I was going to do a post for the writing prompts first and publish it on Tuesday and then do the catch up and post it on Wednesday. But I’ve started to tack the writing prompts onto the bottom of another regular blog post instead, so I decided to carry on doing that and give a roundup of the weekend too.
I finished working on Friday and downed tools for the weekend… or so I thought, because almost all of Saturday was spent on writing outlines for short material, fiction and non-fiction. I’d forgotten that I was going to carry on with the occasional non-fiction and publish it on Medium or Vocal and some of it on Substack, but I wasn’t going to do anything that required a deal of research or leg work, as the pay doesn’t justify it.
I’ve recently been trying to collate all of the raw short story material in one place and I finished transferring the last of those. Now I have one nice notebook filled with ideas and brainstorming and an exercise book that has the outlines in.
Short stories I wrote detailed outlines for are:
- The Maple Tree (working title)
- FrightFest (working title)
- The Boy Next Door
Articles I wrote detailed outlines for are:
- The DIY Writer’s Retreat
- Confessions of a Nutter Magnet
- Holidaying Alone
I found notes for all of these all over the place, but now I think I’ve got the information in one place and sorted into one outline for each. It doesn’t look like a lot, but it’s six outlines and they were done on a Saturday, which isn’t usually a work day for me. The best thing, though, is there’s something like three fewer notebooks now propped up on my desk, so more work room.
We’d already done the shopping on Saturday when I started this and I could have carried on forever. But my handwriting was getting scruffier and more illegible as I progressed, so at tea time on Saturday I put everything away.
On Sunday we didn’t do very much at all because the poet was working Sunday night. We had a great gig to a packed venue and saw a few people we hadn’t seen in a while.
Yesterday was May Day and it was our wedding anniversary. It was a lazy day again, but we did go for a quick walk with the dog and we went out for a meal and then the pictures. We might be going to the pictures again soon as The Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3 (or Volume 3) is out on Friday, and we do enjoy that fun franchise.
Here, then, are this week’s throwaway ideas for writers.
September throwaways
Every month I do a think/write/submit writing exercise. I usually ‘think’ around 6 months ahead, but I’m STILL catching up. So while in May I’d normally be ‘thinking’ November, ‘writing’ October and ‘submitting’ September, I’m still only on ‘thinking’ September.
Once I’ve done the exercise, I put the file away for a few days and come back to it fresh. Then I choose around 5 ideas to pursue for myself, and I discard the others. I hate for those ideas to go to waste, though, so I ‘throw’ them out there for others to take up if they wish.
Here, then, are my ‘throwaway’ writing suggestions for September. There are 34 of them. THIRTY-FOUR. I don’t think I’ll have time to do much with any of these, and those I think I might be able to rustle up have already been put to one side. (Remember to double-check the dates yourself as the source I used may have made a mistake.)
- on 4 September 1923, 100 years ago, the first US airship USS Shenandoah made her maiden flight (topical)
- on 4 September 1998, 25 years ago, Google was formally incorporated (topical)
- on 4 September 2018, 5 years ago, the FBI announced it had recovered a pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, stolen 13 years earlier (topical)
- on 5 September 1923, 100 years ago, boxing flyweights Gene LaRue and Kid Pancho knocked each other out simultaneously (topical)
- 8 September to 17 September this year it’s the Jane Austen Festival in Bath (date-specific evergreen)
- 8 September every year is apparently Star Trek Day (evergreen)
- on 8 September 2018, 5 years ago, archaeologists uncovered more than 300 gold coins from the late imperial period at a theatre in Como, Italy (topical)
- 9 September this year it’s the Last Night of the Proms (date-specific evergreen)
- 10 September this year it’s the Great North Run (date-specific evergreen)
- on 10 September 1993, 30 years ago, The X-Files debuted on Fox (topical)
- 11 September this year it’s the annual Horn Dance in Abbott’s Bromley, Staffordshire (date-specific evergreen)
- 12 September this year it’s Widecombe Fair, at Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon (date-specific evergreen)
- 12 September to 16 September this year it’s the World Sheepdog Trials on the Gill Hall Estate, in Dromore, County Down, Northern Ireland (date-specific evergreen)
- 13 September every year is apparently Roald Dahl Day (evergreen)
- on 15 September 1923, 100 years ago, the Siege of Oklahoma was declared, due to the Ku Klux Klan terror (topical)
- on 15 September 1983, 40 years ago, police officers beat Michael Stewart to death for graffitiing the NYC Subway (topical)
- on 15 September 2013, 10 years ago, 27 were killed in a coal mine collapse in Afghanistan (topical)
- on 15 September 2013, 10 years ago, Japan switched off its last working nuclear reactor (topical)
- on 15 September 2018, 5 years ago, archaeologists found the oldest known brewery and the remains of a 13,000-year-old beer hall in Haifa Cave, Israel (topical)
- on 17 September 2018, 5 years ago, 50 girls were treated in a hospital in Kaya, Burkina Faso, after illegal circumcisions were botched (topical)
- on 18 September 1983, 40 years ago, rock band Kiss appeared unmasked for the first time, on MTV (topical)
- 19 September every year is apparently Talk Like a Pirate Day (evergreen)
- on 20 September 2018, 5 years ago, 207 were killed on Lake Victoria, Tanzania, when an overloaded ferry capsized; one man survived for 2 days in an air lock (topical)
- on 20 September 1973, 50 years ago, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a battle of the sexes tennis game (topical)
- on 21 September 2013, 59 were killed and 175 wounded in a shopping mall gun battle in Nairobi, Kenya (topical)
- on 22 September 1773, 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin published a hoax letter in the Public Advertiser criticising Britain’s colonial policies in the American colonies (topical)
- on 23 September 1848, 175 years ago, chewing gum was commercially produced for the first time (topical)
- on 23 September 2003, 20 years ago, NCIS premiered on CBS in the US (topical)
- 24 September every year is apparently World Rivers Day (evergreen)
- 24 September every year is apparently World Bollywood Day (evergreen)
- on 24 September 1948, 75 years ago, Mildred Gillars (Axis Sally), an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during the Second World War pleaded not guilty to 8 charges of treason in Washington DC (topical)
- on 24 September 1948, 75 years ago, the Honda Motor Company was founded in Hamamatsu-city in Japan (topical)
- on 26 September 1898, 125 years ago, George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York (topical)
- 29 September every year is Michaelmas (evergreen)
Take one idea
Still stuck for something to write? Even with all of those ideas? Okay then, let’s take just one of those ideas…
- 12 September to 16 September this year it’s the World Sheepdog Trials on the Gill Hall Estate, in Dromore, County Down, Northern Ireland (date-specific evergreen)
What can fiction writers do with this prompt? Here are some suggestions:
- write a novel or play about a sheepdog-trials rivalry that covers several years and several tournaments
- write a short story or short play set during just one year’s sheepdog trials, any genre
- write a murder mystery set during the World Sheepdog Trials
- write a romance between rival factions at the World Sheepdog Trials
- write a romance set against the World Sheepdog Trials
- write something from the perspective of the dog(s) at the World Sheepdog Trials
- write a romance between two dogs who are from rival factions at the World Sheepdog Trials
- write something from the perspective of someone who is retiring and for whom this is their last trial
- write something from the perspective of a World Sheepdog Trials widow(er)
- write a poem or a song based around the World Sheepdog Trials
- write a short story about a scandal at the World Sheepdog Trials
- write a story where two dogs connive to get their owners together, or apart, at the World Sheepdog Trials
Now let’s see what non-fiction ideas I can come up with off the hoof:
- write a researched article about the World Sheepdog Trials in general
- write a researched book about the World Sheepdog Trials in general
- write about the history of the World Sheepdog Trials
- write about sheepdogs, what dogs make good sheepdogs, why do some dogs make good sheepdogs, which are the best and which are the worst/funniest?
- write a profile piece on three personalities from the World Sheepdog Trials – an organiser, a spectator, a contestant – using the World Sheepdog Trials as your topical hook
- write about three women in the world of the World Sheepdog Trials using the World Sheepdog Trials as your topical hook
- write an article setting out the pros and cons of sheep farming using the World Sheepdog Trials as your topical hook
- write an article aimed at a vegan/vegetarian publication using the World Sheepdog Trials as your topical hook
- pitch a before, during and after report on the World Sheepdog Trials, and research it and write it up when the time comes (pitch this one ahead of time and get your trip paid for by a market in exchange for an exclusive or just offset the cost of the trip against income tax)
- interview the winners and some of the losers of this year’s World Sheepdog Trials (again, pitch this one ahead of time and get your trip paid for by a market in exchange for an exclusive or just offset the cost of the trip against income tax)
Still struggling? Use the venue (Gill Hall Estate, in Dromore, County Down) as a launch pad and the World Sheepdog Trials as a topical hook (these are some of my own evergreen ideas that I use often):
- where to go in County Down
- where to stay in County Down
- where to eat in County Down
- places of interest in County Down
- what to do with the kids in County Down
- family holidays in County Down
- a potted history of County Down
- a potted history of the Gill Hall Estate
- walking in County Down
- cycling in County Down
- birdwatching in County Down
- what County Down is famous for
- 5 reasons to visit County Down
- 5 reasons not to visit County Down
- everything you need to know about County Down
- to 30. replace ‘County Down’ with ‘Dromore’ or ‘Northern Ireland’, or both
And if you’re still struggling, choose a different topic from the initial throwaway list and drill down from there.
Over to you
If you use any of these ideas, then do let me know and tell me how they fared. And if you’d like to say thanks, you can support me on Ko-fi. They take a lot of work and your appreciation would be very much appreciated.
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