It’s day one of Write Club, and day 8 of #challenge30days. As I mentioned in my post yesterday (You too can participate in Write Club), I’m going to complete the 30 day writing challenge while participating in Write Club, possibly against better judgment. I tell you, once I’ve locked onto a commitment, I’m like a pitbull!

Some of my posts during this time may be really quite brief, like “Help me! I can’t believe I committed to this deadly Write Club boot camp! Over.”

But for now I’m in the blissful early stages of the 16 weeks. I feel fresh and ready, and creatively charged up. So I thought I would write a little about the process, and how I’m launching into it, and the ideas I am mulling over for my first story. By tomorrow I intend to start writing.

The image I picked to illustrate this post may make sense a few paragraphs below.

Mulling over the writing prompt

So, Ms. @tanglebranch gave us the first prompt yesterday. And it’s awesome. The idea is based on an O. Henry story, The Gift of the Magi. It harkens back to the well-known bible story and plays out the story of a married couple who each sacrifice something to give each other a special Christmas gift.

Her directive was as follows: “My only requirement is that in your story there must be a gift given, and it must cost a lot. Not in an expensive way, but in a sacrificial way. On your mark, get set, GO!”

So today is all about plotting and planning. What follows is a look at where I am in my thought process as I prepare to get started.

Potential plots

Coming up with a worthy conflict and storyline under these circumstances should not be too difficult. Someone must sacrifice something! The conflict could be about fear or reluctance. It could be that the recipient of the gift must not know it is a gift, or must not know who it is from, because they would be wounded by it in some way. There are so many possibilities.

To collect my thoughts, I began sketching them out as loglines. (You can read my logline post for more information on loglines as a writing mechanism.)

A few of my ideas:

• A woman gives up a kidney so the husband who abused her can live.
• A child who reluctantly goes to sing carols at the children's hospital, decides to give his favorite toy to another child who has nothing.
• A woman who has been estranged from her domineering mother for 20 years, fights through anger to go to her mother's deathbed and forgive her. (Forgiveness is her gift.)
• When a father and his son are caught in a terrible snow storm during a winter camping trip the father insisted on, he gives up his heavy coat to save his son….

So, there you have it. A sneak peak into what I’m mulling over, as I get ready to start writing. I’m not saying I’m picking one of the above storylines, necessarily. And I’m not saying I’m not! (Should I keep the real one a secret??)

Thanks for reading!

If you are a writer seeking community and support, you can find editors to help you at The Writers’ Block on Discord.