Month: February 2020

“It’s getting closer! Are you ready?”

What is it that’s coming, and yes, are you ready? What is it, and what is entailed in ‘getting ready’ for it? Is it a road trip, your retirement from work, birth of a child, or moving into your new home?

Or could it be a holiday, Christmas, Easter, or a birthday, yours or that of a significant other? These events can definitely cause a bit of emotion, excitement or stress, and the need to get things organised for them. Going to school, uni, or your child doing one or other of them for the first time, more things that need a lot of thought, perhaps.

Or could the ‘thing’ that’s on it’s way be a sad or bad thing? Getting divorced, or your child leaving home. Or could it be the anniversary of the death of a loved one, that can be an emotional time, that requires emotional readiness.

So this writing prompt may inspire tears, so take care – hanky or tissues at the ready, and hopefully someone close by to help, if needed. 

Getting emotional is not always a bad thing, necessarily, but it can be, at times. We all must take care for ourselves, and look out for our emotional well being. Getting to the guts of things, in our writing though, that’s an important thing too. It’s a matter of weighing things up, and thinking hard about it all.

Looking at this photo, maybe this man has to get ready for the hay fever season, and needs to make sure he has his appropriate meds, and tissues, lots of tissues! That’s not funny, for sufferers, but it is still funny, if not affected … Or maybe he’s forgotten to get flowers for his loved one on Valentines Day and now that he’s remembered, hasn’t got the money to pay for them … Who knows? Take a guess, and write about it!

 So the writing prompt for today is the phase: “It’s getting closer! Are you ready?”

I hope this writing prompt is useful to you, in your writing, and please, if you are enjoying these prompts, and finding them useful, why not share the good news with some writing friends! 

One prompt will never lead to exactly the same response, from my quite broad experience. The poetry reading event I help organise on the last Sunday of every month, has a small competition, using five words, with a bottle of wine for the winner, with the winner chosen by our Guest Poet, always a fun time!

This prompt today, is one that could well bring some lovely poems into the world. Emotions are important in poetry, and the prompt for today sure has emotion, love?, hate, a bit of jealousy, but one hopes, with best of friends, mostly respect and much affection, bordering on love.

There’s not much more intense than the relationship you might have with friends. As kids we learn about taking turns, sharing, and these things remain into adult friendships too, but ‘big kids’ have many more emotions happening in friendships. Love is a much nuanced thing.

Is is it wrong to call our pets ‘friends’? Can humans be friends with animals? I know what I think, what do you think? And the relationship animals have with each other, is that friendship? Dogs together, is that a pack or are they friends, what things make that friendship. if you think it IS friendship? And what if you throw a cat in there too? Friends?

What are friends, and do acquaintances become friends in time, or are they tow different things. Does shared experience make people friends, and if so, why? Shared understanding, appreciation, helping each other, being successful together, all good things, or can some of those things make a friendship sour, go off? Or even end?

Lots of things there, and here’s some more – Did you have a best friend as a child? Are you both still friends? If so, what’s that like, and if not, the same … Can we be friends with our parents? Or is that relationship just not the same? Can we morph from child and parent, and then become friends with a parent when we become adults? If so, when? Nuance, nuance, nuance, I say!

Have a friendly time, thinking and writing about friendship.

(oops, in my excitement with the writing prompt, I accidentally posted it a day early!)

Are there limits to what you might do, how high you may climb, how far down you may dive? Are there limits to what you’d do for someone else? Could you ever give your all to a charity, political party, refugee seeking a home? 

Could you ever do the biggest thing a person can do? For this writing prompt, take a look at what some others have done, the heights they’ve reached, the fullness of their giving – a kidney, a lifetime of service, a child … 

Or look at the reverse side, could you ever go against your own moral code, and do bad things? Could you ever steal? Or hurt someone else, or a pet? Could you ever be the kind of person you despise for their nastiness? 

Giving, bravery, taking, cowardice, all of these and many more ‘big things’ could come into your thinking for this prompt. There are wonderful people in the world doing awesomely good things. Write about that, perhaps focus on one and use them as your prompt, looking at whether you may one day do something similar, or why you think your couldn’t do that …

Or could you ever be the person who beat their dog, child, spouse? Or who stole from a loved one, the government, their employer, and used the money for funding your own guilty obsession … Could you ever be that person, hated by others, and inwardly, by yourself?

What are the limits of your physical abilities – could you ever run in a marathon, and do well? Could you ever lift your own weight? Could you ever climb a tree, a mountain? Could you ever break through, and become rich and famous? Could you ever become a nun, priest, politician, criminal, actor, stand up comedian, rock star, best selling writer?

Could you, should you, will you, or won’t you? If you think you could, what will it take? Or the opposite, why could you never … whatever? Why not? Write about it, creatively!

Are your morals and ethics strong enough to prevent the bad things? Have there been times you ever acted against your own moral code? How did it feel, what was the thing, and the reason for it? 

These things and so much more, are all part of the writing prompt for today: COULD YOU EVER …

Using the Senses in Writing

Senses – see, hear, smell, touch, taste. As the song refers, our senses working overtime! Who remembers the XTC song, from the seventies?

Those five senses are not the only ones referred to these days though. Intuition is perhaps a sense, certainly it is held to be so.

What about a sense of direction? Some people, if they’re outside, always know which way is north, useful sense to have at times, for sure. Another one is a sense of time.What about a sense of decency, or even a sense of occasion. I could go on and on with these, using Google, but you could do that for yourself, if you wish to explore it further …

So, a poem about the most delicious smelling meal ever, or the glorious sight of a rainbow after rain. The taste of that delicious smelling meal! What was it, anyway, your favourite meal, use all of your senses, the sound of cooking steak, yum!

And of course, the feel of fur, on a soft and warm pussy cat, sensuous and lovely! I love the sound of rumbling thunder, and I also love the sound of wind rushing through tall trees. I hear that sound quite often at home, because we have some tall pine trees on the western of our front yard.

How about a sense of unease? That may be interesting to write about poetically … that gut feeling that something is wrong, but you don’t know what it is, or you know exactly what it is, but can do nothing about it …

Do any of these writing prompts spark any ideas for you? If they do, that’s great. If they don’t maybe a sense of unease might be writing, making you wonder if you’ll ever write creatively again. Write about that!

Today I offer another phrase rather than single word for the prompt. That phrase is this – Knowing is one thing …

So knowing is one thing … takes you to a response, yes? I would assume so, and hope so, but I am only the giver of these prompts and it is up to the readers of them, ie, you, the person reading this, to decide what might come next.

Or this prompt could also prompt thoughts about something quite different, and that is still a good thing, if that prompting and those thoughts lead to creative words being written. Because the reason I started doing this writing prompt for ‘Fabulous February’, was to encourage people to create new pieces of writing.

And even though I’m the person who came up with the prompts for Fabulous February prompt a day, I didn’t memorise them at all, and try not to look much beyond the particular day, when I look at the list to get the prompt to put up here.

Looking at this photo here, does that work as a writing prompt for you? There’s a bit of mystery there, something very bad happened to that car, that’s for sure. Who would do things like that? Was it stolen, and then burnt out? And what could it be in the bag in the other car?

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And I’ve changed the list around a bit, since creating the list back in January, so it’s different to how it looked at the beginning. I’ve had some feedback (‘more phrases, please’), and I’ve had some new ideas of my own too, so took out lamer prompts, added the ‘better’ ones.

There could be further changes, who knows, I’m an ideas kind of person, big ideas, creative ones. If something big comes along, that I reckon people might want to write about, who knows, I may put that one up as a writing prompt …

Any and all feedback is welcome, leave a comment, keep me going, let me know if you’ve written something new!