The Daily Writer #1

So, in addition to being possibly the worst blogger ever, I'm also a terrible procrastinator. I can't make myself do anything or focus on much. If you know me or have been reading this thing, you know that I've wanted to be a writer my entire life, and I consider myself quite good at it. The problem isn't my writing, you see, it's actually putting it down on paper (er, computer screen). I'm kind of a binge writer. I'll write loads in two hours, then not touch it again for months. I know that this is a problem many writers face. I'm convinced that I could be published and read if I could just get myself together enough to write a decent draft.

So! In order to help myself with this task, I've picked up a book (yes, another one). It's called The Daily Writer, and it addresses exactly the problems I have. It gives a short blurb on various elements of writing and then offers one or two exercises, intended to make you write every day! Isn't that fabulous! Well, it obviously starts on January 1, but I figured I could just skip to August 1 and make my way around it like that. I read the first two prompts and they're very interesting. I offer them here for your enjoyment:

August 1

1.) Prepare a synopsis of a short story organized into the three stages--departure, initiation, and return--of the hero's journey.
2.) Write a fantasy or real world short story based on the synopsis you prepared for number one.

Here are my thoughts for the first part:
- Departure: A classic young male hero's village is infected by a terrible plague. The hero, being young and strong, is sent to retrieve a rare medicine from another village by an elder. The village is several days' journey away and there is a terrible snowstorm.
- Initiation: The young hero braves the storm and many dangers to find the medicine and deliver it back home.
- Return: The young hero returns home to find that his entire village has already perished while he was away. The hero realizes that the elder sent him away to save him from the plague, not to fetch necessary medicine, as he knew that it was too late for the rest of the village.
- I'm interested in a kind of parallel between the young hero and the elder, where they both go through these stages in the story, but you don't see the elder's journey until the end. For the elder's departure, he sees that the young hero is the only healthy one in a dying village. As there is no hope for the rest of the village, he realizes that he must somehow save the young hero. Elder's initiation: He must concoct a convincing story to lead the young hero away from the plague, ensuring his safety. Elder's return: I'm not sure. Maybe he can at least be thanked by the young hero's parents or something for saving their child.

Anyway, that's the first part. I'll tackle part two tomorrow when I get home from work. :)