main WIP), then when you come to edit it and polish it, you will get your full whack of “finishing satisfaction”.
 
So whether you’re writing a novel, or have a short story on the go that’s got a bit stuck: the joy of short story writing (writing another short story, maybe a shorter one) is there for all of us to just reach out and grasp. And yes, I truly believe you can—and arguably, should--switch between projects, although of course, these switches should be less frequent if you have a hefty project on the go, like a novel. If you need your “finishing fix”, short pieces are where to find it.
 
As for my were-creatures story, it’s quite possible that what I’ve written may be too bonkers for them, although to be fair, the details in the submission gave examples like were-squirrels or were-octopuses, and they did say they were open to humour. So we’ll see. I won’t tell you where I’ve taken this, because the story itself is a kind of guessing game, like, is this character the were-creature? Or is it them? And the final reveal, which I’m sure will surprise anyone, is hopefully a surprise worth waiting for. But naturally, it is pretty bonkers—I just couldn’t help myself and I had a lot of fun writing it. The thing is, you never know for sure if what you’ve written is going to be a good fit for a publisher; I don’t know what other stories they might receive by the deadline of 31st May. I might not be the only person who’s written something that’s really ‘out there’. But if it doesn’t get accepted, I will still have that story which I could potentially submit elsewhere if I come across something else in future that seems a good fit. Either way, I’ve had a lot of fun exploring an idea I never would’ve developed had it not been for this particular call-out cropping up, and I’ve got my “finishing fix”, thank you very much.
 
**
Speaking of satisfying short fiction, I have some fantastic story and poetry entries today from some brand new contributors to the show, as well as returning writers.
 
Rick Danforth (welcome to the show, Rick!) responded to a prompt in the last show, “the confused imp”, with the following flash piece:
 
“Malvik, the imp, looked down at himself for the tenth time that day and wondered how the hell he got there.

He was familiar with many, many forms of bondage. Over the years, he had been summoned and bound with chains, runes, and on one notable occasion, a circle of the caster's own intestines. But an itchy suit and a polyester tie was a new one. A confusing one too, not least due to fitting his misshapen wings into such a creation.

The desk was even worse. A simple wooden thing full of paperwork to fill out. One in a sea of similar desks, manned by similarly confused and uncomfortable imps. They all clutched delicate fountain pens in claws better designed for rendering through flesh and bone.

While Malvik vaguely understood what Beezlebub had told them. That hell needed to work more efficiently to deal with a vastly expanding human population. But he couldn’t understand why so many had to do this dull, tedious work. The ones suffering seemed to be the demons, not the humans?”

I love how this flips right on its head the perceived normality of office work: how a slice of ordinary life from the perspective of another species, an imp, may be hell itself.
 
Thank you for sharing your story, Rick. You can find Rick’s work at Rickdanforth.com
 
Paul Benfield also responded to this prompt of “the confused imp” with the following story:
 
“The imp skittered across the serried ranks of bookcases in the dusty library. The sun-lit air was thick with motes drifting on gentle drafts of air coming through sash windows that didn't fully close.

Shadows curled around the room, not following the beams of light, but rather splintering at odd angles. This was the legacy of the imp's master and his decades of trading slivers of his soul for powerful magics and longer life. But the master had vanished with no warning and no sign of violence or magic gone awry. The imp was left with an aching emptiness, alone in the increasingly neglected town house.

Therein lay the source of the imp's torment, a confusion that tugged at its soul and occupied its thoughts day and night. What had become of its contract? That infernal scroll was nowhere to be found, and without it, the imp was bound to this space indefinitely. Doomed to arrange books and to fetch them at the bidding of a missing warlock. It must find either the master or the scroll and earn its freedom: perhaps one more search might offer a new clue?”

Another story, very different story of a kind of imprisonment. It seems a confused imp is a hapless imp. I love the setting in this one, how it seems to define and describe this doleful feeling of the trapped creature. Thank you, Paul Benfield.
 
H.L. responded to an Exquisite Corpse that came up in episode 102, which was “The potbellied volunteer zookeeper danced around with the intent doppelganger.” A strange and complicated sounding prompt, but H.L. wrote:
 
“The door reading “Employees Only” creaked as the hunched figure with a low pulled hat entered the primate house at the zoo. The man with the long coat shuffled to the cage with a fresh plum in one hand. The orangutan made his way to the edge of confinement to grab it. The shadowy figure quickly pressed a pink/white crystal into its hand. The orangutan’s hand burned but he could not let it go. He scampered into the corner and stared at it.
The shadowy man slumped a little lower than before and shuffled out.

Carl, the pot-bellied volunteer zoo keeper jaunted into the primate house for feeding time. The orangutan saw him. The primate’s eyes widened. Carl, dancing to the tune in his head, made a John Travolta worthy disco move and spun in front of the cage. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the orangutan do the same thing. Amazed, Carl played mirror with him. He raised a hand, then (so did) the orangutan. As they got closer, Carl was near the bars. Faster than shattering glass, the orangutan pressed the crystal into Carl’s hand and stared into his eyes. Carl opened his mouth to scream but nothing came. Both their eyes shut. The orangutan opened his and he backed away from the bars. He looked at the crystal in his hand. His human hand! Carl jumped at the bars and found he could not speak. He watched his doppelganger slump and shuffle out the door.”
 
And that is indeed how “The potbellied volunteer zookeeper danced around with the intent doppelganger.” What a great idea—swapping identities and bodies. There’s a nice build-up of suspense there, where you wonder what’s going to happen, and then—bam!
 
Thank you for sharing your story, H.L., and welcome to the show!
 
I also had a couple of responses to another prompt in the last show, 103, which was the rather curious “thickly forested princess”.
 
Elena Dennison wrote:

Wow, this has all the pitch darkness of fairytale cruelty tightly wound into its rhythms. There’s something so magical about this poem. Thank you, Elena. You can find Elena Dennison’s poetry, musings and artwork on her Linktree at linktr.ee/lolathecat.
 
Paul Monteith responded to the full Exquisite Corpse that included the thickly forested princess, which was, “The romantic jelly mould swindled the thickly forested princess”. He wrote:
 
Fire Sprites On Jelly & Cold Consequences

“Whispering Hollow and the world beyond the dell were under a thickening blanket of snow. "You tricked me, Witchwood," said a woman in a gown of shrub and verge.

"No, Princess Thickett. I said I would rid Whispering Hollow of sprites for a smidgen of sunshine," she replied. "And I did." Witchwood held up a jelly mould. "See, the sprites, attracted to the sweet sugarplum gelatin, are stuck on its sticky surface like flies on flypaper."

"You knew a smidgen of sunlight was all it would take to bring about snowfall."

"As agreed, I took no more than a flicker of starlight as payment to end Hollow's sprite infestation." Witchwood admired her boughs heavy with globes of fruit. "The cold benefits me. Look at all these bright red rowan berries."

Turning away, Princess Thickett draped her boughs with burlap against the cold, and root-over-root made her way through Whispering Hollow's chilly disenchantment. Iced tears prevented the willows from weeping. Hungry squirrels had no acorns to store because the oaks had failed to fruit in the cold. Much of the woodland showed signs of dieback, split bark, and blackening leaves.

In a frost-blue sky hung the pale sun, and gray clouds peppered hoarfrost over Princess Thickett and her kingdom. "Shall you not warm us again?" the Princess asked the sun.

"Free the fire sprites from the jellies, Princess Thickett," the sun replied. "And the sprites will add their fire to mine, restoring sunlight and warmth."”


Gosh, this is like a whole fairytale condensed into a flash fiction tale—I don’t know how you managed to do that! Full of natural forces clashing with each other. Thank you for your inventive story, Paul. You can find Paul Monteith on his Linktree at linktr.ee/MostlyPaul
 
Right. It is time to stir the bottomless cauldron of our imaginations once more, with the big spoon that is Brainstoryum. Let us reach fearlessly into the socks of destiny!
**
SOCKS OF DESTINY ORGAN JINGLE
 
This part of the show is un-transpose-able! There's much giggling and rustling of paper as I pull words at random from the Socks of Destiny to create three unique sentences according to the rules of Exquisite Corpse, going: “Describing word—noun—action—describing word—noun.” Today’s resulting sentences are:
 
1. The shocked zombie danced through the forest with the indifferent blister.
2. The blood-curdling detective threatened the condescending sombrero.
3. The otherworldly raccoon was obsessed with the quibbling chamuca (Portuguese or Mozambican version of a samosa)
 
**
Right, well let’s see where we can take this story idea based on “The blood-curdling detective threatened the condescending sombrero” with a roll of the 12-sided dice.
 
If you want to check all 12 categories of interpretation, have a look at the show notes. Here goes. (Rolls dice.)
 
3. A pub or café. Well, that’s weird because we already have a setting which is the hat shop (which may or may not be built over a grave, or a portal into the underworld where ghouls or perhaps something else is snaking through the floorboards in wisps to steal… hats? Or just move things around.) But maybe this is encouraging me to think outside of that original setting and take the protagonist, this hat seller outside of his comfort zone. Sometimes that’s how you can get to know a character better: put them somewhere else where they are less sure of themselves, less in control of what’s going on. That’s a great way to test who they are, and imagine how they react to awkward situations, or to fear; so we get a taster of perhaps a later reaction they may have when things become more extreme, more frightening. Our hat seller may be cocky and condescending in his own environment, in his shop, or in his home, but things can change when he’s somewhere that seems unpredictable, or maybe, distasteful to him—let’s go with that. He’s a family guy, and he’s arranged to meet with this detective (who he doesn’t yet know is blood-curdling), and for whatever reason, she’s suggested—or maybe insisted—that they meet in what he would consider a dodgy pub. Sly, watchful eyes trail over him as he saunters in. He’s not sure what to expect; what she’ll look like. He hesitates by the bar, wanting to look around him but also wanting to avoid the stares, as he clearly does not belong here in his smart jacket and crisply ironed jeans. (He’s a hat seller, he cares about clothes.)
 
From over there, in that corner booth, a slim figure in a broad-brimmed hat, nods with a half-smile. But—is it the detective? What should he do?
 
Why does he feel so nervous all of a sudden? He should’ve insisted she met him in the shop. She’ll need to come and have a look around there anyway, won’t she, so why meet here first?
 
His dark eyes flit around the walls, taking in the décor. Strange looking paintings hang on the walls, figures rendered in swirls of grey and blue like smoke. Glass-fronted display boxes jut here and there from the walls: one houses a spread of old tarot cards, soft at the edges. Another one contains a bird’s skull. He resigns himself onto a bar stool, which creaks under his weight.
 
“What can I get you?” asks the barman.
 
Let’s try another roll of the dice and see what this suggests. (Rolls dice.)
 
9. A hidden identity or disguise.
 
Mm, but we already know that the detective is difficult to discern among the clientele in this dingy pub. Her identity is hidden from us initially. But let’s say it does turn out to be the one in the broad-brimmed hat. They exchange pleasantries—which don’t seem so pleasant after all, not when our hat seller feels like everyone’s listening in. But then the woman looks up at the barman and lifts a casual hand. Moments later, music fills the room, and as if on cue, the sound of low voices starts up. It’s as if everyone, including our hat seller, has been given permission to start talking.
 
“So,” she begins. “What do you think is going on.”
 
“I’m sure I don’t know,” he says, and it’s a relief to say something, anything. Normalising, somehow, although the subject strikes him as being as abnormal as the circumstances of their meeting. “I guess that’s why called. My daughter… she thinks something odd is going on.”
 
“And you?”
 
“I don’t believe in such things.”
 
She leans forward, her elbows on the table, and regards him with deep brown eyes. “And yet, here we are.”
 
A hidden identity or disguise...
 
So she is going to turn out to be more than what she seems. Is she a vampire hunter? On the lookout for any hints of strange activity going on? That’s why she’s put out the advert in the paper. All that stuff about criminology is made up, but by the time her clientele realise, it hardly matters; occasionally, it may be too late.
 
She’s noticed there’s been a lot of suspicious deaths lately, murders reported on the news; some have been covered up, or their gory details suppressed to avoid widespread panic. But she has her ways of finding out about these things.
 
But this case is rather different. She’s unsure what’s going on; it’s very unusual for a vampire to tease humans in this way, behaving more like a poltergeist, and a moderate poltergeist at that, in simply moving stuff around. Taking things. Raising suspicions, fears. What could it mean?
 
Unless of course there are some older vampires among them who are just bored. They are the only ones who tend to… play with their food, so to speak. Maybe this is their way of sending her a message: “You’re making this too easy for us.” They’re coaxing her out, drawing her into a space which, for reasons she can’t yet decipher, will make her vulnerable to attack.
 
Vampires like that—experienced, playing games, toying with their enemy with such confidence—must be dangerous indeed. Things could get messy; she will have to tread carefully, maybe bring in back-up help. Something she rarely does, as vampire hunters tend to work alone, not wanting to complicate matters with relationships and loyalties that might easily be broken if a fight turns nasty.
 
And, annoyingly, this hat seller is full of doubt and suspicion, making it difficult for her to do her job.
 
And this may be why, in the end, “the blood-curdling detective threatened the condescending sombrero”—or sombrero seller, among other things.
 
**
 
Interesting. That’s really got me in the urban fantasy mood. Although, to be fair, this is probably because my were-creature story was also urban fantasy.
 
Speaking of which, the publishing opportunities I shared in the last show were both for longer stories with deadlines coming up within next couple of months. This time, I’ve come across two call-outs for flash fiction, if you are looking to get your “finishing fix” at higher speeds with fewer words. And I know so many of my listeners have a great talent for the flash.
 
Flash Frog is an online flash fiction magazine established in 2021, featuring stories under 1000 words. They say, “We like our stories like we like our dart frogs: small, brightly coloured, and deadly to the touch.” They are open to submissions all year round.
 
Check out their guidelines at flash-frog.com.
 
Brilliant Flash Fiction is an online quarterly literary journal established in 2014. They too are open to submissions all year round, for stories up to 1000 words. They have quite a broad catchment, as they are open to all genres.
 
Find them at brilliantflashfiction.com.
 
As a reminder, I don’t know anything about these publishers other than the information I’ve read out about their submission call-out. Whoever you choose to submit to, always run a check on Google to see what people have said about them online, and read their terms and conditions of publishing to be sure that these will suit you.
 
And don’t forget, I will be launching my new page, Brainstoryum Emporium quite soon. Ideally I would like to kick this off with 3 authors featured on it, who’ve published a story or poem that’s been inspired by a prompt on the show. That could be you! So I encourage you to write your stories, polish them until they shine, and see if you can get them published in a literary magazine, anthology or website so they can be discovered by other readers. Then tell me all about it, and I will link it on Brainstoryum Emporium.
 
In the meantime, if you have a flash fiction story or poem up to 250 words long based on any of the prompts in this show, you know what to do: go to annatizard.com/submit. If you’d like your piece to be read out in the next show, please get in touch by the Friday after the release of this show. If you write in later, I will just include your story in a later show.
 
I’d particularly love to hear what you’d make of the “blood-curdling detective” but feel free to pick any prompt from the show that sparks your imagination.
 
Until next time, go forth and be inspired!