I haven’t done a lot of writing this week, but I’ve been making progress on my ROW80 goals even so.

I’ve been making lists of story ideas to get ready for my upcoming short story classes. One idea that I had a few weeks ago, that I spent some time with this week, is finding story songs and using them to spark story ideas.  Friends shared a bunch of story songs with me (I need to put that list on here somewhere), and I came up with a few as well, and the idea seems to be taking off.  So far, I have story ideas from “Delta Dawn” by Helen Reddy and “Angie Baby,” also by Helen Reddy.  I have a few more songs that are tugging at me, so I’m going to dig up the lyrics and see what other stories emerge.

On top of all that, my favorite podcasters at StoryWonk launched a new podcast this week.  It’s called The Dollar Short, and it’s focused on examining some classic short stories and taking inspiration from them.  The first story was Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”  It’s more of a vignette, but it’s a fabulous character study, and I’m toying with a new idea that came to me from reading it.

To keep up with my other goals, I’m planning on some writing time this evening.  I’m going to look around for some description exercises so I can start honing that skill, because the only other writing session I did this week was a bit of free writing.

Oh, if anyone’s interested, on Monday my tiny online writing support group (on Facebook) is going to start reading and discussing Judy Reeves’ Wild Women, Wild Voices.  Come over and join in if you’re interested: Wild Minds Writers.

That’s about it over here.  I hope the words are treating you well!