With “orange” as a writing prompt this week, it leaves room for silliness and wayward discussions. Strangely, though, I found myself looking for some deep psychological meaning associated with the cheerful color–and that’s when it struck me. Orange evokes a few of my favorite writing things (cue Julie Andrews):
Sunrise and starting the day fresh, new beginnings. This is a recurring theme in BECOMING JOSEPHINE.
The fat highlighter marker I use for researching my books
My favorite tank top that I run in, which also happens to be my favorite time to work out a plot problem
Halloween and the first spooky short story I ever wrote as a kid
Spain? But yes, Spain. The sun in Sevilla is so hot in mid-afternoon the orange heat practically shimmers in the air. Then there’s all that burnt orange dirt of the bull fighting ring. It was in Spain that I first started thinking about writing a novel. It was only a thread of inspiration, a winged muse whispering in my ear, but that was where it all began…
So is a color really a great writing prompt? I’d say so. It may not make for long blog posts, but it certainly gets the creative brain whirring.
How about you? Is there a single word that evokes memories of your writing journeys?
Whenever I hear “languid,” I think of my writing. When I discovered that word when I was a teenager writing feverishly in my attic bedroom, I put it in all my stories. There were many languid pools of water and languid eyes.
http://www.GreenerPastures–ACityGirlGoesCountry.blogspot.com
Oooo languid is a great word, Debi. I can definitely see myself lying languid in the sun right now (but it’s 15 degrees outside). It’s funny that languid was a word you loved when you were writing like crazy. 🙂
I didn’t know you started thinking about a novel in Spain. LOVE Sevilla! Were you there for school or work? Or for fun?
I was a teacher and my administrators said to me, hey, you need to teach a section of Spanish next year (I taught all French at that point). Rather than FREAK OUT and take a class in the states, I enrolled myself for a summer program at a linguistic center in Sevilla and spent the entire summer there. 🙂 It was so utterly fabulous. So many memories were made there. I journaled every day there and started thinking about writing.
What a wonderful story about Spain. I haven’t been, which is unbelievable, but I must! I admire that you can work out plot problems when you run — when I run (a slow crawl of a jog really), all I’m thinking about is how to get through it. 🙂 I don’t run much.
Ok, between me and you and the blogosphere, I haven’t been running much lately. In fact, I could use a few thousand laps around the track to get my derriere back in shape….AND that will begin the minute the snow has melted and I can stand being outside again. 🙂