For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.
Check out each letter’s post here.
XERISCAPING
I always hate when we get to X on this challenge, because I have to get creative and as we’ve all learned from this theme, I need to preserve all the creativity I have for my writing. But here we are, on the worst letter day.
Xeriscape means to landscape with plants that need little moisture and irrigation, when you live in a xeric, or arid, area. I’m going to oh-so-cleverly use this as a metaphor for trying to make our stories grow when they’ve gotten dry and shriveled. This can include shoving a cactus up that difficult character’s rear end, or throwing a shrub on the fire to liven things up. When you need to xeriscape, you may find it difficult because:
– The story may need to be reworked if it’s stumbled into the desert and can’t find water. If you let it bake in the sun too long, it’s going to get crusty.
– Not everything grows in arid soil, so you might have to go back to the place where it was fertile and try again. If you’re terrible at gardening like I am, try watering the soil with your tears of frustration.
– You may be already delirious from heat stroke and think that mirage of a good story on the horizon is real. You may be dead wrong.
If a story has galloped off into the vast wasteland and gotten all turned around, giving it water might be hard. It’s important to step back and look at the parts that are still growing, and try to bring that growth back, if you can. This can be frustrating and difficult, but might be worth it in the end. Or, as it’s a mystery why humans insist on living in inhospitable areas of our planet, like it’s some kind of challenge from the earth and we simply must answer it, you might realize you’re just insane, not plucky.
**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.
Awesome!
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my most favourite post so far. the humour and sarcasm in this was brilliant. loved it.
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my favouritist post so far. so much humour and sarcasm. loved it!
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Urgh yes, letter X. I seriously considered at one point to have one character – who was in the middle of a body dump – to profess his love of the xylophone lmao! This was my first year doing the challenge and now I know to plan ahead for X hehe.
Related to your topic – we moved to a desert area last year so we’re working on xeriscaping our front and back gardens. 🙂 I didn’t know the word xeriscape though, so I learned something extra today!
Here’s my “X” post (no xylophones in sight) 🙂 http://nataliewestgate.com/2017/04/xanthium-secret-diary-of-a-serial-killer
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I’m going out on a limb here and saying that anyone who thinks this post isn’t full of incredible genius is a moron. Way to go on the letter X!
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Hahahaha thank you! 🙂
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I also have a brown thumb, so the tears of frustration sounds like a go-er. I’ve always just let them fall on the floor. What a waste!
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LOL a ‘brown thumb,’ I love that! I’m terrrrrrible with plants!
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This is where I procrastinate on editing. If I have to do some big rewrites, I have a bad habit of putting it off for a long time. ^^;;
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LOL I feel your pain. I’m pretty much the same way.
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I love the letter X, since there are so many awesome words and names we don’t often get a chance to use. Then again, I’m a total linguaphile and name nerd.
Sometimes it’s easiest to identify the clutter which needs excised, or locate spots which need fleshing-out and expanding, after a break away from a story.
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I admit, every time I’ve had to look up X words for this challenge, I’ve definitely learned some new ones!
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Very clever way to handle X. Searching for inspiration can leave a writer feeling like they’re searching for water in a desert as well. I got lucky and found a conspiracy theory with X that I’d never heard of.
X is for the X-37B Space Plane
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It’s just like trying to find a word to use for the ‘X’ day, you know? 😉
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Great analogy. I frequently go back in a story if I find it’s hit a dry spot.
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Sometimes you gotta find where you went wrong and try to dig your way out!
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exactly.
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Smart choice for this day. X is always the last workd I decide on for the challenge.
As for the story going dry? I just hope that’ll never happen. But if it ever, I think I’ll go for ‘watering with my tears?.
@JazzFeathers
The Old Shelter – 1940s Film Noir
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I think we all end up watering stories with our tears, whether we want to or not!
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