A Favorite Tool

A lot of times, I find myself having a hard time coming up with something to write.  Usually, I find that if I can just find a starting point, I can go somewhere with it.  I found this wonderful tool with the help of stumbleupon.  Oneword.com is a website that can help me solve this problem.  It's very simple.  You click the "go" button on the homepage.  It shows you a word, and gives you one minute to write whatever you can think about it.  The site then posts your minute's worth of writing with all the other people who have participated that day.  I also enjoy looking back at other people's posts to see what ideas a single word could spark.

The one negative side that I've found with this site is that it only gives one word per day.  I would love if it were unlimited and you could just click it a hundred times.  So I decided to make a similar tool with things at my own house.  The concept is the same.  I wrote a whole bunch of descriptive words down on pieces of paper and put them in a bag.  I mix them up and draw out a word when I feel the need for some inspiration.  An egg-timer is always handy to give myself a time limit.  The results of my writing get put away, maybe to be used as inspiration later for some other writing task I have in mind.  On good occasions, I might actually decide to go with the flow and ignore the timer!

I'm feeling the need for some inspiration, so I'm going to use the grab bag method right now, and write for ten minutes.  I'm also closing out of Facebook so I won't get distracted....

My word is... Sheep!

My sister was always dragging around that little stuffed sheep.  I remember wondering why she was so attached to it.  Granted, I didn't stop sleeping with a stuffed animal until I was nineteen, and started sleeping regularly at night with my then boyfriend. 

She called it "Lamby."  My mom had to take it from her a few times and force her to wash it.  My sister always hated that.  Lamby would be too wet for her to carry around for a few days.  I let her borrow some of my stuffed animals when she was alone without her stuffed sheep.  One was a stuffed rabbit dressed in ballerina clothing I called "Bun-Bun."  I remember being so devastated when she finally fell apart.

Lamby actually disappeared once.  It was the summer my parents took us to Disneyland.  I was twelve, and my little sisters were ten.  We stayed in a hotel for five days.  We visited with my grandpa and his family.  And at the end of the trip, we forgot to check under the beds.  My dad always told us to check under the beds before we left anywhere, and we forgot.  To this day, I won't forget again.  Poor Lamby got left under the bed, deserted in a lonely hotel.

Somehow, we forgot all about Lamby until it was too late to go back.  My sister was so upset.  No, we couldn't replace Lamby with a new Lamby!  It just wasn't possible to fix, no matter how hard my parents tried to console her.  But only a few days after we got home, we got a call from the hotel.  One of the cleaning crew had found Lamby under the bed, and thought some little girl would be missing it.  They had found my parent's information in their system.  They actually shipped the stuffed sheep back to us.  Of course, Lamby did have a detour on the way.  There was another town with the same name as the one we lived in in California, and that town's post office had to figure it out before they could sent it back on its way home.

My sister was so relieved have her sheep back. // END



Well, that was ten minutes.  It's interesting to see what comes to mind when I look at one little word.  I usually prefer to write fiction, typically fantasy or sci-fi.  But I couldn't resist writing some non-fiction when the word "sheep" triggered my memory.

My creative juices feel like they're flowing better now!  Critiques are always appreciated.

Until next time!