I dwell in possibility

Posted on November 30, 2023 by vgemmell

It’s the last day in November and the last day of my writing challenge where I have used prompts every day (since the weekend I started) throughout the month to write a post on here.

Today’s prompt is to use the Emily Dickinson quote I dwell in possibility to write a poem, essay or story. I’m writing a straight forward post instead (though I guess it could be classed as an essay) as I feel this title is very apt to end on.

Successfully completing this challenge has reminded me it’s possible to make time, even if it’s just for an hour at the end of the day, to sit down and write, or focus on something creative. Waking up my imagination reminds me of the magic that exists in the everyday.

When I start a big project such as a novel, I love that feeling of anticipation, of not knowing exactly how a story is going to unfold or if I’m even going to be able to successfully transport what is in my head onto paper. Sadly it doesn’t always turn out the way I want it to – a bit like when you have a very vivid dream and it’s all so clear and you are sure you can relay it scene by scene, but something happens in those waking hours where you can’t quite capture the story in a cohesive way.

But then you tell yourself there are other dreams still to come, there are other stories that will be written. And it’s exciting thinking this could turn into something amazing, dazzling, which could be life-changing for you. Or at least sell and be read by a wider audience. Every time I hit send on a piece of work to a competition there is a sense of possibility – maybe, you never know…

My writing has enriched my life, not only be feeding my soul and giving me a feeling of purpose and drive, but by opening up a world where I’ve met so many interesting people – both other writers and readers, and creatives. It has taken me on adventures to schools, book shops, writing groups, conferences, community events, libraries, colleges and universities. It has kept me sane when the day job gets too intense, or real-life gets challenging. It has brought some of my best friends and best experiences into my life. It keeps me curious, and keeps me wanting to get better at my craft and try new things.

I saw a post on instagram earlier today with a quote from someone saying they were bored of reading the successful under 40 lists and they wanted to see stories of people later in life achieving their dreams, or striving for them. Someone in the comment section called @_d_u_n_e said in her tribe in Nigeria there is an adage which translates, ‘whenever a person wakes up, is their morning’

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – each day I dwell in possibility.

6 word poetry

Posted on November 15, 2023 by vgemmell

I’m resorting to another 6 word prompt this evening as I’m quite tired and don’t have the brain power for a thought provoking essay type post today.

I’ve already done the 6 word story and memoir, so this evening it’s the 6 word poem.

When my husband, Chris, asked me what prompt I was going to choose this evening I said he should get involved too and so when we went out a wee stroll after dinner, (in the dark, as you do), he came up with a couple of 6 word poems also, and I told him they’d be going in my post to make up for my feeble attempts.

So here’s Chris’s 6 word poems which I have called Ode to Winter:

Cold winter mornings, warm bed, sleepyhead

Melancholy before holly, then feeling jolly

And here are mine:

Ode to my bath

Soak my bones, soothe my soul

Ode to Chocolate

Stop tempting me with your swirl

Ode to Winter

Eternal darkness. Look up! Stars wink

Ode to Fame

After the encore you’re home alone

Dear Paris

Posted on November 8, 2023 by vgemmell

Today’s prompt is to write about a city I love. So here’s my love letter to Paris.

Dear Paris, I found you at a time when I craved adventure and was feeling brave enough to hop on a plane alone to go and find you. Wandering your streets I fell in love with your beauty and you made me feel at home, like we were old friends and you were reminding me of the magic in the world, telling me to stop and look and enjoy being in the moment. The lights at night dazzled; stars exploding inside the Eiffel Tower, carousels spinning gold against a darkening sky. Shakespeare and Co. captured my heart, a treasure trove of words and wonder, notes from travellers pinned up on the wall of a typewriter nook, hellos and dreams from all corners of the world. A Parisian melody played imperfectly, but beautifully, upstairs in the attic room where the piano was always occupied by amateur musicians, their music a soundtrack to the shelves packed with stories waiting to be read.

Your metro signs are more beautiful than some of the art work hanging in your galleries. Your buildings are breath taking masterpieces. Jardin de Luxembourg is as grand as it sounds and the children racing boats in the pond and the old men playing chess under the trees were some of my favourite observations during the time I spent wandering and just sitting, watching.

Along the Seine you showed me artists who were attempting to capture a part of you…like me, with my camera taking hundreds of photos which will never do you justice, as my real memories are tied up in feelings and sounds and the tiniest of details that can never be put into words or printed onto paper.

November Creative Challenge

Posted on November 5, 2023 by vgemmell

Last month I mentioned taking part in the #writetoctober23 challenge over on Instagram which was a great way of making time to do short posts about my writing life and keeping my head focused on creative things. I didn’t take part some of the days when I was on my abroad honeymoon, but managed to keep up with the challenge for most of the month.

Since this ended I’ve missed having this fun creative focus, as often I’m so bogged down during the week with work brain I often find myself not having the headspace to work on longer novel projects. Then I get frustrated with myself because I’m not devoting any time during my week to anything creative at all.

Lots of people take part in NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) every November, where they commit to writing a certain amount of words per day, usually with the aim to accumulate 50,000 words of a novel by the end of the month.

I thought it would be fun to set myself the challenge of writing a blog post a day (hopefully!) throughout November instead, with no word count goal imposed; the goal is just to get some words down every day. (Obviously a bit late to the party as we’re 5 days in to November, but I will make up for lost time).

So I went searching online for themes and prompts to inspire me and came across this great post here on the See Jane Write by Javacia site which contains a whole year’s worth of blog prompts. I also flicked through my helpful little book of creative prompts, The Pocket Muse by Moncia Wood and found there was actually an overlap in some of the themes.

I made a selection of ones I found most interesting, and I’ve listed them below so that anyone reading this can maybe join in or find your own inspiration from this. Even although I have made myself this list below there is probably going to be some variation on it (for one, I probably won’t do them in order as I feel some will be quicker posts than others, so this may be my deciding factor for which one I land on for a particular day).

I am also going to give myself permission to use the ‘prompt’ loosely as I know it may spark off alternative ideas.

I’ve listed 30 prompts and obviously we don’t have 30 days left in November – so this allows for space to skip past any I feel stuck with. I might duplicate some posts (interviews, cities I love) so again if you are using the prompts, don’t feel confined by them.

I plan to put the prompt I’ve selected for the day on my Instagram account so you can follow me over there for reminders: @victoriagemmellauthor

PROMPTS:

Why do you Blog?
Write about an outfit you associate with an important memory
Use an image as a prompt
Write about a City you love (I might use this prompt more than once)
Write a 6 word memoir
Take a negative comment and flip it into an essay or post
Write a love letter to your body
Write a letter to your younger self
What do you love most about writing
Write about a time you had to speak to a large crowd
Write a 6 word story
What songs would be included in a soundtrack of your life?
What is the opposite of cake?
Interview people who inspire you (I plan to make this a recurring post, interviewing writers/creatives)
Write about a milestone birthday (or birthdays)
Write a commencement address for girls graduating high school/college
Look out a window. What do you see?
Write an essay/poem with the title ‘This is what I say, but this is what I mean’
Write a 6 word poem
Take a notebook to a gallery or museum and write about something you see there
Write a post about an hour that changed your life
Write a thank you note to your readers
A high point or low point (or both) of your day/week/month/year
Imagine the day living as someone else (I’m going to use prompts alongside this from an exercise I did in the Artists Way)
Write about the best trip you’ve ever taken
Share your goals and how you plan to achieve them
Write about the 5 things you know for sure
Write a post celebrating winter
Explain what self-care means to you
Write a poem, essay or story inspired by the Emily Dickinson quote, “I dwell in possibility”

You’ll see number 1 is Why do you blog? I started seriously blogging on the blogger platform back in 2010. I flew out to Vancouver to visit my friend Jane who was living there and during this trip I realised I wanted to properly document my experience (as I was spending some days exploring the city alone when my friend was at work). I also wanted a platform where I could experiment with creative posts. I remember when I was staring at an Alice in Wonderland themed shop-front (photo below) on Commercial Drive I came up with the name of my blog ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and I started writing posts as soon as I returned home.

I stayed on blogger until 2017, which overlapped with the creation of this website here on WordPress (which I created during the launch of my first YA book). I switched to soley using this blog platform since I found it hard to maintain two separate sites, and this one has my writing domain name so I use it on contact cards/promotional materials.

I feel on this blog I’ve not been quite as creative and experimental as I used to be on Blogger so I guess this opens the door to try something new and return to the core of what I wanted to achieve through my blogging; to keep my creativity flowing, sparking off a more creative life in general and keeping the fun in the day-to-day when developing work. And also maybe daring to be a bit more personal in my posts again, not being so super-conscious of my audience and expressing opinions or writing about things I feel passionate about.

I was also much better at connecting with other bloggers through the Blogger platform and used to enjoy reading about other writers’ journeys, so if anyone decides to do a similar creative challenge for November leave your blog link/social media handle in my comments and I will give you a follow!

Re-framing Rejection

Posted on November 13, 2022 by vgemmell

Recently I re-read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ and for me, it still stands out as one of the best books focusing on ‘the craft’. The memoir conversational style of writing throughout creates a very honest and accessible account of King’s journey to becoming a best-selling author, with the technical advice neatly threaded into the narrative in a way that makes you think this guy clearly knows what he’s talking about, as you can read he’s a natural storyteller within the pages of this book.

Things that struck me this time around when I was reading was the fearlessness and tenacity King showed as a young writer when he would study the stories in numerous short story publications, then submit, submit, submit. If he got a rejection (and there were many as he started out), he simply kept going, often re-working and quickly re-submitting elsewhere, all the time consciously developing his craft. He did what we should all do really – don’t dwell on the ‘no’, just strive to get better and to find your story a home where it fits. (Keep reading on and I’ll share a challenge which might help with this)

Ironically the one time King nearly gave up on a piece of writing was with Carrie, his debut novel that launched his career. When he started to write Carrie, it was as a short story, and he felt it just wasn’t working. I love the way King threads in stories about his wife Tabitha, often reminiscing about how she has supported him at key moments throughout his career. Nothing better illustrates this than when Tabitha retrieves the crumpled pages of Carrie out of the bin and tells King to keep going because she wants to see how the story ends. King reflects on what his experience with Carrie taught him and I’ll quote an abridged version here;

Don’t stop a piece of work because it’s hard (emotionally or imaginatively). Keep going even when you don’t feel like it, and ‘sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is shoveling shit from a sitting position.’ pg.82

Another section which stood out to me was when King described ‘the first time in (his) life, (when) writing was hard’. This was when he was working as a teacher, and even although he acknowledged the good parts – loving the kids and co-workers – he described ending the week feeling like he had ‘jumper cables clamped to (his) brain.’ (pg. 76) and it was the one time he, ..’came close to despairing about (his) future as a writer.’ I’ve included this in this post as it’s something, even with dropping a day at work, that really resonates with me. With a caseload of close to one hundred young people (doing indepth one to one work), and I’m now in an education setting one day a week, I understand the ‘jumper cables clamped to my brain’ description very well. It takes a lot to decompress, and stay creative.

Staying motivated to write when you have a lot of other things competing with your time is difficult. Especially if you don’t always see much reward.

So, something else I read lately which caught my attention, and actually gave me a spark of motivation, was an article about setting yourself Rejection Goals. You can read ‘Why You should aim to get 100 Rejections a Year’ here (The author of the article Kim Liao actually references King’s On Writing and the way he collected his initial rejections, nailing them to the wall, like a badge of honour).

The idea behind the 100 rejections goal is the more you submit, the more acceptances you are likely to get, and it quietens ‘your fragile ego.’ The perfectionist in me, never mind my fragile creative ego, thinks the psychology of this one is quite clever – if I can trick my brain into thinking my aim is to reach 100 rejections, I’m going to let go of any nagging doubts that I’m not good enough, and to let go of any disappointments of ‘set-backs’ because that simply is no longer the objective of my task.

So if you’re reading this and it seems like a great new challenge to embark upon, why don’t you join me?

We can sail into 2023 with the aim of racking up a lot of ‘nos’, or in the case of modern publishing, a big empty silence of never hearing back …

Good luck!

VICTORIA GEMMELL

Writer

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