WORD SPLATTER 2025

January 30, 2025

Dear Writer Friend,

Well, I tried doing something over the past 12 weeks. You know what? I feel it was an epic FAIL. WHY? Never have I felt my creative life so choked and suffocating! I mean, almost to the point of stopping writing completely! WHAT??? I know! Right? INSANE! Me? The Word Shepherd feeling like giving UP?

Yep.

So, what did I try? Well, considering this season of life I’m in (caregiver to 3) I figured it wasn’t the time in my life to create new things. My thought process was I needed to finish writing projects I had in various stages. I mean, when I’m caring for two parents, and helping our son navigate cancer and chemo, I don’t have time to add new things to my creative well. At least that’s what I planned and thought.

However, as I slogged through the days, I’ve had this feeling of angst and, for lack of a better word, loss. November,  December, and January have been busy to say the least in my personal life navigating all the ins, outs, ups and downs of the various hats I’m wearing. I go to bed tired, and wake up tired [can I get an Amen?] But, I do make time daily to work on my writing even if some day it’s only 10 or 15 minutes.

So, back to my angst…there was this unease or unrest in my spirit, and I couldn’t put a clear definition on what it was. That was until I was cleaning out my emails, and found some old emails from something I took part in 2019, 2020, and 2021. [ Have I ever mentioned I’m an email hoarder?]

These were the emails from a month-long “idea-generating” challenge I took part in. There were daily prompts meant to do nothing but spark ideas. So, I started reading (or in this case re-reading them but again, they are years old) one email daily. I allowed myself 10 minutes to generate, germinate, and nurture ideas to spark and ignite in my mind. I had to tweak some of the prompts because originally the challenge was for children’s picture book writers.

OH MY GOODNESS Y’ALL!

Those days rejuvenated my creative spirit! Even though I haven’t written any more words than I would have, the creative time playtime with ideas and having fun with my words has been like a LIFE-GIVING BREATH to my creativity! All in only 10 minutes a day!

Would you be interested in a fun little “curating ideas” challenge? I am in the process of organizing my prompts I created and massaging the prompts so that they fit writers of all levels and all genre.

Then we will have fun with the first Write More Write Now WORD SPLATTER 2025!

Ps. The prompts are suitable for all levels and all genres of authors.

Pss. This is meant to be a writing time of ease. Only spend about 10 minutes for each daily prompt. This is a time of idea gathering, not fleshing out your next novel, blog piece, chapter book or character sketch!

Psss. Don’t get overwhelmed. Remember your genre and keep your focus on generating ideas that you may (or may not) use. It’s all an experiment. I have results from my 2019 challenge that I’m still “baking” in my brain!