Friday, August 10th, 2012  Today I was driving through eastern North Carolina and I came across this little gas-and-go store at a bridge intersection.
(The bridge takes you over to the coast, where apparently, a lot of fisherman go. At this little crossroads, they can get worms [for bait] and coffee [for some energy] on their way.)
I LOVE the name of this store. It’s a clever bit of naming that (unless you’re a local fisherman) makes you think twice. I adore the incongruity.
Here’s Your Prompt
- Write a story about “worms and coffee.” Caveat: it can’t be about fishing.
- If you don’t like the idea of worms and coffee, open up the dictionary to a random page, close your eyes and drop your finger down on a word. Do this twice or more, until you come up with two different nouns. You can connect them with “and” or “or.”
- Choose any of these random word pairs that I generated using a random noun generator found on the internet:
- okra and alligators
- pen and Zinc
- mountain and soda
- caterpillar or desert
- storms or fairies
Find your own word pairs using the Paper Tiger Random Noun Generator.
Friday, August 3rd, 2012  No sooner do I get back from Oregon than I have to start planning my next trip away.
Bummer!
Yeah, yeah, it’s great….but what should turn out to be a few relaxing weeks is turning into scads of laundry, tons of email catch-up, a frantic paying of bills and tossing out of all the science experiments taking place in the fridge.
Oh, and I’ll be eating lots of junk so that I don’t inadvertently start any more science experiments in the fridge.
Since I’ve got traveling on the mind again today…
Here’s Your Prompt:
Good Luck!
If you enjoy these writing prompts, consider donating a cup of coffee or a donut!
Friday, July 20th, 2012  Today marks the 43rd anniversary of Armstrong’s moon walk.
I remain amazed – and yet feel we should have done so much more by now. We’ve lost momentum along the way.
Don’t you feel that there ought to be colonies up there by now? Vacations?
I think the moon would be an awesome place to take a writing retreat. Few distractions, and an up close and personal look at space for those of us who write that type of science fiction.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a story about colonization on the moon. How do politics come into play? How do the nations of the world divide up the acreage of the moon?
- Giant steps are what you take, Walkin’ on the moon
I hope my leg don’t break, Walkin’ on the moon
We could walk forever, Walkin’ on the moon
We could be together, Walkin’ on, walkin’ on the moon
Walkin’ back from your house, Walkin’ on the moon
Walkin’ back from your house, Walkin’ on the moon
~ “Walkin’ on the Moon, by the Police (Lyrics by Sting)
- Pretend you’ve been granted a deed for 100 acres of space on the moon and you’re going to turn it into a resort. What kind of resort do you build? What attractions will you have for your customers? How will people get there?
- Neil Armstrong is quoted as saying, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” when he stepped out onto the moon’s surface. Write a story where the same quote could be applicable, but don’t mention the moon (or anything related to space) anywhere in the story.
- A twist on an old favorite: if you were stranded on the moon, who would you NOT want to be stranded with? Now, pretend you’re stranded on the moon, and it’s that person’s fault. Write the argument. You’re not allowed to write only dialogue: make certain you set the scene and show what both of you are doing during the fight.
- Write a poem about walking on the moon. This poem can’t be about the moon, but walking on it. Use your imagination to decide what it would be like to hop across the surface, or do some research to get the facts straight. Your choice.
- Write a letter to your best friend about staying for a week on the moon. How was the commute? Are you camping or staying in a hotel? Do you plan to site-see or relax?
Good luck!
Friday, July 13th, 2012  It’s possible I’m dead right now. Check the news. I’ll wait.
Did you see anything about a plane crash? One heading to Oregon from the Eastern Seaboard? If so, I might be on that plane, and therefore dead.
It would also mean that all the lucky charms and talismans I stuffed in my pockets before I left, did not work.
(You might have figured out that I have a fear of flying. I don’t know where it came from. I’ve flown to Europe on more than one occasion, have been up and down the East Coast and as far west as Colorado…and I enjoyed each of those trips. But somewhere along the line, my brain wrinkled.)
I’ve been advised to take a pill and have a drink.
Instead, although I’m not normally a superstitious person, I’m carrying with me:
- Several rosaries.
- A scapular.
- A lucky sea bean.
- An acorn.
- A wad of Patron Saint, Miraculous and Bleeding Heart medals that I inherited from my grandmother.
- Some medals of my own, purchased at the Vatican on Easter Sunday – which makes them holier, right?
- A tiny, tiny statue of statue of Saint Christopher, inherited from another grandmother. It’s encased in brass, no larger than a bullet (and very easy to carry in my pocket).
- I have also made a promise to donate money to a charity upon my return. Because according to Jewish wisdom, there is extra protection given to someone who is en route to perform such a mitzvah.
If it offers protection. I’m game. I just hope they can all work in harmony. I’d hate for one lucky charm to cancel out another.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about your good luck charm.
- Take a character in one of your stories and give him a good luck charm. Think of something unusual for the charm or talisman. Write the back story for it: why does he carry this particular item?
- Write about:
- a lucky shirt
- a four-leafed clover or bamboo
- lucky sigils, crosses, runes or rings
- a lucky ‘piece’ (a penny)
- a horseshoe – with the luck run out!
- lucky runes
- crickets, lady bugs, dragons, or scarabs
- acorns
- a rainbow
- Find a penny, pick it up
and all day long, you’ll have good luck!
- Write about someone who throws a coin down a well, and gets his wish: but not exactly the way he wanted it to happen.
- “Luck of the Draw,” his tag read. She stared at him, and he stared back. Now how was she going to get him home?
- …Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and preserved as a powerful talisman. They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed… ~ From The Golden Bough, 1922. Chapter 3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops by Sir James George Frazer.
- Write a scene (or more) from the point of view of person who is very superstitious.
- Luck can change in an instant. Write a scene where a person’s luck changes by the end of it.
- His mother pleaded for him too, but it was not needed. He had enclosed in his letter the strongest talisman of all, a letter written by Elizabeth in the long ago when we were children together. ~ From The Making of an American, 1901. Chapter V. I go into Business, headlong by Jacob A. Riis.
Good luck!
Friday, July 6th, 2012  It’s not even mid-July and the dog days have arrived. The weatherman predicts triple-digit heat today and even hotter triple-digit heat tomorrow.
Makes me wish I were floating on a raft, catching some rays, reading a really good book.
(To be sure, I’d also be wearing a hat and sunglasses and be slathered from head to toe in sunscreen. I don’t tend to burn, but I don’t want shoe-leather skin by the time I’m 50….) 🙂
What do you think of when someone says dog days of summer?
I think of high school summers: lazy days on the hammock, sunning myself on the deck, crazy corn-field parties at night, loud music, driving with the windows down, dancing.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about what you like to do when it’s too hot too move outside. Or, write about hot-summer memories.
- Are you completing a character sheet for a work in progress? Write about what your character does/likes/did during long, hot summers.
- Write about a summer job.
- A prompt just for today, July 6: On July 6 the first picture post card was made. If you could make a postcard, what picture would you put on it? Who would you send it to? What would you say?
- The real foundlings, the children of the gutter that are picked up by the police, are the city’s wards. In midwinter, when the poor shiver in their homes, and in the dog-days when the fierce heat and foul air of the tenements smother their babies by thousands, they are found, sometimes three and four in a night, in hallways, in areas and on the doorsteps of the rich, with whose comfort in luxurious homes the wretched mother somehow connects her own misery.
~ From: Waifs of the City’s Slums in How the Other Half Lives, Jacob A. Riis, 1890.
- Dog-days of summer word association. Write whatever comes to mind when you hear one or any of the following words or phrases:
- lazy days
- ice cream
- steamed crabs
- street festivals
- swimming
- water balloon fights
- tree houses
- bullfrogs
- home-grown tomatoes
- on the beach
- car washes
- roller coasters
- ice cold watermelon
- open-air concerts
- berries plucked and eaten off the vine
- lightning bugs, fireflies, glow worms, dragonflies, June bugs, Japanese beetles, moths, mosquitoes, chiggers, deer flies, hover flies, see-me-nots, bumble bees, ladybugs
- There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet
Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies
With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage,
When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage.
~ Epilogue, from Amores. D.H. Lawrence, 1916.
- Uses your senses. Choose one sense: sight, smell, touch, sound, or taste…and only write about that:
- The smells of summer
- The sights of summer
- The sounds of summer
- The touch of summer
- The tastes of summer
- Let not experience disqualify or excellence impeach him. There is no third term in the case, and the pretense will die with the political dog-days which engendered it.
~ From Roscoe Conkling’s speech nominating Grant for Third Term for President, 1880
Good Luck!
Friday, June 29th, 2012 Today is National Camera Day.
In the spirit of things, I’ve chosen a photo as today’s prompt. Write the first thing that comes into your mind when you see it. Don’t restrict yourself to an essay or character sketch, try a poem form you’ve never tried before or try writing in a POV you don’t normally write in.
If you don’t like my photo, don’t despair. I found it by going to Google Images and typing in the word, “random.” You can try it, too. Or choose a different word. Open up the dictionary, and type in the first word you randomly stab your finger on. See what comes up!
Here’s Your Prompt:
Friday, June 22nd, 2012 I’m playing a word association trick with you today.
What’s the first thing you thought of when you read the title, “bugs?”
Sometimes the shortest words can have the most meanings, depending on context.
I deliberately didn’t post a photo (like I am wont to do) when presenting a writing prompt, because I didn’t want to influence what your initial reaction might be to the word “bugs.” I assure you, there is a picture.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a story, poem or journal entry about the first thing you thought of when you read the word, “bugs.”
- Take the first thing you thought of, and see how it applies to an old memory. Write about that memory involving bugs.
- Write about a flu bug, cold germ or cooties.
- Write about a room being bugged.
- Write about someone who bugs you (or a time when you bugged someone else). Write about things that bug you.
- Write about a master computer programmer who inadvertently programs a bug into a program. Writer about a hacker who deliberately puts a bug in the program. Write about one person this bug affects, and how he or she solves the problem.
- Write literally about bugs: flies, ants, cockroaches, bedbugs, head lice, spiders or stink bugs.
- Write a favorable (or at least, not negative) poem about a much-disliked bug, like a roach. For example:
How delightful to suspect
All the places you have trekked:
Does your long antenna whisk its
Gentle tip across the biscuits?
Do you linger, little soul,
Drowsing in our sugar bowl?
Or, abandonment most utter,
Shake a shimmy on the butter?
(From Nursery Rhymes for the Tender-Hearted, by Christopher Morley, 1921. Read the full poem here.)
- Write about catching a bug, a wild enthusiasm or obsession, for something.
Good luck!
p.s. If you want to see the photo that made me think of bugs, here it is.
Friday, June 1st, 2012  It so happens that June 1 is Doughnut Day. And so, we must talk about doughnuts.
I’d rather have a piece of cake (or chocolate) than a doughnut, but there are days when a warm glazed doughnut beats everything else hands down. I also like a chilled Boston Creme with a tall, cold glass of milk.
I’m not a “sugar in the morning person,” so doughnuts for breakfast is anathema to me.
(The worst part of my honeymoon trip to Italy was breakfast. I’m afraid the Italians adore sugar in the morning with their strong, black coffee. I would ask for a plain dinner roll or slice of bread and invariably it would come sugar glazed. Sacrilege!
In the early morning, I would try to sneak into the kitchen and grab a loaf of day-old-bread to eat with my coffee. Oh, the squawking when they found me! Apparently, it’s just not done to eat day old bread in Italy!)
Here’s Your Prompt:
Good luck!
Friday, May 11th, 2012  On this date in 1934 a huge dust storm sent 350 million tons of silt and topsoil catapulting eastward from the Great Northern Plains, some of it reaching as far as New York and Atlanta.
The reason?
When the plains states were settled in the mid-1800s, the land was covered by prairie grass which kept the ground moist and kept soil from blowing away during hot, dry times. When farmers began plowing the grass under to plant crops, the soil dried and had nothing to keep it from blowing away.
Worse, the U.S. involvement in World War I in 1917 created a huge demand for wheat, and farmers plowed under more and more grassland, thanks also to a new invention: the tractor. Farmers continued to plow after the war, as even more powerful tractors came on the market. (In the 1920s, wheat production increased by 300%, glutting the market by 1931.)
In the early 1930s, a severe drought caused crops to die, and wind to carry the dust from the fields. Storms increased yearly until 1934 when the number of them decreased, but the severity increased, causing the worst dust storm in history on May 11. The New York Times reported, dust “lodged itself in the eyes and throats of weeping and coughing New Yorkers,” and even ships some 300 miles offshore saw dust collect on their decks.*
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a poem, essay or journal entry about being unexpectedly caught in a storm.
- Write about being caught in a dust storm, wind storm or any kind of storm other than rain or sleet or hail. Was it a small storm, or a large one (affecting your town or the entire state)? Did you need to seek shelter? If so, where?
- Write about:
- biting the dust
- dusting it up, or dusting it off
- gathering dust
- when the dust settles
- dry as dust
- dust bunnies
Theorize about how something we’re doing today could unintentionally cause a catastrophe such as the dust storm of 1934. What would we need to do to prevent it? How could we fix the problem if we don’t?
Would you ever consider being a storm chaser? Why or why not? What do you think the risks would be? What do you think the rewards would be?
Scientists risk their lives chasing tornadoes in hopes of learning about them. What do you think these scientists are trying to find out? What do you think the benefits will be for society if scientists find these answers?
I’ve seen the dust so black that I couldn’t see a thing,
I’ve seen the dust so black that I couldn’t see a thing,
And the wind so cold, boy, it nearly cut your water off.
I seen the wind so high that it blowed my fences down,
I’ve seen the wind so high that it blowed my fences down,
Buried my tractor six feet underground.
Well, it turned my farm into a pile of sand,
Yes, it turned my farm into a pile of sand,
I had to hit that road with a bottle in my hand.
~ From the Dust Bowl Blues, Woody Guthrie
“Charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it.”
Write about any other natural disaster, such as a tornado, a landslide or avalanche, a tsunami, or an earthquake.
Write about a storm that personally affected you in some way. What kind of storm was it? How did you get caught in it? What were the consequences?
Write a story where a storm is the inciting incident. (The inciting incident is the action or event that sets in motion the central conflict of the story.) Or, write a story in which a storm plays a major role.
Write about:
- the calm before a storm
- the eye of the storm, or being in the eye of the storm
- weathering the storm
- stormy weather
- any port in a storm
- a storm is brewing
- storming out of a room
- taking something by storm
We are the voices of the wandering wind,
Which moan for rest and rest can never find;
Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life,
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.
~ The Deva’s Song, Sir Edwin Arnold
Good Luck!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Quote from History.com’s May 11 entry.
Image Credit: A dust storm strikes Powers County, Colorado, in April 1935. Image: Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection, Repro. Num. LC-USF343-001617-ZE DLC.
Friday, March 16th, 2012  My background is journalism, so naturally I have my own morgue.
The “morgue” in newspaper parlance are the file cabinets holding all the research materials, notes and photos that went into producing a news story. All the pieces are usually filed together in a single folder by year or story. Sometimes the photos have their own morgue. Depends on the newspaper.
Pretty inefficient, really. While a lot of those records are filed electronically now, most of it still goes down the same way because who has the time to turn scribbled notes and library research into electronic documents when you’ve got to write the next news story?
And really, that stuff almost never gets looked at again unless it’s a really big story that has repercussions years later and needs to be referenced again. Or, the newspaper runs one of those “Five years ago, Ten years ago, etc. columns.
Writers tend to have ideas folders (stuff where they put ideas they’ve had, but aren’t ready to be written yet, snippets of overhead conversations, inspiring photos, etc.) and “trunked” files: a place for those stories that were written, but never got sold for whatever reason.
I have another file I keep, my “Culled from ‘XX Manuscript'” file: this is the place where I copy and paste the stuff edited out of my manuscripts. It contains idle scenes, verbose paragraphs, misplaced character thoughts in long and short phrases.
It’s a file that makes me feel better when I’m editing: I can take all that “hard work” which should never see the light of day, and keep a record of having written it. I tell myself I’ll go back there one day and make use of it.
I’ve never, ever done so (unlike my morgue or ideas folders…)
But this past week while I was doing some major edits, I realized that that file contains a lot of good stuff even if it wasn’t polished enough — or well thought out enough — to use in the current manuscript.
It’s plenty good for inspiring ideas when you need a kick.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Raid your ideas folder or junked stories for a snippet, phrase, paragraph, description, etc. to get your juices flowing: we’re not looking for an old idea to use here, we’re reading until you find a phrase that sparks a new idea. Find it and write.
- Kill two birds with one stone: edit something that needs to be polished. Take all those words and phrases you cut away and save them into another file. Likely, they won’t be ‘sparkers’ this early: they’re too fresh in your mind. Set them aside for a few weeks and then revisit. In the meantime: you’ve polished up some writing. Send it out!
- If you don’t have ideas folders, trunked files, or writing that needs some editing (Welcome, beginner!) pick a book off your shelf — something you haven’t read in a long time, or something you’ve never read — and open it to a random page. Read until an idea is sparked.
- If none of these ideas appeal, here area a few very short phrases from my latest edits. Feel free to use them for your own stories:
- “I’m damn tired of not getting my money’s worth.”
- So, what did he want me to do about this?
- It didn’t matter why the old man told him the story: he didn’t want to hear it.
- …stiff and away from the window…
- Chasing women was something he’d never had to do
- Convinced he could do no more for the creature than make her comfortable, he…
- The priestesses had long controlled the northern parts of the continent because of…
Good luck!
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Photo Credit: A story about the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch newspaper morgue.
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