Planning - Rachel’s Roll & Sort

This is not the first time my wife, Rachel, has rolled the Story Cubes, but this is the first time she has sorted them. I gave her the option to do as much of the prep work as she felt comfortable with, including telling me any character names, plot requirements, or what the symbols on the dice meant. She decided that simply grouping the dice together was enough for her. While I enjoyed this choice because it allowed me to be a bit more creative, maybe one day I can convince her to give me a prompt. But not for awhile because this was the last of my short stories for now.

With her sorting, I felt a little stumped. I had seen a lot of these symbols before but I didn't want to use them in the same way. Plus that opening line, "I'm just a beetle that lives in a tree," kept going through my head. To top it all off, I usually followed it up with some dumb rhyme. The joys of parenthood. I find myself regularly rhyming or talking in prose just because most of what I read now is written that way.

I decided just to get weird with it. Throw the timer aside, pull up a rhyming thesaurus, and just make it happen. As an added bonus, it will force me to use shorter sentences and fewer commas. I really love using commas.

It was quite the departure from my normal fare, but I think you will be surprised to find "Ptolemy's Tales" is as well.

When I started this blog this past summer, it was to serve a purpose beyond an excuse to sit and write more often. The goal was to experiment with stories that I didn't really care about so that I could find my voice. I learned many lessons throughout this experiment and I am incredibly excited to return to my book in the next entry to this site.

That's right. The next entry will be the Prologue of my novel. I am both terrified and ecstatic to put even the smallest piece of this project out into the world.