Author: carolyncordon

Ants are thought on as being industrious creatures, but sometimes I wonder … I’ve been watching these ant nests a little in the last few days, and to my untutored eye, their meanderings look random.

Random isn’t necessarily though, I suppose, sometimes, anyway. They emerge from the ant nest, head off, connect briefly with other ants, head in a different direction, connect again, disappear from the screen, do a u turn, and so on …

Would watching short snaps, over and over again lead to new ideas, do you think? That’s what I was thinking about, anyway, and finally I’ve gone outside with my phone, and fine some filming. Just a short piece, and I don’t know if this will even work, but let’s just see …

I think there are ants in that photo, but you can’t see them. And there isn’t anything moving there, because WordPress won’t let me do that. So if you want to, imagine lots of biggish ants, busily getting around their business, while I watch quite close by, phone/camera in hand, filming them … the filming was done, but I can’t load it to this blog …

The imagination is a wonderful thing though!

Today’s writing prompt is LIES.
Some people might say they never tell lies, but I think that’s not true … It’s a lie. Surely all of us have fibbed at least some time in our lives? Whether it’s a lie told to yourself, a loved one, workmate, friend, employer, whoever, we all lie in some way at some times in our lives, don’t we?

I lie to myself when I say to myself, ‘Yes, I’ll do that tomorrow’. Sure enough, tomorrow comes along and that ‘thing’ doesn’t happen. Again … And of course fibbing to stay ‘nice’ is something needed at times in our lives, in the interests of keeping the peace in a variety of different ways. ‘Yes it looks good on you, well worth the price …’ told to a friend who possibly shouldn’t have spent the money on an item of clothing, but it’s too late now, and they needed cheering up.

This kind of ‘social smoothing’ keeps society rolling along well, most of the time. Sometimes things hit a snag, but mostly it’s OK, and we all keep on keeping on, lies, fibs, over/under statements, and all …

A brief poem of mine, about lies:

Of Course

Of course I’ll love you to the end

it doesn’t matter how much you spend

I can afford it, worth every cent

the joy you bring is Heaven sent …

I’ll pay you back, before next week

I didn’t know, I never peek

If you didn’t want me to know

should’ve hidden it, where it don’t show!

Of course you’ll get the money back

you’ll manage anyway, you’ve got a stack

What d’ya mean, I still owe you money?

What’s yours is mine, isn’t t honey?

And the other way around, yeah of course

but I need the money to back a horse

it’s a dead set winner, no way it can lose

of course I can stop gambling, if I chose!

So this writing prompt for today, mixed in with a lot of media coverage recently, and my own thoughts about life, my own and that of others, lead me to this little poem, which came along easily enough. It may  require some editing, but I’m content with it right now. Writing about things that are in the media, where there can be many different viewpoints is always great for getting the material, to write about lies.

Even if you are a totally honest person, you can be sure there are many other people speaking and writing, who almost tell lies for a living … And most of us want to ‘cover our own arse’ in times of potential trouble, and sometimes lies, fibs, and those nuanced interpretations come into things again.

So think about all of these things. take a look at your own ideas about it all, and get writing about lies. it will be enlightening and fun! Would I lie to you?

haha!

“Reasonable action, beats thoughtless reaction”

As a writing prompt, the opposite idea is true, I suppose, because taking reasonable actions is likely to lead to sensible results, no drama, no conflict, all calm … But of course this will lead to a quiet and sensible piece of writing (even boring), and without dramatic things going on, where’s the excitement, where’s the possibility for action packed climactic scenes at the end of the poem or story?

But when you’re writing something more philosophical, and meaningful, reasonable action is the way to go, rather than lashing out, jumping straight in, taking a shot without knowing where the target is!

These thoughts are useful to think about in terms of character development, if writing fiction, and trying to think on what kinds of characters you have to work with, always remembering that characters are generally held to need to change, by the end of a book, or story, in some way.

Of course, generally held truths are always there to be twisted and shaped in ‘other ways’ if the writer wants to, but bear on mind publishers may hold to more traditional views! A character acting in a different way, but lashing out suddenly can be an exciting way to get a story going, and you can then explore in the story what led to that unusual action …

People aren’t robots, and they don’t always do the expected thing. This is what makes life, and writing interesting, exploring those moments when things suddenly get very, very exciting, dangerous, interesting …

If one is a follower of the Stoics, reasonable action is likely to be your way to go for everything. Considered thought, doing the best thing for self, family, friends, community, and the world, whenever possible, is the way to go. Can that attitude always be the way a person, living by Stoic principles, always goes? Well, people, as I wrote previously, aren’t robots, so maybe not.

No-one is born with a Stoic attitude, far from it. Babies are born with a give it to me, don’t care about you, give, give, give attitude, but they quickly learn to love the one who gives them what they want (need), and become more nuanced in the way they may make their demands … Some anyway. And as we get older, we gain more understanding about those nuances that are there, and that need to be thought about.

What might cause such a diversion from the thoughtful wisdom of the Stoic person? Therein lies the interest in a story with such a character … In the weighing up of options, ideas, emotions, and actions, there are many gaps and tweaks that have to happen, all of which add interest. Whether Stoic or not, people are people, and have motivations, sometimes conflicting ones, and so comes the interest in examining people and their actions …

As the John Lennon song goes, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans …”

I hope these ideas might be helpful to writers when thinking about characters, story development, poetry themes, articles …

Inklings – much in small hints, and intuition

Inklings

Writers and poets tend to be people who may see little things, and readily imagine more …  They can make much from little, and can take stories all over the place, adding little bits of this and that, to end up with a great deal story.

Writing poetry can involve concentrating on one tiny aspect of a thing, and delve deeper and deeper into what that ‘thing’ is. I am interested in trees, and have been thinking about how the Australian native – Eucalyptus tree, with imported trees like the pine tree and fir tree. The Eucalyptus is a tree that seems flexible, bending and moving with the wind, like a dancer moving with the flow of music. The non natives seem much more staid and unmoving, standing tall and still in the face of the wind.

These small ideas have lead to the beginnings of a poem, and I am certainly happy with the way my small inklings of thought about trees have taken me on the way toward another new poem. Another thought I’ve had is about ants, and I’m thinking about taking my ant thoughts from a slight interest to a possible obsession …

I’ve always considered ants to be steady workers, who follow in regimented lines, to and from their ant nest. But I’ve been watching ants, recently, and though I’ve certainly found them trooping along in lines, from and back to the nest, there is also a lot of heading off in one direction, turning around, heading somewhere else, then turning again, and again, and again.

I’m going to film the comings and goings at some ant nests in a particular place in my yard. I stood and watched the ants there this morning, and was very interested to watch one ant, carrying something, dark, I don’t know what it was. It seemed to be wanting to take it back to the nest, via one of the five or so holes there, but most of them had ants leaving the nest, and he ant seemed to be waiting for clear passage to offload its burden.

Eventually, it happened, the ant had a clear chance and in it went. I hope the ant got some kid of reward for its patient waiting … Then I saw another ant leave a different hole, carrying a small white pebble, I say ‘small’ but it was almost as big as the ant’s torso … Anyway the ant walked around and around, obviously looking for the best place to put down its burden, and then, there it was, the perfect spot, and the pebble/burden was unloaded, and the ant disappeared again, into the milling masses of other ants.

I can easily see a story happening from these ant ‘inklings’, and others thoughts I’ve been having about ants …

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Intuition

And according to Wikipedia,

“Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning.^[2][3] Different writers give the word “intuition” a great variety of different meanings, ranging from direct access to unconscious knowledge, unconscious cognition, inner sensing, inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition and the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.^[4][5]

The word intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as “consider” or from the late middle English word intuit, “to contemplate”.”

Do you ever get feelings about things, like if you do this, that will happen, even though you have no proof, or teachings, that it will be so. Gut feelings, these are often called, where you just get a feeling, and act on it, and it turns out that your gut feeling was correct.

The subconscious mind has access to all of our brain, where there is much more there, awaiting for us if we ever need to access it consciously … the brain is putting together all of the tiny bits and pieces of information being taken in, and putting them together to try to make some kind of sense of things …

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So for today, the two, matched writing prompts are inklings and intuition, have fun with it!