These little buckets were originally the wedding favour pots at my friends wedding which I have repurposed. I thought it was a nice wintery image to share for a writing exercise 🙂
What do they make you think of?
Write about them or the associated emotions for 5 minutes and see where it takes you!
Now the first half of the month is over, I feel it is time to bring out the Christmas Cheer and some festive inspiration and because I am still obsessed with Pinterest, I have create a Christmas Board.
I find working my way through large caches of images like this gets me in the right frame of mind for writing about a subject 🙂
Sometimes the myths rise up from the depths of memory and appear real and concrete for moments that will stand to focus time and reset the world once more. Each time the tale is told differently, good becomes bad and bad becomes benevolent and the old magic twists itself around altering endings and shifting meaning but the essence is always the same.
One such time the moon came to be, reborn at a time of conjunction, this time there was no Huntress, no Manipulative Mirrored beauty, nor was she Queen of Death or in love with the animals of the Earth that she could never reach.
No none of that was to occur, not at this time, instead the girl appeared, silver bright hair and large dark eyes that had the heart of the cosmos within them. She was somewhere between the age of five and eight with a fluid quick silver dress with an ice blue patch and ingrained soot upon her bear feet and legs.
Her name was Luna.
She was a wraith-waith, she was scared and she was a ghost to those around her. She had a month to be but no one wanted such a child near them, they thought she would suck the life from them, that she was the Dead Moon who’s false light lived in the waters of the Fenns and Marsh and the Swamps and the Sinking Muds and Quick Sands and the bogs of the lands where the moons light could not shine.
They were of course not wrong but nor where they right, not this time, not in this incarnation. She was just a small child lost and alone. They rejected her and chased her from village to village, as the Moon grew so did her powers, so did her solidity until mid month a woman saw her for what she was and took her in. She fed her broth and stale bread, not out of meaness but because that was all she had.
She tucked the child in her own bed and sung her a lullaby, it was an old song full of longing, the woman knew the child would fade, she sensed the other world about her but that did not stop her loving her in those moments, in the cross over from the real to the dream.
But she drifted to nothing but a mist of memory as the moon dwindled to a slither, she sat on the porch invisible completely that last day, watching the woman look for her. She was a Dead Moon now, a moon that no longer shone in the sky and her time had come.
She left and walked out to the hills where the foggy vales came creeping, searching for her, wrapping themselves around her until she was nothing but dew for the frost.
Sometime she made patterns for the woman on the window panes and sometimes she sat upon the moon combing her long hair and smiling down at the only love she had known in her time.
When a moon of Lovely Death took the woman decades later she took her hand and then together they skipped into the night that killed unwary travellers and faded until the next time that it was their time, which would never quiet be the same again. But for this eternity they had a happy ending.
A little early perhaps but for those who like it all Christmas like – here are ten story starters to kick start the festive story writing 🙂
1) It was December the 25th but all was not well in the little house in the middle of suburbia.
2) Snow clouds smugded the skyline, a sickly yellow that would bloom the light and fluffy flakes they had all be waiting for.
3) It was BBQ time! All that was left was for Uncle Cerol to arrive, but he was always late
4) The little santa doll was the best thing ever and Amy was going to look after him
5) Tick tock the mouse hang out her sock
6) A fest like none she had ever seen lay before her, her feet still bare and her face still sooty, she walked towards it waiting to be told no.
7) The Snowmen Wars went on a while and everyone agreed they had never seen it’s like before.
8) Aunty May just could not help herself – she never could and now the toddler was in tears and she was not a shred remorseful
9) The house looked like it had been hosting the unicorn potty training club, globs of sticky glitter were everywhere
10) They were going for Christmas drinks at her Dad’s best friends house, she’d made a special card that said Seasons Greetings
Here are some icing snowflakes that I made, what would you do with them? Do they remind you of anything? Use the photograph to get the creative juices flowing 🙂
Use these story starters to get the imagination going and to get you writing!
1) The icicles hung in a line, not perfect nor straight but they were…
2) The fairy lights had somehow been warmer in the past, all their pretty lights in defused glows, now they were harsh, hurting the eye.
3) Candy canes! So many little tiny candy canes, they were just the right size
4) The jingle of bells echoed on the air, floating some distance and with a hint of snow to come
5) Ted was starting not to like Christmas, it had once been the best day of his life now, he got forgotten when the new things arrive and
6) Excitement was high amongst the kids as the choir master tried to quiet them down back stage, rumour had it that the Mayor herself had come to see the show.
7) The creature from beyond the nth dimension was not sure how it in all it’s slimy-ness had ended up here at the teddy bears picnic with a paper crown upon it’s head.
8) The little blue-white fairies sparkled as they dashed here and there, there was a lot of work to be done before dawn.
9) Hunger was stark within the ice bound mountains and the wolves knew were a ready source of meat lay without tooth, without claw to defend itself.
10) The glass baubles had been passed down through the family, they were never allowed to touch them
But I know have a The Little Book of Festive Poetry mug and a bunch of Christmas cards – sadly they still have not arrived and are not in large enough bulk to be selling them properly but basically the mugs are £8 and the cards are £2 each. Next year I do hope to have them a lot cheaper and to be selling them via various on line shops etc…
I have also done a book or rather story Advent calendar for my little ones 🙂 I cover a graze box (a box pre-ordered snack thingies come in) and put a picture from a story I’ve written on the front and fill it with some craft bits. They do the craft and get the story read to them 🙂
This also serves the purpose of making me sort out how many stories I have and what needs to be done to them to make them publishable etc… This year they are not all winter-Christmas stories but in the future it will be 🙂
A soft darkness has enveloped the sky, pearlised clouds are twisting around themselves, fluorescing and threatening, it is almost time for the End Time to begin. The cold wastes that these lands will become will be beautiful and softened once more. No more harsh corners or ugly scars, the snow will cover all of that, will hide it away forever and ever or until it heals itself.
We have been waiting for this, sleeping in ever more crowded and dwindling numbers, huddled for cold in the permafrost but now our domain shall grow once more. We shall take the bodied of those that ravished the planet and ground them as flour in our natural mills, the terminal moraines will be made of bone and the fine earth will be flour of flesh and when we retreat once more, if we leave survivors, they will rejoice in the fertility of the land.
They will have forgotten this path they have trod, where they tread to extinguish us forever, such a foolish notion for even if we here were all melted to the liquid warmth that oozes everywhere these days. It would not stop our brethren from the skies, they await in the comets and in the clouds at the edge of perception, and deep deep in the heart of the void. Dark Clear the ice world orbits no star but has it’s own offspring satallites. It is home to us who dwell.
And we wait, the ice will come but first Let It Snow.
Due to the success (at least for me) of the Inspire the Muse and Halloween boards on Pinterest as writing stimuli, I have created a Deep Ice board. Pinterest and Deviant Art are also great places to track down artists for book covers etc…
It is day two of Advent and that got me thinking about cool smallish writing challenges – why not write a series of stories for advent. Make a calendar out of them?
24 stories about winter or Christmas or just random stuff?
Or 24 snippets of a longer story which can be read out on Christmas Eve in it’s full. Or do a collaboration, you write the odd numbered days, they the even and you swap?
At the very least it will make an epic Advent calendar next year 🙂