It’s been crazy this last week with YALLFest and a writing retreat. I’ll post about my inspiring and productive past five days later this week, but for now I’m pretty proud of myself for actually getting my 15 Minute Tweet Tales posted before I collapse into bed.

 

11/6 - He shoves the baby into her arms. Not sure what to do, she jounces it on her hip to try to keep it quiet while he buries its mother.

 

11/7 - After a few nights of rustling in his attic, he concludes he has an inquiline squirrel. He's shocked to find the neighbor's kid hiding.

 

11/8 - She surfs eHarmony to improve stochastic chances of finding soulmate, never noticing guy next to her reading her favorite obscure novel.

 

11/9 - Her intelligence was so vast it was incommensurable with normal IQ measurements, but instead of curing cancer, she played video games.

 

11/10 - She furbishes the mirror again and again, but it reflects the ugly truth: tho a pretty girl, she'd been cruel when she could've been kind.

 

11/11 - Everyone is dumbfounded by his involute speech about why he shouldn't have to pay bus fare, then they start slipping out the back door.

 

11/12 - Her tiffany clothes make her look soft and weak - a purposeful wardrobe choice for lulling her coworkers and then stealing their ideas.

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween. I tried to honor the day with a creepy tweet tale – horror movie buffs should get the reference. 

 

YALLFest is happening this weekend! After all these weeks of interviews, I can’t believe it’s finally here – so excited to hear these authors speak!

 

NaNoWriMo has officially started and guess what? I STILL haven’t decided on an idea. Obviously that means I’m sitting at zero words when I should be at 8335 by the end of today. Oops! The last time I participated I actually wrote my novel in two weeks, so I’m not out of the running yet. But due to other obligations, I probably won’t be able to start until after YALLFest. That’s going to be dicey, but I think doable. We’ll see how it goes!

 

A now here are my 15 Minute Tweet Tales for the past week:

 

10/30 - The recusant Girls Scout hot glued 'knots', left camping to go to library, and ate all her cookies. She went on to become the President.

 

10/31 - The fodient activity at the Myers' house makes her curious, but she won't ask Michael what he's planting - he's not the green thumb type.

 

11/1 - Tired of Dems and Repubs, the men declare their neighborhood an autarchy. Their bout with independence lasts until the beer runs out.

 

11/2 - She thought the bump derogated her beauty, so she got a nose job. A slip of the hand taught her a bumpy nose was better than no nose.

 

11/3 - Her feelings about him are not effable. Because if anyone overheard she'd be arrested for conspiring to cause bodily harm or death.

 

11/4 - She redacts articles to perfect them for her magazine, so she can't help correcting her boyfriend's grammar. He can't help dumping her.

 

11/5 - They call him Prince of Persia, but he's a satrap controlled by neighboring rulers. He only feels powerful when tormenting servants.

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is starting in just a few days – are you planning to embark on the novel-writing challenge? I’ve done it four times before, and it’s such a rush. I skipped the last few years to focus on making movies and rewriting my WIP (my second NaNo novel), but I’m ready to jump back in this year with some story-making madness. I’ve spent the past few weeks waffling back and forth between two ideas, but as the start day looms, I’m actually feeling pulled toward a third late-blooming idea. Since I’m a complete pantser rather than a planner, I’m not too concerned, but I do need to decide on one pretty soon – at least in time to pick names for my main characters! 

 

As for my other writing adventures, here are my 15 Minute Tweet Tales for the past week. I didn’t realize I had two tales this week about witches performing curses until I just reread them. I guess it’s appropriate considering it’s Halloween week.

 

10/23 - "Your face is emetic!" Ann sighs when Tim just shrugs. It's tough being an erudite bully - her victims are too lazy to look up her insults.

 

10/24 - Since her dog sheds, Pam bought a couch that matched his fur color, but his apatetic coat made him tough to see. Poor Fido's now flat.

 

10/25 - The king thought the turbinate hedge maze was a perfect place to meet his lover. The queen thought so, too. Awkward afternoon delight.

 

10/26 - The grass drinks in roric droplets, but shrivels; it's not normal moisture but tears of a witch cursing the land for killing her love.

 

10/27 - Most women rush past the thersitical construction workers, but Kim saunters by: she paid a lot for her body and is glad it's appreciated.

 

10/28 - She visits a shrink hoping discussing past relationships will lead to a satori about her bad taste in men. She ends up screwing him.

 

10/29 - His body twists and writhes as the curse takes effect, giving him ungual appendages unlike any creature on earth. Never insult a witch.

 

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

After last week’s weirdness with all the repeat words, I thought we were going to get through this week without a repeat until I opened the Rare Words book this morning. Today’s #15tt word was supposed to be purlieu, but we already had it last August, so I moved on to the next one. At this rate, I’m starting to wonder if there are going to be enough unusual words left to keep going next year! But for now, here are the 15 Minute Tweet Tales for this week:

 

10/16 - The guards only pretend to do rounds during hyetal weather, giving Tim a perfect way to rescue his wife. Sucks about the six month drought.

 

10/17 - The effluvium preceding the Devil's visits frustrates Kim; she can't wash the smell from her clothes. Drawback of dating the king of hell.

 

10/18 - She thought she'd found someone special when he wrote her anacreontic poems. Turns out he was recycling them, plus they were plagiarized.

 

10/19 - She got an F on her orrery because it had an extra planet: a hidden one only her parents knew about because it was where they were born.

 

10/20 - He swore he'd protect his sister, but when the zombies broke through, he gave her a recreant push, creating a diversion for his escape.

 

10/21 - She had divers excuses for missing the deadline, none of which mentioned the hundred grand a rival company gave her to drag her feet.

 

10/22 - The strip club wasn't the milieu where she'd dreamed of getting engaged, but he loved her (well, her body) & she loved him (well, his money).

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

This week was crazy with repeat words from last year. Not only were there three of them, but there was some Halloween-worthy spookiness with two of them. On 10/9, the next word up to bat in the Rare Words book was supposed to be solipsism, but we’d already had it at the start of this tweet tale adventure waaay back in week 3. So as I usually do with repeats, I moved on to the next word in the book – it was solecism. Not only was it another a repeat word, but it was also in week 3 and was the word of the day before solipsism. *cue Twilight Zone music* I think it’s odd that two different providers of unusual words presented these two words back-to-back, albeit in a different order. Luckily when another repeat word showed up for 10/11 (sedulous) it was from week 39, so I didn’t have to get too weirded out by it.

 

And now here are my 15 Minute Tweet Tales for the week:

 

10/9 - The brumal weather outside's considerably warmer than the chill in the bedroom. She's found him dancing in a lacy thong. It isn't hers.

 

10/10 - Bill's doxastic research made him a top election advisor, but he was paralyzed when it was time to tell his son the truth about Santa.

 

10/11 - Ron gets jumpy when the temperature rises: he loves the skin displayed by estival outfits, but fears his wife's punishment for looking.

 

10/12 - The school nurse diagnoses pica, but he only eats weird things because it hurts less to be called a freak for stuff he does on purpose.

 

10/13 - The ducklings mourn their father: coming home after one too many quack-tails at the local watering hole, he crashed into an empennage.

 

10/14 - Wanted new haircut for first day of job but pileated result made her cry. Upside? Boss thinks she's edgy and gives Em her own trend column.

 

10/15 - Locked in her room, Suzy uses the hamate end of a coat hanger to pick the lock. What she finds downstairs changes her life forever.

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

After finishing the rewrite of my novel, I slept for twelve hours straight on Sunday night. It was awesome. Since then I’ve watched some TV (most of the new shows are terrible) and started reading Divergent (finally!). But I’ve also been spending time wandering around the house feeling a little lost. The rewrite had been hanging over me for so long that without it I feel like I don’t have a purpose. 

 

I think a bit of a break is good, but I also know I need to jump into the next project before I let myself get pulled back into the land of laziness. I’m actually planning to participate in NaNoWriMo in November after taking a break from it the last few years, so I need to start figuring out what I’m going to write. I have two ideas pulling equally at me, so probably the best course of action is to jot down a quick outline of each and see which one ‘feels’ right. 

 

But until NaNo starts, I’ll be keeping my writing muscles warmed up with my 15 Minute Tweet Tales. Here are the ones for the past week:

 

10/2 - Deb's supererogatory attempts to place the ideal ratio of condiments on the buns gets her fired. It's fast food, not slow perfection.

 

10/3 - The kick to his junk was painful but condign. He was just grateful she didn't know the entire story, or she'd have cut it off instead.

 

10/4 - Blind date set up by Mom. Infandous outfit to repel him. Regrets it when dream man arrives and says she looks hot with twinkle in his eye.

 

10/5 - Keeping her seity different from all the mindless followers at school turned into a challenge after it became trendy to be unique.

 

10/6 - Emma uses cacoepy in an adorable way when she speaks. It makes people underestimate her, which is vital for the success of her missions.

 

10/7 - Water weeps down dirty windowpanes, creating a loxotic image of men dancing in the rain rather than warriors battling to the death.

 

10/8 - Thinking she's about to be hit by a car, he tackles her. Then he has to explain to the cops he's a victim of parallax, not an attacker.

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

It’s been a busy week, so I'm keeping it short and sweet today – enjoy my 15 Minute Tweet Tales:

 

9/25 - Tim's the town bully, so people cheer when Ed finds muniments proving Tim's land belongs to Ed. No one mentions Ed's past as a forger.

 

9/26 - Her displays of love were exiguous - to make her kids grow up strong. It worked. The conditions of her nursing home didn't faze them.

 

9/27 - Despite my dirty looks, the man behind me crepitates through an endless tub of popcorn. In the parking lot, I get a perfect end to my movie.

 

9/28 - The audience freaks when he apostrophizes during his victory speech, but now that he's Governor he doesn't have to ignore Mr. Jingles.

 

9/29 - The women he picks up in bars doubt his claims of chiromancy until his fingers slide sensually across the lines etched in their palms.

 

9/30 - His heartfelt promises are nugatory words twisted into lies by all the other times he swore he'd never do it again but did it anyway.

 

10/1 - She affects a Palladian air, from her clothes to her decor, her followers blissfully unaware her insight is culled from fortune cookies. 

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

This weekend I participated in the NYC Madness Flash Fiction Challenge, where you have 48 hours to write a 1000 word short story for an assigned genre/location/object. My group got ghost story/a coffee shop/a light bulb. At first I was super excited because ghost story is right up my alley – the one time I was assigned the ‘open’ genre, I actually wrote a ghost story (which eventually became my short film High Heels & Hoodoo). 

 

But as soon as I started brainstorming ideas, my enthusiasm waned – everything felt so cliché or like it was going to be the same as everyone else’s story. I mean, that light bulb was going to be flickering in all of them, right? And it was either going to be a barista serving a customer who was actually a ghost or a customer being served by a barista who was actually a ghost. Eventually I came up with something I hoped at least started the story in a slightly original way and was also a fun kind of meta (the protagonist had to submit a short story for a competition’s midnight deadline, but her internet went down, so she was parked outside a coffee shop for wifi).

 

By the double halfway point (500 words in at 11:30pm Saturday night), I finally admitted I hated my story with the heat of a thousand suns. It was stupid and, worse, boring. I briefly attempted to fix it by rewriting it in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, but soon realized unless the judges got what I was doing, they were just going to think I was a terrible writer (so many adverbs, adjectives, and repeated words!). 

 

As I was pulling out my hair in writerly despair, a new idea revolving around format popped into my desperate brain. I was intrigued but wasn’t sure I could make it work. I spent the next hour thinking and pondering (it might have looked like I was napping, but I was working, I swear) until I had a plan, and then I was off! By 5:30am, I had a rough draft. I finally grabbed some zzz’s and then spent Sunday afternoon rewriting it several times. I managed to turn it in five minutes before the midnight deadline on Sunday night. Whew!

 

It’s not one of my finer efforts, but it’s not the shame-inducing mess of words that was my first attempt. The big format risk is that the entire thing is an online chat, with a few tweets thrown in at the end. So if the judges don’t spend time hanging out online, they might not understand what I was doing, and I’ll be completely screwed. Plus, since it all happens online, they might decide I didn’t meet the coffee shop location requirement. We’ll see, but regardless, it was fun to stretch myself with something new.

 

Here's my title and synopsis: A Spirited Chat - Kerri meets an exciting guy online, but he might be seeking more than she's willing to give.

 

And now for my awkward segue… NYC Midnight is the group that originally introduced me to twitter fiction, so here are my 15 Minute Tweet Tales for the week:

 

9/18 - She wants to play Dad's favorite song at his funeral. When the palinoia makes her fingers bleed, she's ready - she slips him the cyanide.

 

9/19 - At fist day roll call, she sighs at a name. Had his four hellion brothers, so it's ineluctable he'd be in her class. He hurls a spitball.

 

9/20 - Dr. More's wife had a jugal jut that caused people to call her exotic. Accurate, since he created her in a lab by splicing cat and human.

 

9/21 - Never one for birthdays, he celebrates his 38th with a perfervid energy that baffles his friends. Six months later cancer claims him.

 

9/22 - While the crepuscular lighting in the room is appropriately symbolic, Jane wants to feel the sun on her face when it's her turn to die.

 

9/23 - She recites his evil acts seriatim. Tied up, defiant, he says, "If you'd been this focused on housework, U wouldn't have needed discipline."

 

9/24 - Since his cube-mate has been hurt before, he plans a proreption to win her heart. But she thinks he's gay and starts dating Stan from HR.

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

It’s starting to feel like we have a repeat word from last year every week. This time the word on 9/16 was supposed to be orgulous, but we already had it almost exactly a year ago. With this many repeats, I hope I don’t run out of words in the Rare Words book before the end of the year!

 

I also thought it was interesting that three of the words this week actually had to do with words, or at least describing how words are put together: causerie, chrestomathy, and anaphora. Words about words are always fun!

 

And now here are my 15 Minute Tweet Tales for the week:

 

9/11 - She's barking mad the editor turned her essay about years of canine social behavior research into a causerie on how to train your dog.

 

9/12 - Ken panicked at his tingling lips - a broken embouchure before the concert would ruin him. His rival removed the IcyHot from his reed.

 

9/13 - The publisher includes the story he plagiarized from his ex-wife in his chrestomathy. He hates that it's always been his most popular.

 

9/14 - His tank runs out of air. The Tempean ocean's a nice place to die, but relief when a mermaid appears. Until she smiles. She's all teeth.

 

9/15 - "I adore your superb mind, your superb face, your superb body." He only means the last in his anaphora; it's the fist that wins her love.

 

9/16 - Costumes too expensive for 8 kids, so Mom pulls out trunk of Nana's fusty clothes. Find jewel sewn in skirt lining; changes their lives.

 

9/17 - On her 1st day as PTA president: 6 parents brawl about smartest kid & principal hires escort with bake sale money. She immediately demits.

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?

This week we had another repeat word – on 9/9 the word was supposed to be antonomasia, but we already had it back in April of last year. The definition is a memorable one, but I never would have been able to pluck the word itself out of my brain. In fact, I’m not sure that many of these crazy words are sticking around to improve my vocabulary!

 

But here we go, on to my 15 Minute Tweet Tales for the past week: 

 

9/4 - The threnody for Father starts, and I pretend to cry. People already whisper about the fortune I'm inheriting – don't want them to suspect.

 

9/5 - Walking on the beach, she finds a muricate sphere and picks it up. It pricks her. The life-form rejoices. It's waited millennia for this.

 

9/6 "We like pie 'round here, 'specially pecan." The actor used aphesis to try to sound southern, but lacked the lyrical flow of a native.

 

9/7 - Romantic date at beach. Urticated by jellyfish. Tells him pee cure is old wives' tale. He does it anyway, a bit too excited. Break up.

 

9/8 - The baby shrieks, but defeating the level boss is his exigent concern. Wife comes home. His punishment? Four months of poopy diaper duty.

 

9/9 - The kids snigger at their dad's trophic lectures. No one wants eating advice from a man who looks like he's due to deliver any day now.

 

9/10 - The fuliginous cat runs through the den leaving a trail of ash. "Whose cat is that?" "I don't know." "How'd it get in?" "The chimney?"

 

Play along and write tweet tales for the above words. If you’re willing to share, post them on twitter with the hashtag #15tt or add them below in the comments because I’d love to read them. Any thoughts about this week's tweet tales or #15tt words?