Grab a cuppa and a comfy seat, and let’s chat a while.
It’s Monday again - time for Coffee and Conversation.
When I was six, my familywas driving on a highway late at night. Streaks of headlights and taillights painted the dark. For the first time, I realized that each car held people living lives as important to them as mine was to me.
I wanted to know what those lives were, and to share my own…
Hey there! How are you, this fine Monday?
April is drawing to a close. I’ve completed my CampNaNoWriMo challenge, and I’m in the process of writing the last two stories for my Blogging from A-Z Challenge.
So, does that mean that I’m going to breathe a sigh of relief, and put my feet up?
Uh, no. I’m a writer, and writers write. Writing is fun, and there are stories happening in my head all the time, anyway, so …
I’ll be participating in the Story-A-Day May Challenge beginning Thursday, May 1, and continuing on throughout the month.
And, just to make things interesting, I’m going to follow the prompts in Julie Duffy‘s A Month of Writing Prompts 2014 , which I bought last week.
And, because I really dig interesting, I’m going to add another wrinkle.
When there is a celebrity prompt (as there will be, on May 1, from none other than Neil Gaiman!), I will do everything I can to incorporate it into the day’s story. Depending on the nature of the prompts, that may not be possible, because of my final wrinkle….
Each post will center around the characters T’Pol and Trip from Star Trek: Enterprise. Yup, that’s right. I plan to write canon fan fiction as my challenge. So, I may have to adapt or alter a few contemporary prompts, or skip them if I can’t fit them into the operating rules of the fictional reality I’m choosing to play in.
Why Enterprise, you ask?
Well. the answer is simple:
Because I want to. And, maybe more importantly, T’Pol and Trip want me to. And those two…
Those two can be mightily convincing, especially when they want the same thing. As Trip observed, they really do make a hell of a team.
They’ve been in my head for a year now, insisting – T’Pol quite logically, and Trip most passionately – that there is much more to their story than four seasons of Enterprise showed. I mean, there are all those places between scenes, after episodes, mess hall chats, neuropressure sessions, projects worked on together…and a days-long trip on a transport to Vulcan.
Since I was a little girl, I’ve wondered about the hidden places – in people’s lives, in relationships, and in stories.
T’Pol and Trip seem to have quite a lot of hidden places, bwtween them, and a relationship that intrigues me.
And so, for May, I will indulge my own desires to peek into those deeper places, and let my imagination run free.
That would be payoff enough, but there’s more.
This month will also be about stretching my writing muscles, and challenging myself to create something new each day, within specific parameters, and then polish it up and release it out into the world
Quickly, before I have time to think it through.
It’s a chance for me to find out what else happens with these two intriguing characters. What does an interspecies romance look like, when so much of their understanding isn’t shared, and instinct can’t be relied upon?
It’s a month-long self-indulgence, an acknowledgment that fancy and fantasy are potent and necessary tools, for the fiction writer – and maybe for us all!
I will be posting each day’s story, in whole or in part, with a bit about the prompt or prompts I used, and the episode or episodes that inspired them. I invite you to come by, once or more, and enjoy my playful explorations. Leave a comment or join the conversation if you’re so inclined; I’ll have a variety of beverages and snacks available all month!
