The Absurd List Exercise

A few years ago, back when I lived closer to Columbus, my big sis wrote this, in permanent marker, on a dry erase board.

absurd list written on dry erase board

We have never been able to wash this off, so nearly ten years later, we still have this list tacked to the refrigerator, and it makes us laugh.

Seeing this inspires me to try a new idea as a warm-up writing exercise.

The exercise?

Make an absurd list.

It doesn’t have to have a theme like “What to Do When I Grow Up,” but if it helps you get your silly gears going, then go for it.

So I just did my free-writing list of “What to Do When I Grow Up,” and this is what I came up with:

  • Learn to Cook a Unicorn
  • Speak Cat
  • Shave my eyebrows
  • Lint-roll the dog
  • Make a sweater for the Eiffel Tower
  • High five Adolf Hitler in the face
  • Fly with the owls
  • Stretch my toes into Nickelodeon slime
  • host a Dalek tea party
  • Put sunglasses on Shakespeare’s dead body
  • arm wrestle the sun

The fun thing about the Absurd List is that it gets your creative muscles moving, and that means you’ll be more receptive to ideas and suggestions, whcih is always a good thing in creative work.

Share some of your absurd lists in the comments below!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Writing Claire’s Story

claire comic post apocalyptic zombie fighter
(Click to enlarge)

So one of my New Years Goals was to write 1000 words a day. Which sounds pretty lofty, but really I can accomplish that in about an hour. Sometimes less.

In writing 1000 words a day, I’m actually getting a LOT of writing done.

It’s not just blog posts either.

Thanks to my 1000 words written a day goal, I’ve revisited an old script of mine, and am now in the process of writing it and continuing off of it.

I’m talking about my post apocalyptic lesbian love story with zombie-killing, starring Claire and Tracy.

claire and tracy in work in progress

I finished editing Chapter 1, and I powered through Chapter 2. It’s a GREAT feeling knowing there’s progress finally being made on a project that’s been on hold for months.

I’ve been revisiting this project in my sketchbook, as well.

claire and tracy comic work in progress art sketch
A Work in Progress (click to enlarge)
claire and tracy comic work in progress art sketch of environment
Sketching out an idea of the world they explore. (Click to enlarge).

And I’ve been doing some sketching to flesh out their world bit by bit.

I’ve also been looking at this list of post-apocalyptic tropes to avoid and what hasn’t been done yet. I’m hoping to add elements of things rarely done in post-apocalyptic stories, pulling inspiration from this list.

Like bike-riding. Oh my shit there need to be more bike riders after cars become useless hunks of metal.

What are some tropes of the post apocalyptic genre you can think of? What hasn’t been done in a zombie story yet that you can think of? Leave them in the comments below. I would love to hear about them!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.