You may have heard of automatic writing or "stream of consciousness". If you want to do it like the surrealist poets, write at speed, without stopping, without plotting or planning, without worrying if it's "good" or if it makes sense (in fact, the less sense - the more abstract and strange it is - the better). Just let your mind wander - let the words spill from your brain onto the page in whatever form they come.
Example:
"I don't know what to write so the cousins of the fourth temple made their appearance suddenly and the erstwhile pyramids scheming like the eponymous elephants licked and supped at the tertiary sector's best people who were stood with clipboards and fathoming the depths of their collective wisdom brought orange juice and sandwiches for all and sundry when the sun came up and the moons of other planets began to form on the horizon..." etc., etc.
Now your turn!
*Hint: if you don't know how to start, pick a line from the writing above, and use this as your beginning sentence; then whatever comes into your head after that is GOLD. Just keep writing!
Rules: maximum 250 words.
I attended the Sci-fi writing class recently and tried automatic writing for the first time-
"Imagine A World In Which . . . "
Enjoy:
Imagine a world in which nothing changes. The air is still and the sounds never move. The sands of time don’t trickle. But the tapping is constant. Tap tap tap. Is it annoying? Nobody knows. Nobody is there to witness it. Yet.
Across the galaxy they come. He doesn’t know it yet either. The man that is immutable. The nothing man will change everything. And slowly the sands of time start to shift. A great gurgling from the belly of the beast. The sun seams hotter today and the moon shifts orbit on the horizon. Has water started to flow. Maybe it is gravity. A shift. The planet knows what will soon arrive. Even if he doesn’t.
Its dark like it always has been outside the hull. The sails flap red against the dark. And the lunar event glints out in the distance, the forever. Space dust deciding the direction. Or fate. Or indecision. Or not caring. The nothing inside the nothing man.
Picking up the pace now. Caught in orbit. We move with them. Across the skies. Until a sun is born on the horizon. If space has a horizon. The tempo slows. The tapping slows. A new beat is born. The sound of an engine. A spacecraft coming into contact with the atmosphere of a new planet. A new day is born. Something will change.
A boot hits dust. Sands shift. Time shifts. He was here before. If there ever is a before on a timeless world. Or was it after? He will come again. And we have been waiting.
Bethan T Vickers.
I love the beetles that drink the meltwater! Some great work being posted.