I am stuck for inspiration for my TMA2.  I have a couple of story ideas but I don’t think they’ll fit in a short story.  I have a character though.  She’s called Emily and she rides a pink Vespa.  That’s as far as I’ve got.  I thought a freewrite might help.  It didn’t.  But at least I wrote ‘something’.  Here it is.

So, there’s this girl with a pink  Vespa and she has a matching helmet but what does she do?  Does she trawl the internet dating sites looking for men to write about on her blog?  Can that be a short story?  I don’t think so.  My chewing gum story won’t work either.  I need something to write about for TMA2 which is going to creep up on me really really soon and there’s moving house and going away for my birthday beforehand too and I don’t think I’ll be doing much writing on my birthday in Naples.  Ok, then, I won’t be doing any writing on my birthday in Naples.  Just drinking.  And eating pizza.  I’ll probably see lots of Vespas in Italy too.  When I was in Bologna there were LOADS of scooter drivers or are they riders?  Anyway, there were loads of them and they all drove like complete wankers.  I’m lucky to be alive I think.  They don’t seem to have a highway code.  Just drive and ride all over the place.  Street lights?  What are they?  Traffic lights, I mean.  They don’t care about them.  I paused typing but this write or die thing didn’t do anything.  Shouldn’t it have shouted at me or something?  I need some inspiration.  Not easy after drinking too much wine last night.  Sunday drinking must stop.

Someone on the OU A215 forum posted a link to www.wordle.net.  It’s a website that generates word clouds based on text you provide it.  The more times a word is used, the bigger the word will be.  You can either paste in content yourself, or give it an url and it will generate it for you.  The clouds can be customised with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. 

This is what I got when I gave it the URL of this blog.

Pretty, isn’t it?

Paloma Chaffinch alerted us all on the OU A215 forum about a great site she’d found: One Word.

One Word is a brilliantly simple site that gives you a word each day and 60 seconds to write in a box whatever comes to mind.  After your 60 seconds are up, press submit, and you can see whatever tumbled out of your brain along with everyone elses.

Cool.