In the military, drill sergeants loved to make me self-destruct. This was a series of five exercises done over and over until I literally could not rise off the floor, which generally didn’t take long. We did these at my kung fu school for fun.

Continuing on our theme of taking everything, I decided to get creative. What sort of things would make me self-destruct emotionally? Mentally?

For those of you who know me, it’s probably a stretch. I’m nothing if not composed. It’s almost to a fault that the more serious the events, the more detached I become from the moment.

There are certainly things that get my goat. I can be annoyed. But what would really turn me inside out?

Here were three I came up with this morning:

• Becoming trapped in my own mind with no bodily control (a vegetable)–trust me, my mind’s a dismal place; also, I’d never be able to do martial arts again
• Watching my family die in a car crash. This actually happened to my uncle and, though I wasn’t there, I can see the car through the windshield, flipping into the trees, watching my family die, as if I were him. It’s utterly devastating.
• Being lowered slowly into a pit filled with tarantulas–I’m not making this up! Okay, so I am. But I’m not making up the part where I would crawl out of my own skin to escape.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write down three things that would destroy you–your sanity, your life, or your composure.

It’ll be kind of like writing yourself as a character into a story. As writers, you might use them, you might bury them and never think on it again.

The premise is unique and compelling. The character is intriguing. The setting is volatile. All the ingredients of success, yes? Not quite.

My story is flat. The MC is lost in the dark, surrounded by things that can kill him, with nothing but a dim light source to keep him alive. Yet it’s not terrifying.

So I let the story simmer. And simmer. And simmer. Finally, after three weeks of agonizing over the scene, I’ve realized how to up the stakes; how to put it over the top.

Put. Out. The. Torch.

That’s all he’s got left? Well then I have to take it away! That’s right, three weeks to realize that. Le sigh.

You see, this is our job as the wielder of pen. We must put our characters in impossible places so they can show us what they’re made of. We can’t afford to be nice. We must make the readers hate us and love our characters. When we go to a book signing, they should exclaim, “How could you! I hate you.” Then we can say our job is done.

Take everything. Leave them nothing.

Everyone needs this once in a while. There’s nothing new here, but this is a beautiful rendition of the basic reminder to keep seeing the world through a fresh eye, titled 29 Ways to Stay Creative.

The Mind

Check out this collage of people texting! Sound boring? Try it out and see; it’s provoking in every way. Enjoy.

Find long words pulchritudinous? Or do you suffer hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia? I didn’t, until I saw this word. What the bleep is that?

The Martial Way

Struggling with your confidence? Wondering if you can really make a difference? Receive a devastating rebuke? Check out a few famous faces that ignored the critics.

The Craft

Mary DeMuth guest blogs about how she published her first e-book at Rachel Gardner’s blog.

K.M. Weiland blogs about techniques for writing characters of the opposite gender.

Liana Brooks talks about Amazon’s 99 cent books as an alternative to publishing short stories via traditional methods, and the pros and cons of each. Brilliant!

The Romans were masterful at stealing ideas from the countries they conquered. They were also pretty damn good at looking at old things in a new light, distilling out the noise, and finding the most functional approach to a problem.

That said, what I love about this article isn’t Roman ingenuity. It’s the way different people react.

The article itself tries to take this single ship at the bottom of the ocean and discover how it applies to the entire Roman civilization.

I look at this article and wonder what sort of eccentric person ordered it built, whether he was on it when it sank, and what sort of unique and amazing story that crew would probably have if dead men could tell tales.

Where does your inspiration come from? Do you write in the mornings or the evenings? How do you get the idea for a plot? How do you write such vivid characters?

All journeyman writers know these questions. If you have been to a reading or read an interview of a popular author, they abound. This question bubbles up within every student of the art at some point. What is often missing, and what even the talented author often cannot articulate to words, is the real question: Where, for you, do your inventions begin and how do you recognize them?

For each author, this is different. But essential to the process for every author is analysis. If you do not look, if you do not see, if you do not stop to polish an idea, then how can you recognize dusty gem from dusty rock? Thus, you must begin by finding a strategy that causes you to dig into everything you see, to be curious about every experience of your day.

I’m taking a course on creative writing, and ran across this passage about the importance of journals as an intimate, vital friend to the writer. Enjoy.

Keep the journal regularly, at least at first. It doesn’t matter what you write and it doesn’t matter very much how much, but it does matter that you make a steady habit of writing. A major advantage of keeping a journal regularly is that it will put you in the habit of observing in words. If you know at dawn that you are committed to writing so many words before dusk, you will half-consciously tell the story of your day to yourself as you live it, finding a phrase to catch whatever catches your eye. When that habit is established, you’ll begin to find that whatever invites your attention or sympathy, your anger or curiosity, may be the beginning of invention. Whoever catches your attention may be the beginning of a character.
Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway