Creative Nudge #9 - Taste

 Before I get started on the Creative Nudge for today I just wanted to let you know there is only one day left to win the above book!! Hush Money was a great read that reminds me of John Grisham's work, only written with a younger and edgier tone. Go enter to win it!  There are very few entries so far so you have a good chance of being the winner.

Now onto today's Creative Nudge! As I explained last week, I am going to spend the next few weeks focusing on the different senses as a device to help add descriptive flavor to my writing, and hopefully yours! I'll be posting what I write up (this is what I wrote for the smell prompt) and I would love to read what you have to write as well.

Isn't that picture cute? It's cake....but it sure looks like a cup of coffee! Perfect picture to start out my discussion of taste. Make sure you check out the artist. 

I decided to follow smell up with taste because the two are very connected, in fact 80% of what you taste is because of the smell, which explains why food tastes so bland when you have a cold and your nose is all plugged up.

When I think of taste I primarily think of food, which is normal, there aren't a lot of other things that adults taste, although tooth paste and the lips of a significant other come to mind. Food is a very important part of most cultures, and I've always found it fascinating that people have such a wide variety of interests in food, and that what I think of as comfort food you might find completely gross.

Here's some fun facts about taste thanks to this site and this site:

• Hypogeusia is a diminished sense of taste. 
• Dysgeusia is a persistent taste, usually an unpleasant one.
• What we perceive as "flavor" is actually a combination of smell, taste, spiciness, temperature, and texture. So yes, it really does taste better cold, or hot, or whatever. Goldilocks knew what she was talking about!
• That "taste" I mentioned in the last fact? It is made of up of taste groups sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (a savory taste).
• You know those bumps on your tongue? Those aren't your taste buds, rather, they contain your taste buds, and each one has an average of 6 taste buds inside it. 
• The average adult has between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds, "super tasters" have even more!
• Your flavor preferences change over time and can be very affected by social queues. For example, if the first time you see someone eat something they react badly, you are less likely to like the taste of it yourself.

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So how does the Creative Nudge work? Read on...

The Creative Nudge:

Theme: The sense of taste.

Genre: Any

Other requirements: Try to make the sense of taste central to whatever you write!

How it Works:

Take a few minutes to write a short response (any format or genre) to the prompt.

Post it on your blog.

Come back here and leave me a link in the comments so I can read it!

I'll post my own response on Tuesday for you to read.

Check back next Saturday for another Creative Nudge!

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Need some ideas to get you started?

1. Write about your favorite food and a memory associated with it.

2. What's the worst thing you've ever tasted? Write about it!

3. Send your main character to a restaurant. What would they order? What do they think about the food? How does it make them feel? 

4. Go to a World Food Store, pick something you've never tasted, try to describe it.

5. Pretend to describe your favorite dish to someone totally unfamiliar with the cuisine. So describe macaroni and cheese to an African tribesman. Or Thai food to someone who grew up on Southern home cooking.

6. Describe a taste none-food related. Someone's lips, medicine, toothpaste, or even blood if you write about vampires!

Have fun!

~ Ruthie ~

Hey, Hey Good Lookin' - Whatcha Got Cookin'?

One of my goals right now is to cook more often, and so when I sat down to write this goals post the only I could come up with was this song. So of course I had to look it up...

Bring back memories for anyone? I'm not that old (not calling you old, calling me young :P) but my Daddy used to ask my Mom that question all the time, and even sing from time to time!

So how am I doing on my goals? Well...

Writing:
1. Five hours editing a week. I'm at 3:10 right now! I'm very happy with that. I'm actually ahead of the game! Granted, it's only by 10 minutes, but I was behind schedule last week, and never reached my goal, so this is super fantastic.

2. Blog on a regular basis. Monday: Giveaway post (go enter!), Tuesday: Creative Writing Post, Today: your reading it!

3. Write book reviews and post on GoodReads.com. Four so far! I'm not caught up yet, but at least I'm up to writing about the books I read this month! One of the reviews is in Monday's post... in fact it's the book I'm giving away! (hint, hint)

4. Read and comment on at least 5 other blogs. Check!

Life:
1. Put more variety in our diets. That above picture is last nights dinner. Left over burrito meat cooked up with some scrambled eggs and cheese, topped in salsa and olives, served on a tortilla (and rolled up, but this is prettier)! Super yummy. Tonight's dinner was a newish recipe (old favorite ingredients, new combination) but of course I forgot to take a picture of that!

2. Clean/Organize the house. I cleaned! A little bit. The house is still a mess in general, but the bathroom is clean! And a little bit of the mess is gone.

3. Exercise! I've been doing more stretching, and the cleaning is counting as exercise this week. Believe me, my knees are feeling it.

4. Take more pictures. I think the above picture of dinner is the only picture of any worth I've taken this week so far (the one's of my husband when I was picking on him don't count) but hey, that's one good picture. I'll take it.

See that pretty picture? Ok, so maybe it doesn't look so pretty to everyone else. Especially since I have gone through and blurred the text in the center. But that my friends, is the ready to go file for the second draft of Misfits!

Woohoo!

I finally finished the overly long process of taking all the changes I made on the paper copy and putting them in the new digital copy. This required lots of copy and pasting text, putting it in a different order (in many cases) than I wrote it, typing up the outline I created, typing notes into the text and highlighting them, and lastly, making sure all my references pages were in the new work-from file. Oh and for the heck of it I alphabetized, color coded, and labeled everything.

My OCD side was very happy when I was done.

It took way longer to do all this than I expected, but I figured out some more things about my story along the way, and I know the next phases of the the process are going to be much easier because of this phase, so I'm happy.

So what is next? Well I was going to tell you rewriting is next, but I realized yesterday that I need to do some more world building and character building before I tackle the rewrite. I started in on that today, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take me, but I know the book will be better for it in the end, so I press on!

How is your writing going?
~ Ruthie ~

The Way the World Smells

Like free books? Check out my giveaway!

The following piece is my response to the Creative Nudge I posted on Saturday - taking the sense of smell and making it central to a short piece. I used the characters in my current WIP and wrote a totally new scene for them, that I might just include somewhere in the book (or unwritten sequel).

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“How does the world smell to you Levi?”

Levi looked up at Alina from his bowl of Keava’s stew, and just stared, confused, with out a clue how to respond to this strange question.

Seeing his confusion Alina tried again, “I mean, I know you are a Wolf, and that Wolves are very scent orientated, and I’ve noticed that even when you are shape-shifted into human form you tend to sniff at things. For instance, you just took a deep whiff of that stew you’re holding, and while I do that too because Keava’s stew is fantastic, I’m just wondering what the world smells like to you.

“Like … the world?” Levi wasn’t trying to make a joke, he still was completely lost, and unsure of what Alina was trying to get out of him. She asked the strangest questions sometimes, and right now he’d rather just go back to his bowl of stew.

“Well, yeah, of course, but what does that smell like? Does it smell different when you are a Wolf versus when you are in human form?”

“No.”

“Really? I’ve always wondered about that, what stays the same when you shape change that is.” Alina wanted to figure out her friend, well, honestly, she wanted to figure out everything, but right now she was focused on this strange, black haired Wolf that fate had thrown her together with.

Levi sighed and put down his stew. “My abilities mostly stay the same, except I’m not as strong as a human. I can still see everything through scent, hear better than you can although not quite as good as I can as a wolf, and use my mental abilities of course.”

Alina rolled her eyes. “I knew you could use your telekinesis and telepathy, and those make sense to me, it’s just seems strange that your physical abilities change so little.”

“Well think of it this way, I’m in charge of the shape change, it’s not like I’m casting some spell that does the work for me. I mean yeah, there is a spell involved, but I still have to put the intent into forming the shape. So what can stay the same, and that gives me an advantage, does.”

“Ah, that makes sense.” Alina looked thoughtful, “Do you think you could ever teach someone else to shape-shift?”

Levi just shook his head.

“Why not?”

“I’m not that good of a teacher!”

Alina laughed, thinking he was wrong about that, but letting it rest for now, she still wanted an answer to her earlier question. “So what does the world smell like to you?”

“You aren’t going to give that up are you?”

“Nope.”

“It smells… like information. I can tell that you and Keava were collecting herbs earlier because your clothes still smell like rue and lavender, and I could tell you what spices Keava used in the stew, and that there was a herd of deer through this clearing earlier. The fire smells like a bouquet of the different woods we used in building it, I can smell the different flowers growing around us, and a whole bunch more.” Levi ended awkwardly, not sure if this is what she wanted to hear, but then, looking back up at her and seeing the wonder on her face, deciding that it was.

Creative Nudge #8 - Smell

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(I love the smell of coffee!)

Senses are what allow us to connect with the world around us, and with our own bodies. Lose just one of those sense and the world loses some of it's richness, and might even become very challenging, just think about what would happen if you permanently lost your sense of balance! As writers our goal is to create a rich environment for our readers, without drowning them in detail of course. One of the ways we can do that is by providing sensory descriptions.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to do a series of Creative Nudges based on the different senses. I'll start with the traditional five (smell, touch, hearing, sight, and taste) and move on to some that we all know about but don't hear as much in school, such as balance and temperature.

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Did you know that the sens of smell is scientifically referred to as Olfaction? Or that an inability to smell is called Anosmia? Here's some other fun facts about the sense of smell - thanks to the Sense of Smell Institute. Who would of guessed such a thing even existed...?

• A year later - people will still recall smells with 65% accuracy.
• Most of the things that we smell fly "under the radar," that is, we aren't aware of them.
• Our sense of smell is directional, which is probably why we have the expression "follow your nose."
• The sense of smell is responsible for about 80% of what we taste.
• The average human can smell 10,000 different scents. Dogs can smell about 20 times that.
• Everybody perceives scent differently. So what I think smells fantastic you might think utterly stinks.
• Every single person smells different, and this scent is always changing based on things like what we have eaten, our mood, and even the weather!

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Scent also has a powerful impact on mood and memory, which is why it is used so commonly in aroma therapy, and why I think it is very important to include (when appropriate) in writing. When you include this sense in your writing you have created opportunities to evoke powerful connections in the minds of your reader, so don't forget to use it! 

The Creative Nudge

Theme: The Sense of Smell

Genre: Any

Other requirements: Try to make the sense of smell an integral part of whatever you are writing.

How it Works

Take a few minutes to write up a short story based on the prompt.

Post it on your blog.

Come back here and leave me a link in the comments so I can read it!

I'll post my own response on Tuesday.

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Stuck? Here's a few ideas to get you started!

1. Describe your favorite scent and a memory it brings.

2. Kidnap, blindfold, and stuff ear plugs into your character's ears and have them guess where they are at based on the smell alone.

3. Describe a smell you hate.

4. Write a scene based on the inability to smell (be it a temporary thing or more permanent condition).

5. Put your character in a situation where they are assaulted by new smells.

And of course - have fun!

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. My first giveaway is coming on Monday - you don't want to miss it!

The Luck of the Irish - Creative Writing

This week's Creative Nudge was:

Theme: The Luck of the Irish

Genre: Any

Other Requirements? None

Here's what I wrote up :)


Patrica Ann O'Conner (Patty to her friends) was Irish to the core, and her parents would never let her forget it.

Neither would her friends.

Patty supposed that she would have liked being Irish if things had been a little less, well, Irish in her life, but there was no hope of that. First there was her red hair. It was actually a good shade of red, but her friends never got tired of making jokes about how she was the most Irish person they had ever met, and if she got grumpy, teasing her about the inevitable temper that an Irish red-head was bound to have. She also kinda hated how badly she burned in the sun.

Neither of those was as bad as her parents though. They weren’t just Irish, they were Irish and they reveled in it. Her house was done in a thousand shades of green. Green grass that was fertilized to keep it's healthy color. Green plants. Never a flower in the flower bed because, well, they weren't green. Light green paint with darker green trim on the outside. Paler green on the walls inside, accented by the furniture, the dishes, the carpet, the pillows, the nick-nacks, and even her parents, all in shades of green.

The sole exception to this green paradise was her room. Patty did her room in purples when she was 12 (much to her parents dismay, but they had let her pick out the paint) and accented it with silver, white, and black. She owned green clothing, but only because her parents bought it for her, and she shoved it to the back of the closet so that the only time green ever really invaded her home was when her parents would come in to talk to her.

Don't even get Patty started on St. Patricks day. Seriously. Don't.

If an unfortunate person were to make the mistake of asking her about the quintessentially Irish holiday they would be subjected to a lengthy rant about the improbability of St Patrick actually having anything to do with snakes, let alone eliminating all of them from an entire island, how society currently used it as an excuse to get drunk (and if that wasn't a stereotyped way of portraying the Irish she didn't know what was), and her parents. Her parents, you see, took the holiday as an excuse to throw open the doors of their home to any reveler passing by who might like a pint of guiness in the most Irish household in Sacramento. It was embarrassing really.

Her friends didn't get of course. They thought her parents were weird but cool (especially around the holiday not to be mentioned) and loved how her Mom showed up at school every year with green cupcakes for Patty's birthday. This tradition lasted until Patty's first year of high school when Patty threw a legendary tantrum in which she threatened to dye her hair black if her Mom ever crossed the threshold of her school for anything but a parent teacher conference or otherwise normal reason. Her friends didn't understand why she fussed about it (and why anyone would reject cupcakes) and it was about this time that Patty decided she might need new friends. Not coincidentally, she also began introducing herself as Ann and refused to answer to anything else.

Others might thinking Patricia Ann O'Connor was lucky for being born with into her heritage, but honestly? Sometimes it sucked being Irish.

I had a lot of fun writing this! It was definitely influenced by all the young adult fiction I've been reading lately, and it was fun to try something that I haven't done before! I might try more of it in the future. We'll see.


Did you write up a response to this week's Creative Nudge? Leave me a comment and tell me about it! 


~ Ruthie ~