Friday, March 2nd, 2012  Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!
Theodor Seuss Geisel, writer and illustrator of many of my favorite stories, was born March 2, 1904. Even as an adult, I enjoy reading Seuss books (and can quote verbatim from several)!
Most of Seuss’ books are composed of rhyming couplets of simple words, making them easy for children to read, and learn to read. But they’re fun, too, which makes them all the better. Many times, Seuss made up his own words to make the rhymes fit.
(In fact, Dr. Suess created the word nerd, though with a different meaning than we think of it today. The word’s first known existence is in his book, “If I Ran the Zoo,” in 1950.)
The couplets Seuss wrote are the type “anapestic tetrameter,” which is often used in comic verse.
A few definitions:
meter: the rhythm of a line of poetry, composed of feet
foot: a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
anapestic foot: a pattern of three syllables, of the form: unstressed / unstressed / stressed
Since “tetra” means four, each line of anapestic tetrameter verse contains four instances of an anapestic foot (or twelve syllables total).
A good example of anapestic tetrameter is from Dr. Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle:
On the far-away Island of Sala-ma-Sond,
Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
A nice little pond. It was clean. It was neat.
The water was warm. There was plenty to eat.
The turtles had everything turtles might need.
And they were all happy. Quite happy indeed.
You know what your prompt’s going to be, right? Below I’m going to tell you to go write some anapestic tetrameter.
I know some folks might feel intimidated by the challenge. So, I offer the following advice:
If you don’t think you can write anapestic tetrameter on your own, take a line from Seuss and change all the nouns and verbs.
For instance, instead of the first couplets above, you could write:
In a kitchen fantastic, in the dead of night
An egg-frying ghost, gave me a terrible fright.
Transparent, and shimmery, and nearly not there
He flipped the eggs with one hand while munching a pear.
He read from, “On Writing,” by the great Stephen King
And had just turned the page when I heard the toast ding.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a poem in anapestic tetrameter. Don’t feel constrained to make it silly. Try a horror poem, or romance, or science fiction.
- I you’re feeling ambitious, write an epic poem — or short story — in anapestic tetrameter.
- If the words don’t flow, draw a whimsical picture like Seuss might have done. Remember: it doesn’t have to be silly! Seuss drew ‘scary’ pictures, too, like those “pale green pants, with no one inside them!”
Friday, February 24th, 2012  On February 24, 1836, Colonel William Travis issued a call for help on behalf of Texas troops defending the Alamo.
The Alamo — a fortress, the site of an old Spanish mission, and one of two ‘gateways’ into Texas from Mexico — was under attack by the Mexican army.
A bit of history:
Travis moved from Alabama to Texas in 1831 and became a leader of the movement to overthrow the Mexican government. When the official revolution began in 1835, he was given command of a small troop of soldiers in the recently captured city, San Antonio de Bexar.
On February 23, 1836, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana arrived in San Antonio — weeks earlier than anticipated — accompanied by a large contingent of the Mexican Army, and called for Travis’ surrender.
Travis and his troops, heavily outnumbered, holed up in the Alamo along with a volunteer militia led by Colonel James Bowie.
On the 24th, they answered Santa Ana’s demand with a cannon shot from the Alamo. Furious, Santa Ana ordered his men to take the Alamo. Travis sent out several messages via courier asking for help. He signed them with the now famous tagline, “Liberty or death.”
Travis’ pleas were largely ignored: only 32 men from a nearby town came to his aid. Still, the men of the Alamo put up a grand fight.
They held the fort until March 6, when Santa Ana’s troops broke through the outer wall. Travis, Bowie and 190 ‘rebel’ soldiers were killed — most by execution, once Santa Ana claimed the fort. (Though during the siege, the Texas rebels killed at least 600 of Santa Ana’s nearly 5,000 men.)
The loss of the brave men at the Alamo turned the tide in favor of the Texas Revolution, and soldiers were heard to cry, “Remember the Alamo!” as they entered into the fray with the Mexican army. Santa Ana was soon captured by the Texas Army and on May 14, 1836, Texas officially became an independent republic.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a ‘what if’ essay: What if you had the power to stop a war. Would you do it? Would you have stopped a past war in history, knowing that it would mean your life would be very different today?
- Choose a legendary historical war and imagine “the other side” won. Re-write history.
- Write a war poem. Use onamonapia to convey the feeling and action of the war.
- Write an essay, a poem, a short story, a vignette etc.:
- glorifying war
- condemning war
- using war as a metaphor for something else, or
- using something else as a metaphor for war.
Friday, February 17th, 2012  I was running a few minutes late to work this morning.
This is a problem, because running even a few moments late can mean being a half-hour to forty minutes late overall.
Case in point:
First I had to wait through the traffic jam at the stop sign.
Yeah, I know that sounds funny. But, because I was late, I had to wait for three cars to go through the stop sign at the intersection onto a larger road. (Normally, I arrive alone, see no cross traffic, and pull out immediately.)
Three of us were waiting for cross traffic to pass. So that made me a few moments later.
Then I got behind the pokey driver (+ a few moments) and because we were pokey, the school bus pulled out in front of us (+ a few more minutes) and then we got stopped by the train (+ a lot more moments while we waited for I-stopped-counting-at-57-cars to go by.)
When I finally got to the highway, traffic was nearly bumper to bumper, and I lost my early morning commute advantage.
::: sigh :::
The inclination is to get in the hammer lane and speed along with all the other crazies so that I can make up some time. But I exercise patience, because as the billboard says, it’s better to arrive 6 minutes late, than six feet under.
(Although in my case, it’s about 35 minutes late. That’s still better than six feet under.)
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a story, essay or scene where a character’s patience led him into trouble. For instance, due to patience, someone lost a career opportunity; or, someone watched a loved one die while they patiently waited for a quack doctor to affect some kind of cure.
- Write a story where not being patient brought on loads of trouble. (This one is almost too easy: impatient driving caused an accident, bailing out too soon meant taking hit in the stockmarket – but holding on a day could have meant making zillions, jumping to conclusions loses you the love of your life, etc.)
- How about a play on words? Use patience, patients or pay / shuns in a poem or essay.
- If you journal, write about a time you had to convince someone else to be patient…and you were wrong. What happened?
- And some obligatory quotes to stir the juices:
- Patience is the best remedy for every trouble. ~ Plautus
- Patience is a remedy for every sorrow. ~ Publius Syrus
- Patience, and shuffle the cards. ~ from Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
- Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. ~ Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
- Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts. ~ James Russell Lowell
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Stop sign photo from UltimateImages.com.
Friday, February 10th, 2012  February 10 is National Umbrella Day in the United States.
(I didn’t know this until I sat down to write this post.)
Seems kind of silly to me. (But fun, too. For some reason it makes me wish it were raining today.)
I suspect that “National Umbrella Day” must be the product of a greeting card company, because I can find no congressional evidence of a “national” day being declared for it.
Do you have a favorite bumbershoot? I have this wonderful golf-sized umbrella that I got free from drinking lots of Lipton Tea. It’s red-and-white-striped with the Lipton logo. It’s my go-to umbrella when it’s raining…and people laugh and laugh because it’s so huge. But it keeps me dry, so I’m keeping it.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a poem using the imagery of an umbrella. It can be any kind of umbrella: rain umbrella, beach umbrella, an umbrella in a mixed drink, one of those silly hat umbrellas, etc.
- If you journal, write a letter to your children (or nieces and nephews) about the time you needed an umbrella and didn’t have one.
- Consider the things that “umbrella” is a metaphor for: a shield for protection, something to hide behind, as a cover from risk, or a folded umbrella representing untapped potential, etc. Write about the time you or a character in one of your stories could have used an umbrella — metaphorically.
Friday, February 3rd, 2012  Someone in my family died this week.
It was unexpected, but not surprising. Still a bit of a shock to hear on the phone.
Human nature being what it is (and this being my family, I guess), the first order of business was a tussle over which family plot my uncle will be buried in.
(What – your family doesn’t have any death real estate?)
Grudges can be held, apparently, into the grave…and for decades beyond.
And we learned there’s going to be an autopsy. Required, apparently, by the state.
Since there’s time between death and burial preparation, the phone lines have lit up among the older generation in the family. People who have not spoken to each other in years, finally have a topic to bring them together.
Funny how that happens.
After you get over the initial impact, that kind of “out of the blue” call gets you to thinking about, well, death.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Caution! Some of these prompts may cause you to come to terms with death.
- Plan your own funeral.
(If this seems morbid to you — consider that you’re doing your family a favor by letting them know what it is you want to happen upon your death. It saves them the time of speculating (perhaps agonizing) during the initial grieving process. With luck, it will ensure that they lay you out in your favorite outfit, instead of something pulled off the rack at the funeral home.)
- If you can’t plan your own funeral, plan one for someone else. Be creative: plan a funeral for your Great-Uncle Harry who always slipped you a fiver when he saw you, and never forgot your birthday. Do it up right. Conversely, create a special ‘funeral in hell’ for that neighbor of yours with the dogs that never stopped barking, the wild parties every day of the week, and the police raids which happened on a regular basis.
- Your grandmother dies and leaves you $75,000 in her will. How do you feel when you hear this? What will you do with the money?
- Write a story — starting with the reading of a will — where the most unlikely person in the room inherits all the cash and assets. This is the black sheep of the family — the runaway, the drunk, the drug user. Everyone hates him (or her). Speculate why this person inherited everything. Was there a relationship with the deceased that no one else knew about? What happens with the family dynamics now that this person inherits?
- Your spouse or partner dies suddenly. Write their eulogy.
- Write your own eulogy. How do you think people will remember you?
- You’ve just learned you have terminal cancer. Write what happens for the next week of your life.
- Write the funeral scene of the villain in your current work in progress. Or, write the funeral scene of your favorite evil character from a book, movie or television series.
- And now for some obligatory quotes about death:
- I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid. ~ Thomas Stearns Eliot
- Let death be ever daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything. ~ Epictetus
- Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him — that is the best account of it that has yet been given. ~ Edward Morgan Forster
- Our scripture tells us that childhood, old age and death are incidents only, to this perishable body of ours and that man’s spirit is eternal and immortal. that being so, why should we fear death? And where there is no fear of death there can be no sorrow over it, either. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.
Friday, January 27th, 2012  “Taking Our Geese to Market”1909 W. H. Martin Decades before the software program Photoshop was a gleam in anyone’s eye, photographer W.H. Martin was creating photo montages. Judging from the few postcards I’ve seen, his themes were mostly agricultural, with some based on “old wives tales.”
All the ones I’ve seen tell a tall tale.
According to Wikipedia:
“A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories (‘the fish that got away’) such as, “that fish was so big, why I tell ya’, it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!”
Other tall tales are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the European countryside, the American Old West, the Canadian Northwest, or the beginning of the Industrial Age.
See Wikipedia for more information about tall tales.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a tall tale about what happened to you today.
- If today is too hum-drum :(, write a tall tale about another day in your life.
- Re-write a tall tale you already know with yourself as the main character, and using modern day events.
- Like Martin, create a visual pictorial of a tall tale: draw it, use photography software to create it, or tear pictures from a magazine to make a collage.
- Write an exaggerated poem about something that happened to you yesterday.
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Give me liberty, or give me death.
~ Patrick Henry
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Loss of liberty (or freedom) isn’t always an issue of being dominated by someone (or something) else, such as being bound in chains, or incarcerated in a cell, or being subject to some governmental curfew.
Sometimes it’s about danger, or embarrassment.
The main character in my novel work-in-progress has had her liberty curtailed. Not only is she being hunted down by demons, but she has been bitten by one, causing deeply horrible changes in her appearance.
So while she’s not literally bound in chains, she fears for her life if she goes outside (and so stays in as much as she can), but she’s also partially disfigured — which embarrasses her. So, whenever she goes out, she covers up.
Oh, give me liberty! For even were paradise my prison, still I should long to leap the crystal walls.
~ John Dryden
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Sometimes our desires bind us.
Have you ever worked at a job which you absolutely hated? But did it for the money? There’s always a choice to live with less, and yet…
A day, an hour of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity of bondage.
~ Joseph Addison
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Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about someone who’s physical liberty has been taken away by incarceration, kidnapping, bondage or curfew.
- Here’s a specific example: write about a group of people who are suddenly under martial law. The law restricts their movements in certain parts of town and requires that they return to their homes before dark.
- Write a journal or diary entry about a time you felt you’d lost your liberties.
- Write several stanzas of haiku about liberty (or freedom, if you need to watch your syllables).
- Put yourself in the place of the villain: the person kidnapping or incarcerating someone else. Write about why you might do this, and how you might keep control of the situation.
Friday, January 13th, 2012  I was halfway home from work today when I realized I’d not scheduled the writing prompt for today.
Whoops!
I’ve had so much on my mind that I forgot.
So… in honor of forgetting, today’s prompt is about forgetfulness.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Your character forgets something very important. What happens?
- One of your characters forgets something she thinks is no big deal, but her best friend/ significant other/ spouse completely disagrees. Write the argument that ensues.
- If you journal, use either of the two above prompts, only from your point of view.
- Write an acrostic poem using the word Forget or Forgetful.
- Here are some famous quotations about forgetfulness to spark you:
- It is the lot of man to suffer, it is also his fortune to forget. – Benjamin Disraeli
- Though the past haunt me as a spirit, I do not ask to forget. – Felicia Dorothea Browne Hermans
- There is a noble forgetfulness–that which does not remember injuries. – Charles Simmons
- When out of sight, quickly also out of mind. – Thomas a Kempis
Friday, January 6th, 2012  I was heading to work Wednesday morning this week — my first day back in the office after a long Christmas Holiday — when I’d finally reached the exit for the highway.
The signs loomed above me: east in one direction, west in the other. Usually, I’m on autopilot at a little after 5 a.m. in the morning, and veer eastbound strictly out of habit.
But Wednesday I had the strongest — the strangest — urge to take the westbound ramp and just keep going.
The closer I got to the ramp, the stronger the urge grew, so much so that I had to grip the steering wheel hard and make a conscious effort to make the left hand turn instead of drifting into the right hand on-ramp.
Even after I made the turn and was heading east, something inside me cried out for a U-turn (impossible on this divided highway – I would have spent time playing the clover leaf should I have succumbed to my urges).
Urges are motivated by something, either conscious or unconscious, and I’ve yet to decipher what my motivation was.
We could argue that it was some ghostly pull inspiring the desire to drive westward, but it could have simply been that I had such a blast with family and friends over the holidays that I was reluctant to end that euphoria by schlepping back to work.
Another motivation could be that work is such a heinous place (yeah, it has its moments) that I didn’t want to go back. Somehow, I think my westward urge would have manifested before Wednesday morning if that were the case.
Whatever the reason, I managed to suppress the desire and arrive safely to toil at my workaday endeavors without further incident.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- If you’re a journal or diarist, write about the time you succumbed to the will of an urge. What was your motivation? Did you anticipate the action with glee only to end in despair? Did giving in prove wildly exciting? Do you have any regrets? Do you wish you’d given in to more urges?
- Write a story or a scene in which a character falls prey to an urge that is completely out of character for him. Why did he do it? What was the motivation? Did it end badly or well??
- Write a story or scene about a character who stands firm against an urge…something she’s not known for doing. Where did she find the power to resist? Does the scene end badly, or well? Does she regret not giving in, or feel self-righteous that she was able to stand firm?
- Some quick prompts:
- a friend urges another to rid herself of a (real or perhaps not) physical imperfection
- a wife urges her husband to overcome a sexual inhibition
- a psychologist urges his patient to face a truth
- a student urges another to deface a university building
- you feel the urge to tell a lie to someone close to you
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Photo obtained from NY Times Web site.
Friday, December 30th, 2011  We’re a people who live on hopes and dreams.
We make a wish on a falling star, crack open a fortune cookie with hope, and blow our desires into the wind on dandelion seeds.
It’s like we’ll find any excuse to make a wish:
- blowing out all the candles on a birthday cake
- seeing the first star of the night (Star light, Star bright…)
- tossing coins in a well
- breaking wish bones
- when the clasp of your necklace touches the charm (while you’re wearing it)
- an eyelash that’s fallen out
Let’s make good use of those wishes by writing about what comes from them…
Here’s Your Prompt:
- You’re walking down the beach and you find an old scotch bottle half-buried in the sand. The cork is in place, and it’s been sealed even further with one of those wire cages used to keep champagne corks in place. On top of the wire is duct tape, making certain that cork never comes out.
But you can’t help yourself: off comes the tape and the wire, and out comes the cork. A stream of dark blue smoke snakes out of the bottle and solidifies into a genie. He or she is beautiful beyond belief, and in age-old style, offers you three wishes for rescuing him (or her) from the bottle.
It’s not until after you make the wishes that you find out that the genie is really a demon, and it has it’s own special way of fulfilling your desires…
- Have you ever wished for something good for you, that might have been detrimental to someone else if it came true? Write what might have happened. Or, use this idea as a springboard for a story: the wish is what starts the trouble…
- You’re granted a wish where you can choose two of the following: love, health, success or wealth. You’re life will be filled with the opposite of the two you don’t choose. So, if you don’t choose wealth, you will be poor. If you don’t choose health, you will be sickly, etc. Which do you choose? How do you cope with the other?
- Use the above scenario in a story. Here’s the twist: One character may choose any of the four attributes for himself, but he must bestow the other three (one each) on three of his friends. (None are ‘penalized’ with an opposite of the other gifts.) How does your character make the choices? Does he tell his friends what he’s done? Why or why not? How do these changes affect their relationships?
- Someone says to you, “I wish you were the President. Things would be a little better around here.” Poof! You’re the president. How would you make things better? How do you rally the House and Senate around you to get things done? What happens if you can’t convince them to see your point of view?
- Don’t want to fight the House or Senate? Poof! You’re a tyrant, a despot, a dictator, or (simply) the leader of a country with no governmental checks and balances. What beliefs have you built your country on? How is it working? How do you fix things when they aren’t working to your satisfaction?
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Writers - Maryland Writer's Assn.
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