Month: December 2023

Happy Friday Fun-Day, Scrap Binners! And happy last night of Hanukkah to those who celebrate! It’s hard to believe that we’re already reaching the end of those eight holy nights, six days away from Yule and the Winter Solstice, and ten days away from Christmas. With all these winter holidays going on, I think it’s time for another holiday-themed Friday Fun-Day writing prompt. This time, I want to turn the spotlight on the big man himself: Santa Claus.

We’ve seen a million different stories—especially movies and TV specials—starring Santa Claus: The Year Without a Santa Claus, Fred Claus, and Disney+’s latest streaming sensation, The Santa Clauses. Honestly, at this time of year, there is no shortage of the cookie-eating, gift-giving, home intruder. It can get a bit tedious to see so many different versions of the man in the red suit year after year, especially if you have children.

However, there is a plus side to this dilemma: his origins, as a character, remain an enigma. We do have the historical origins with Saint Nicholas, even if those are questionable as well. As a character, though, Santa Claus has a wide variety of origins. Whether he’s a mythical being, a man who became an immortal being because of his good deeds, or a man who picked up the mantel in a long line of red-suited gift-givers, Santa Claus’s roots are forever changing.

That’s what I want you to do with today’s writing prompt. Explore Santa Claus’s origins. All myths have their beginnings—what are Santa Claus’s?

Where was he born? Does he have a family? How did he start giving gifts to children? How did he start breaking into houses without facing any backlash? Who exactly are the elves, and how did Santa Claus fall in with them? Why did Santa Claus choose to go to the North Pole, and how does he survive up there?

The questions are limitless.

Since the questions are limitless, give yourself five minutes to jot down notes and let your imagination run wild. Then use these notes to create a short story about the origins of Santa Claus. The story can be a whimsical children’s story, like “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, or a hysterical yet sometimes tragic story of familial dysfunction, like Fred Claus. The only real limit here—beyond the five minutes for your notes—is your creativity.

I highly encourage you to make Santa Claus as well-rounded a character as possible. Remember, this is an exercise in seeing how well you can take an already flat character—a well-known one, at that—and make him into someone with a truly fleshed-out background. However, don’t forget to have fun with it. It is your story, your version of Christmas, after all.

Share your vision with the world!

Feel free to share your experience with this exercise and the resulting short story in the comments below. For an extra writing prompt, don’t forget to join my paid Patreon membership at this link.

Happy holidays to all!

My mom got me the best holiday gift possible: a Cameo video from Mark Sheppard, the genius actor behind Supernatural’s Crowley. It’s easy to say that this gift did not just make my day or my week; it made my year. (For those who don’t know, I am a big Supernatural fan, especially Crowley.) Yet it’s not just the fact that it was Mark Sheppard who appeared in the video that made it so special. It was the message that he left for me that really lifted me out of the doldrums.

My mom told Mark Sheppard that I was having writer’s block. And it’s true. I’ve been having the worst writer’s block of my life recently. I’m especially having a hard time writing for my ghostwriting project. But Mark Sheppard reminded me of a basic truth of writing: writers just have to write, even if it turns out to be rubbish.

It’s advice that we, as writers, hear often. Just sit down and write. It doesn’t matter if it’s rubbish, so long as you get some writing done. However, that’s easier said than done.

Oftentimes, we say it’s because we don’t have time. Most of us have jobs outside of our writing, you know. We also have our families and social obligations, not to mention when we get sick (I just recently got over Covid myself). Yet even when we do have the time, we still can’t seem to find the inspiration. There’s too much noise, too many social media posts to get caught up on, too many TV shows and movies and books to dive into, too many distractions…

The truth, though, actually goes much deeper than that.

We are afraid of the rubbish.

Many of us writers are perfectionists. You could say that all artists are. We have a paralyzing fear of our writing not turning out perfectly the first time that we get it down onto paper, and so we just don’t write anything at all. Alternatively, we do write something, and then we rewrite that little something again and again and again, rather than marching forth with the rest of the piece.

There’s something that we need to realize, though: there’s no such thing as a perfect first draft. In fact, all first drafts are probably rubbish. That’s why we get feedback, revise, and edit, after we have finished the first draft.

If we want to make it as writers, if we truly want to push past our writer’s blocks, we need to embrace our rubbish, not run away from it. We need to get past the fear of imperfection and just write. Even if it’s just a little bit of rubbish every day, we need to write something.

After all, one word soon becomes two words. Two words become a sentence. A sentence becomes a paragraph, a paragraph becomes a page, a page becomes a chapter, and a chapter becomes a book. It just takes persistence. The polishing of the turd, so to speak, can wait until later.

Yes, we have our obligations that we must tend to before our writing. That is the way of life. However, we should not let a fear of turning out rubbish keep us from writing at all. It is our passion, and we cannot allow anything to stand in the way of us pursuing that passion, let alone ourselves.

Now, in the words of Crowley, let’s go raise some Hell.

To support my writing on here and across platforms like Vocal and Medium, get a paid subscription to my Patreon.

Happy Friday, beloved readers! It’s hard to believe that it’s a little over two weeks until Christmas, huh? And Hanukkah already started last night! (Those are just the holidays that I know of.) It’s hard to believe how quickly the holidays are going by. Hopefully, even with all the hustle and bustle of this time of year, you are taking some time for your writing. Whether you already are or you need some inspiration to help you get started again, here is a writing prompt that will (hopefully) get your writing gears going.

For this prompt, I want to do something to go along with the increasing darkness of winter and to complement my “All Summer in a Day” writing prompt. I’m calling this one the “Eternal Night” writing prompt.

Imagine that, one day, the sun suddenly goes dark, and all electricity goes out. The sun has not died out, but for whatever reason, all light has disappeared from our planet but for the stars and fire. What do you think would happen to humankind? How would we handle being stuck in such a dark, primitive state? Would we panic? Turn on each other? We would come together and try to survive in this brand new world? Or we would just die out, as T.S. Eliot once said, not with a bang, but with a whimper?

Like with the “All Summer in a Day” writing prompt, I want you to spend about five minutes thinking over this scenario and jotting down your notes for it. Then turn it into a short story, piece of microfiction, or a poem. It can be whatever you want–horror, science fiction, fantasy, apocalyptic fiction, whatever fits the notes that you came up with. The only limits are your imagination!

This writing prompt will stretch your imagination. You might even be tempted to go beyond what would happen to humanity to explain why the light went away, which would probably take far more than the five minutes allotted to the note-taking in this exercise. Great! If you feel so compelled, bend the rules of this exercise and let this exercise take you where it will! Remember, these writing prompts are just to get you started writing. There are no strict rules to them, so if you need to be flexible to follow your imagination and creativity, so be it.

Let me know how this exercise turns out for you in the comments below.

For a bonus Friday Fun-Day writing prompt, be sure to join my Patreon page.

Happy holidays, everyone! It has been quite a while since I’ve written on here. I’ve been busy with my beta reading, editing, and related work. I even started ghost writing over the summer. (Not an easy job, I’ll tell you that much–but I’ll save that for another post.) I plan on revitalizing this blog, though, starting with some big news: I have started a Patreon page for The Writer’s Scrap Bin and my own writing.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a bit of an experiment for me. I’ll be testing out different incentives on the Patreon account to see what the community wants, starting with exclusive writing advice like what you see here on The Writer’s Scrap Bin and my own fiction and poetry. There will also be updates as I start on my journey towards the ultimate goal for any fiction writer: writing my first full-length fiction novel.

Don’t worry; this doesn’t mean that I will be discontinuing The Writer’s Scrap Bin. As I said earlier in the post, I will plan on revitalizing the blog to bring it back to its former glory. Instead, think of the Patreon page as supplemental material that will–hopefully–help to keep the blog going.

As I stumble through this new experience, I will share on here my obstacles and lessons so that you, my regular readers, can benefit from my pitfalls and successes. After all, what use is going through this Patreon process if I don’t share the wisdom that I earn from it?

So, come! Join me on this next part of The Writer’s Scrap Bin’s journey and become a patron on Patreon. Just follow this link. You might just find some interesting content or meet some new, supportive community members along the way.