Greetings SnoValley Writes! Writers!
 
I know many of you are swamped in National Novel Writing Month. I have descended into the second week sucking chest wound of word count deficeit. However, I’ll be working hard tomorrow to catch up. I get to live tomorrow — our national holiday of Veteran’s Day — as I wish, as a full-time writer. Seeings as I’m a veteran, I feel it’s only right I get to spend one day a year doing as I wish. I’ll take my combat ears, messed up neck, back, pelivs and cow knees for a walk with my new puppy and get the delta brain waves of creativity engaged first thing in the morning and then meet all those who care to at Isadora’s for a double-your-word-count day beginning at 9:30 a.m.  Won’t you join me?
 
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Invention.
 
Said to be the mother of necessity.
 
Therefore today’s prompt is about invention. Write about it. Create your own. Show how an invention either negatively or positively impacted your main character. Need some inspiration — watch a little TED tv on YouTube. Go back in history. Write about man discovering fire or the wheel or gunpowder. Get at least one scene out. If you have the luxury to not stop until you reach “the end,” do so.
 
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Writer’s Digest’s Short Story competition deadline is Dec. 1.  Here’s the details. Would love for you all to enter and ….make great things happen for your writing.
 
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And now your moment of Writing Zen:
 
“Young Castle called me “Scoop.” “Good Morning, Scoop. What’s new in the word game?”

I might ask the same of you,” I replied.

I’m thinking of calling a general strike of all writers until mankind finally comes to its senses. Would you support it?”

Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the police or the firemen walking out.”

Or the college professors.”

Or the college professors,” I agreed. I shook my head. “No, I don’t think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.”

I just can’t help thinking what a real shake up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems…”

And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?” I demanded.

They’d die more like mad dogs, I think–snarling & snapping at each other & biting their own tails.”

I turned to Castle the elder. “Sir, how does a man die when he’s deprived of the consolation of literature?”

In one of two ways,” he said, “petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.”

Neither one very pleasant, I expect,” I suggested.

No,” said Castle the elder. “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle)

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Casondra Brewster
Writer/Editor/Literary Mentor
 
http://www.casondrabrewster.com
http://www.martiuscatalyst.com
http://www.snovalleywrites.org
 
“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.”
Anais Nin