I parked my electric bike inside an enclosed gate in the middle of town and headed into Miranda’s apartment. Once inside, I dropped my overnight backpack on the floor and collapsed into my chair. Megan followed suit on her chaise lounge that doubled as her bed for the night (not very comfortable, and I’m not sure how she survived on that thing for an entire year of Saturday nights).
“Do you guys wanna hear my Word Doodle?” Miranda asked.
“Yes!!!” Megan and I both cried. Word Doodle readings were the best, especially after a long week of high-energy teaching.
“Does it have the Captain in it?” I asked, hoping we could hear about our favorite character.
Miranda smiled, “Yep.”
What followed was a story about the Captain (captain of a space ship) who had humorous and endearing adventures in space. I could never hope to recapture the stories here, so we’ll all just have to convince Miranda to publish a book and then we can read them whenever we want.
Megan and I loved Word Doodle story time. It was one of the highlights of our weekend in town.
“What are Word Doodles?” I asked Miranda one day.
“Oh, it’s just a story or character sketch I write based on two random words.”
“Where do you get the random words?”
“My brother sends them to me, and then when I finish, I send him the story.”
“Wow! That’s such a cool idea!”
I wrote one or two Word Doodles back then, but I didn’t start writing them in earnest until after I finished my Master’s degree several years later and suddenly realized that I had a lot more time on my hands and I needed motivation to write. I was working on a novel at the time, but I was stuck because I needed to do research for it, and I wasn’t sure where to begin. So I decided to write some Word Doodles just to get back in the habit of writing.
Anyone can write a Word Doodle. I love them because the two words can offer inspiration or they can be fit into something that you already have. In my Word Doodles, I use words in both ways. At the beginning when my creative juices were drier than sandpaper, I would tend to use the words for inspiration, but later on, when my creative juices were a little bit healthier, I would fit the words into whatever story I had cooking up in my head.
Word Doodles can be stories, but they can also just be character sketches. I have a few Word Doodles where nothing actually happens. Some people don’t like those ones as much, but others told me that some of those are their favorites, so I guess Word Doodles have the advantage of offering something for everyone.
I had several goals for my Word Doodles. One of my goals was of course to write about China and to share about China with my readers. I also wanted to experiment with writing different types of stories. I wrote stories about people of all ages and from lots of different perspectives.
One advantage of Word Doodles is that they are short, so you can try out a voice for just a page or two and see how it fits. I wrote a lot of stories with repeat characters, but I also wrote a lot of stories with characters that never showed up again. I really loved some of these characters, but sometimes the voice was just too hard to find again. I didn’t want to write something fake, so I tried not to keep going with characters that I liked but didn’t seem to know so well. The advantage of Word Doodles is that I could meet those characters for a short time and then leave them for a future time if I could find them again.
After someone gives me a word for my next Word Doodle, I usually try to let the words cook for a while in my brain. My favorite place to cook words is in the park. I used to go to the park for an hour or so and think about the words until I had a story in mind. Then I would hurry home and spend an hour or so writing it all out. Sometimes words had to cook for a week, but if I went to the park, I could usually cook up something in the time it took me to do a couple of laps. Although if I had a lot on my mind, I would sometimes have to spend a lap thinking about or praying about whatever else was going on.
I think one of the hardest parts of Word Doodles is finding someone to think up good random words to give you. So, if you’d like to write a Word Doodle, I would like to be the first to offer you some words. Your words are:
Cycle and Croissant
If you would like more words, leave me a comment in the comments section, and I’ll send some more.
If you need someone to read your Word Doodle when you finish, please send it to me via the contact form, and I would love to take a look at it.
Happy writing!