Jack's Place

Pick a Card, Any Card

"You can always write something. You write limericks. You write a love letter. You do something to get you in the habit of writing again, to bring back the desire." ~ ERSKINE CALDWELL

         Good day once again, friends and readers. Another relevant quote gets me going, and I'm continuing my monologue about no longer being a writer. Bored yet? I know I am. What I'd like to be writing about is my latest writing triumph, but here we are. So instead, I have come to talk about my latest effort to whip this dead horse back to life. Buckle up.
         If you spend any time at all here, you have likely seen the ad for the Storymatic card system. This currently retails for $37.95 on Amazon and consists of two decks of 270 cards each. One deck describes a person by trait, and the other gives a situation. Well, as luck and a supportive family would have it, I was gifted this some time ago. It comes with a booklet describing various ways to use it, but none of them have worked for me thus far. Not much of a follower, I guess. But I recently made up another method that feels like it might lead somewhere, and I'm going to share it here. This should work with Storymatic or any similar prompt-provider.
         What I've done is to randomly select one "person" card, then select five "situation" cards, and pair the person up with any or all of the situations as they appear to fit. The first set I picked was as follows:
         The person card read, "A superstitious person."
         The situations were, "Wrong number; Third day without sleep; Equipment malfunction; No place to hide," and "A fever." The two I went with were Equipment malfunction and No place to hide. They've led me down a convoluted road to another chiller story that feels suitable for the "Invalid Item"  anthology. Now, all I have to do is write it, and that has been where the wheels have come off of every attempt since 2020. Hope, as they say, springs eternal. I'll let you know if anything develops... Who am I kidding, you'll be able to hear my celebration from the other side of the country!

         In other news, I've been toying with the idea of starting a forum where practitioners of the dark and dangerous can meet to discuss the Craft of writing the chiller. It's under construction in my port. It's currently marked Private, so don't stampede over there. I bring it up here because I want to get some opinions.
         Would it be of interest?
         Would it duplicate other efforts currently being made on the site?
         Would it have value to writers currently working in the dark genres?

         If there are other items on the site already dealing in similar activities, please, I implore you, send me a link. If there's something already ongoing I can sign up for, that seems much more productive than starting from scratch, building an audience, defining a theme and all the follow-on activity that goes with that. And, you guys? The best of luck with all your projects, and may you avoid the dreaded Block for as long as you have ideas to develop.

Stay inspired!
Taylor...