Welcome to the first post on the H.J VandeRiet site. If you’re here, it’s because like me, you love to write, and you love to read. Maybe you’ve subscribed to my email series, where you’ll receive the weekly writing prompt the week before I post my own creation here, allowing you time to craft a story, and post it to the Facebook group. Or, maybe you just wandered down a writing rabbit hole and found yourself here (I promise, there are no Evil Queens or Mad Hatters…there may be a Cheshire Cat wandering around though).
I started writing when I was nine years old, and what prompted me to do so was reading my father’s first short story: Stoney Star: Death to the Rich. He wrote it when he was quite young and VERY into James Bond; basically it was James Bond meets the Hardy Boys, only Stoney Star didn’t maul women on a regular basis, as I recall.
Anyway, I started writing, and I have written semi-consistently though not really ever since. Life happens, and as such, I don’t write every single day *GASP* I know this is blasphemy, and I’m sure there will be other professional writers out there waiting in the wings to stone me, but contrary to what a lot of them say, I don’t believe you have to write EVERY SINGLE DAY to be a good writer. Sure, it helps, certainly is good to clean the pipes. But what makes a good writer is a good idea, good execution, and strong sense of character, IMHO.
I like to free-write, personally. This is how I often come up with my best ideas. I find a prompt, and just start writing, and usually what comes out is mostly crap, but occasionally there’s a nugget of something worthwhile in the crap, so I take that out and polish it up, and before you know it, I have a piece featured somewhere I’ll never make money with, but then, writing is about A LOT more than aspiring to be Scrooge McDuck swimming in coins.
Basically, free-writing with or without a prompt allows me to get rid of the noise in my brain so I can write something worthwhile (there’s a few voices talking at once in there, but only two of them speak English).
But, seeing as I’m publishing my first novel (after coming to terms with my crippling sense of Imposter Syndrome), I thought it might be fun to give something back for free here on the site. And so, the Weekly Writing Prompts will commence.
Thank you for being here, and for supporting the book. It has been my lifelong dream to be published.
PS: Since you sat through all that, it’s only fair you get to see the first Writing Prompt. So, here you go
Free-write a response to this writing prompt, and then turn that into a short-story, 1-2 pages in length.
If you could book a flight tomorrow for anywhere in the world, where would you go, and why?
For more content, like H.J VandeRiet on Facebook to see our weekly Coffee Talk live-streams, keep up on Otherside news, and see other people’s writing creations from the prompts. You can also follow me on Instagram at H.J VandeRiet
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