Sometimes I feel less inspired than I would like. For the last few days, I've had plenty of ideas that I'd love to put on paper, but nothing seems to be coming out right. Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. Isn't that a common problem with writers? We stress out about the words to the point where they flow like treacle. It isn't always easy to snap ourselves out of it, either.
When I sat down to write this post, I wasn't feeling any more confident. I wanted to say something profound about life and writing and the stories that we use to examine our shared humanity. That sounds like a lot of pressure, so it shouldn't be surprising that doing this to myself did not help my creative output in the slightest.
Then I gave myself permission to have a little bit of fun with this. Why not? We all need a little fun and laughter from time to time, and when you're a writer, getting playful with words can also help unblock the pathways responsible for creative output. Sounds like a win-win scenario, right?
That's why I wrote a little Mad Lib style story to share with you. It was so much fun to write something silly, and all of you can have a good time filling in the blanks to create something uniquely amusing. I've always enjoyed writing stories like this, and I'll highly recommend it to anyone who's feeling the creative strain.
Before going on to the story, write a list of these 12 things. Feel free to be as zany with your responses as you want!
Texture
Beverage
Symptom
of illness
Annoying
song title
City
Country
Verb
Noun
Emotion
Job
title
Color
Shape
Do you have your list ready? Okay. Going in order, insert each response into the blanks to create your very own story. Have fun!
Launch Day
The
day of the launch was not going _______.
In fact, an accurate description of events would include a few crude
words. One of the astronauts had too
much ______ and was experiencing the fallout from that. Dealing with ______ on launch day wasn’t
exactly ideal.
Then
there was the issue with the lead engineer Stan. Some wires got mixed up, and now the
spacecraft’s navigation system played _______ on repeat. Without a proper navigation system in place,
the ship could easily end up in _______ rather than in orbit.
No
one had been able to reach Stan, either.
His answering machine said that he’d gone to _______ to _______. It wouldn’t have been a problem if they had
more time. Delaying a mission was
commonplace enough. Except they had to
launch today to save Earth from destruction via _______.
Sarah
was determined, however, not to feel ______ about it. She had a job to do. She hadn’t been appointed ______ for nothing! It was only a few wires, right? How complicated could that be?
She
looked up at the enormous _______ ________ of a spacecraft and steeled her
nerves. She had a job to do. Today she could end up being a hero. Or she could doom humanity to
extinction. No pressure.
* * *
How did your version of the story turn out? How do you think it ends for our hero, and for humanity as whole?
