[AE.NiNoBilMa] March NiNoBilMa: Must be the Season of the Silly
Another month, another iteration of NiNoBilMa, my ongoing, year-long attempt to acquire or renew writing skills I was meant to have learned as a child and student.
I'm going to permit myself a moment of celebration that I've nailed my goal of getting this out on the first Monday of the month, and then get down to it.
This month and next month are both going to be about breaking down inhibitions for me. I have often found that writer's block for me is a matter of being weighed down with inhibitions.
In my younger years, I knew how to write with abandon... I was both better able at dreaming up ideas without hesitating or overthinking, and at committing them to paper.
For March, I am specifically going to work on embracing silliness without cringing or trying to make it less silly. This is not out of any desire to write silly things in particular, so much as it is about getting to a point where I can write without first convincing myself that what I'm writing is not too silly.
Officially, I'm leaving behind the five-point outline format for now. I might use it if I find myself stuck on composition, but it's not an actual part of the exercise.
But I have found the "roll six sided die for exercise" aspect useful and I think that when the goal is write without worrying about silliness, pointedly working with a prompt I'm given would be very helpful.
I'm also giving myself a warm-up exercise this month, something that is a bit more formulaic than the actual exercise are, since I am stepping away from the outlining.
The Warm-Up Exercise:
Go to the random word list generator at https://www.randomlists.com/random-words and get a list of 12 random words.
Write one sentence or lime using each of those words, preferably in the order they're given, and in such a way that they tell a story or a fragment of one, or form a poem.
The Actual Exercises
This month I've got a list of six full, separate prompts rather than three topics done two ways. I'm also swapping out the non-fiction component for poetry this month, as the line between creatively silly non-fiction and fiction is pretty thin, and I find that would like to write more poetry this year.
These exercises are definitely less general-purpose than the previous ones and are based on my own self-perceived weaknesses and things that I would like to shore up for myself.
As always, it's up to anyone participating at home whether they want to also do my "lesson" for themselves, or adapt it for their purposes, or skip it entirely. I'm including my own reasoning in square brackets after each prompts, as an example for things you might consider when considering similar exercises.
Write a scene with conversation between two characters where the dialogue, and any narration reflecting inner thoughts, is completely nonsensical, but where ideally a reader could get a clear impression of what is happening anyway. [Reason: Because I often rely on dialogue to tell the story, which leads to me overthinking the dialogue and underthinking everything else.]
Write an erotically-charged (but not necessarily conventionally sexual) scene driven by a fetish that I don't share and find at least kind of silly. [Because I like writing erotica but my tendency to feel constrained by self-consciousness rears its head there more than most places.]
Write a fictionalized description of a place I have been but with some details changed to be fantastic or impossible. [Because I struggle to describe settings in terms of appearance and layout and worry about getting things wrong.]
Write a poem of 2 to 4 rhyming quatrains, any or no meter. [Because I used to be very good at this kind of poetry and I became self-conscious after I started writing "serious" poetry.]
Write three limericks about topics that aren't current events or politics. [Because I get too hung up about if what I'm writing or doing is "relevant" these days.]
Write a poem that is in some way a nonsense poem: nonsense words, words and phrases with no complete sentences, lines do not relate to one another in any kind of literal fashion, etc. [Because I tend to lean heavily back towards prose when I'm trying to write poetry.]
As usual, my goal is to do each one at least once, so if I roll the die and it's one I've already done and I haven't made it through the whole list yet, I'll move down the list until I find one I haven't, or loop around to the top.
But again, as usual, you don't have to do things the exact way that I do to participate in NiNoBilma. You can set your own prompts or goal for the month, and/or use mine however makes sense to you.
Happy writing!