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December Writing Challenge!

If January 1st is going to be the day we decide we’ll really sit down and focus on starting/getting back to/finishing that novel, we have to do something in December to prepare, right?

Inspired by one of my best writer friends, I’ve created a four-week fiction writing challenge with twenty days* of holiday-themed writing prompts to get your creativity flowing!

Enjoy the season with small writing prompts dedicated to savoring the season and flexing your writing muscles. We’ll start off small in Week One, with descriptions of various holiday concepts. Then, we’ll expand in Week Two to holiday odes, poems, and songs. In Week Three, we’ll get into retellings, playing with stories that already exist. Finally, in Week Four, we’ll dive fully into original holiday scenes and stories.

Hopefully by Week Five, you’ll feel energized and inspired to get to work on whatever your New Year’s (Writing) Resolution may be.

December Writing Challenge: Twenty Holiday Writing Prompts

Week One: Describe…

DAY ONE: An ideal holiday meal in Dickensian detail

DAY TWO: Your own personal winter wonderland (real or imaginary)

DAY THREE: The Proper Way to engage in a special holiday tradition (real or imaginary)

DAY FOUR: The perfect house in which to spend a snowy evening (don’t forget to decorate)

DAY FIVE: Holiday Joy

Week Two: Compose…

DAY ONE: An ode to your favorite holiday beverage

DAY TWO: A haiku about Winter Solstice

DAY THREE: A poem about a winter walk

DAY FOUR: A metaphor based on a winter clothing item

DAY FIVE: An original holiday jingle

Week Three: Retell…

DAY ONE: A classic holiday story from an unexpected point of view

DAY TWO: A Christmas song as a short story set in the modern day

DAY THREE: A holiday memory with some extra seasonal magic

DAY FOUR: A historical holiday event as a classic children’s story

DAY FIVE: A classic children’s story as a serious news report

Week Four: Write a Story About…

DAY ONE: The (fake) history of a (real) holiday tradition

DAY TWO: A rom-com worthy holiday meet cute

DAY THREE: A ghost who’s all about the holiday “spirit”

DAY FOUR: Characters inventing their own holiday tradition

DAY FIVE: A midnight deadline

Here’s a print-friendly graphic for your desk:

I hope you write along!

Best,

Julia

*We take the weekends off in these parts, because the best way to exceed expectations is not to set them too high to begin with. The holidays are a busy time of the year with an abundance of social obligations. Write every day if you can, but give yourself room for days where your only task is to complete a prompt you didn’t quite finish earlier in the week, or where all you have the capacity for is thinking about writing. Hopefully that will give you the leisure to enjoy the month and not worry too much about finding time to write on Christmas day, when being in the moment with friends and family might be a healthier priority.

#writing challenge #writing prompts #holiday prompts

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LWSN Lesson One: Write What You Love

How to Steal Your Ideas

Welcome to Lesson One of the Let's Write Some Novels Online Workshop!

This is the first lesson for obvious reasons. Before we start talking about first drafts and micro revisions and three-act-structure, we first need to talk about ideas.

There are tons of ways to come up with ideas for novels. This lesson focuses on a couple: refilling creative wells, stealing ideas from the stories you love, love-it lists and writing what you know. It’s aimed at the writer who’s stuck on the blank page, whether that page is meant to be page one or page one hundred.

I actually used something like the exercise at the end of this video to come up with the novel I’m currently working on!

I asked myself “if I was going to pick up a random book on a shelf, what are some things I’d love to see in it?” and came up with: ghosts, female rulers with terrible reputations, secret passages, castles, and strong female friendships. It didn’t take long for all of those things to snowball into an actually story idea.

Hopefully these tips work as well for you as they have for me!

If you’d like them, I also have the slides and script for this video.

Video Slides

Video Script

NB: this isn’t a transcript of the finished video, but the filming script I used while making the video. There will be differences between the two, but the content is largely the same.

Next week, we move onto Lesson Two: The First Draft (Running a Marathon in a Taxi Cab). See you then!

Best,

Julia

#ideas #LetsWriteSomeNovels #workshops

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Lemon Poppyseed Cake with Lavender Buttercream Frosting

This is not a food blog, but this also isn’t my first recipe on this blog, so I’m going for it. I made a very good, very easy cake this week and I. Want. To. Talk. About. It.

I was asked to make a lemon poppy seed cake for work. I knew I wanted to make it a cake I would be excited about, so I decided to do a lavender buttercream frosting: lavender goes super well with lemon, it’s a unique flavor, and I personally enjoy florals.

However, I also knew that I didn’t have the time or energy to make a cake from scratch on a Monday night, so I took a couple of shortcuts.

If I was a food blogger, this cake would probably be my greatest shame because it has a deep, dark secret.

It is a BOX MIX Cake.

I know, I know. I’ll pause for your gasps. I have never gotten so many compliments for a cake, though. So I think this is an experiment I’m going to repeat quite a few times.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake “Recipe”

Ingredients

1. Vanilla Cake Mix

2. One more egg than the recipe calls for

3. Milk instead of water, when the mix calls for it.

4. The zest of two large lemons (achieved by lightly using a cheese grater on the washed rind of a lemon, if you’re zester-less)

5. A reasonable amount of poppy seeds

Directions

Follow the direction on the cake mix box, using substitutions of milk for water and an extra egg, and adding poppy seeds and lemons to batter before mixing.

Celebrate!

Lavender Buttercream Frosting Recipe

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup softened unsalted butter

1/2 cup milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lavender buds

Directions

Heat milk and lavender buds in small saucepan on stove at medium heat

Once simmering, turn off heat and let cool

Strain solids out of milk and set aside

In large mixing bowl, beat butter until smooth

Mix sugar and vanilla into butter

Slowly add in 3-5 tablespoons of infused milk, depending on desired consistency

To decorate, I simply covered my two cake rounds with the icing, scraped little lines in the icing with the ridges of that yellow cake knife as a “design” and sprinkled lavender buds around the edge.

Again, I have never gotten so many compliments on a cake and it took two and a half hours to make starting from the time I left the house to go to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients to the time I was back on the couch watching Netflix. Which is why I’m sharing it with you, so you can make a very easy, very tasty cake too.

#cake #lavender

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black

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 Drawing by R.E. Higgins, 1924

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Slater’s bridge, Little Langdale, Lake District, England by Jason Connolly

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by  silver_neon

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It’s that time again!

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Jewels of Versailles | Marie Antoinette 2006

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joan of arc reincarnated

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Zendaya as Joan of Arc for Met Gala 2018  (Famous for leading France in its victory against Britian and was honored as a saint)

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Akaroa cottage | nzhouseandgarden

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althought I wanted to finish these while it was winter , it’s still snowing here so  here, some warmly dressed folks!

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I love playing with nature brushes

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today my anthro professor said something kindof really beautiful:

“you all have a little bit of ‘I want to save the world’ in you, that’s why you’re here, in college. I want you to know that it’s okay if you only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is you”