A writer spends most of the time in her head, with the characters she’s still getting to know and the world she’s trying to build. She stares at a blank screen or a blank page for a long while, thinking of how to construct a sentence or shifting through metaphorical file cards in her mind for another word for ‘said.’

Should you find yourself in a writing rut, dreams are brimming wells of bizarre and nonsensical material (some are sensible though and connected to reality) and inspiration for a story.

I wrote the text above from a writing prompt I did for myself last August 2020. I listed down words for each day of August, and then I would come up with something that should include those words.

Because I wanted to be productive and answer the call of writing and illustrating a book this quarter of 2017, I decided to finally try my hand at self-publishing a book of short stories and prose.