Author: carolyncordon

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!

How a poem can come into being:

A writing prompt of Superstition (For the month of February, I am posting a new writing prompt to this blog, with some hints, tips, and thoughts about the prompt). I’m very much enjoying doing this, and find my creative input for the month has gone up considerably!

Some Initial Thoughts:
(These thoughts came to being in the comments section of a friend’s blog. The results show how useful and productive it can be to visit the blogs of people who’s writing you like, because they often have interesting people who also follow their blog, and can lead to interesting though pathways …)

A humorous poem about someone scratching off their cerebrals!? 

Wise owls watching, someone scratching … I’m getting hints of a poem in near rhyme here … 

I’ll work on it, and see if I can get some superstition into it too! 

I don’t have that many humorous poems in my collection-to-be yet, but I am a humorous kind of person, so a funny owl poem might be just the thing!

Owl Superstitions 

In some cultures, having an owl around may signal death …

I’m not a superstitious person, and I loved having this owl living in our shed last summer. I felt privileged, and no-one died because of the owl’s presence. I suspect some mice and other creatures may have died though. I hope the deaths were fast and relatively painless, unlike the one in the poem that was inspired by these thoughts.
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And so, after three days, much thought and some editing, (quite a bit of it, actually) the poem below is the final? result.

Having written that comment, some changes are always possible – it’s my poem and I want it to be as good as it can be!

Beware the Hungry Owl

(a poem in ‘near rhyme’)

Wise owl 

watching, 

a silly fool

head scratching –

man’s purpose unclear.

Steady stare, 

owl waits,

with no complaints –

Silly itching duff,

he’s ripping off 

his cerebrals!

Not surprised –

owl reaches,

its hunger aroused.

man retches,

brain bits to scoop –

a bloodied soup.

Man falls down,

owl follows to dine,

‘Loves fresh brains!’

owl claims,

‘yummy for my meals!’

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Many thanks to my poet friend John Malone , for his inspiration and input into this horrid grisly (but fun) poem!

Inspirations come from many places, and can go in weird and wonderful directions! And I love owls, a lot.

This poem has a rhyming scheme of
ababccddeef
ghghiijjkkf

Because the poem is written in ‘near’ or ‘slant’ rhyme, the rhyming pattern is not one that immediately hits you in the ear, and with the first rhyme not being there until the first line of the secone stanza, that may not be immediately obvious either.

Poets like playing with words, I think. I know I certainly do, and sometimes the games the poet plays might not result in a poem that receives great acclaim, but it keeps the poet happy, and they will go on happily ‘poeting’! It certainly works that way for me.

After all, I’ve spent hours on the poem in this blog post, and this blog post may be the only place the silly little poem ever gets published!

I’d love to read your thoughts about what I’ve written here. Do you have any thoughts about how some of your poems come into being? I’d love to read all about it, leave a comment!

I love my husband, my son, our dog, my Mum. I love all of my other family members, and I love my wonderful friends. All them are loved in different ways, but I care about them all, and wish them all good lives in their lives.

I also love travelling by car, driving around on country roads all around where I live, to see the crops growing, seeing them getting taller and taller, the heads fuller, ready for harvesting, and then all gone, harvested. I love the occasional wildlife I see in my travels (except for snakes, I don’t love them …), love to see the various creatures, but am worried about them being in danger, too close to the road.

And I love the tall eucalyptus trees all around, I think about them, am concerned about them, when there’s not enough rain, and happy when we get some rain come again. These trees, so elegant, the way their branches bend and move, reaching out, and up to the sun, showing resilience, bend don’t break!

But they do break, the big winds, coming after little rain, get them, and crack, down the big branches come, as well as smaller twigs, and sometimes whole trees go down. I realise that’s Nature’s way, but I don’t love that happening.

I love looking at the night sky, sometimes. Looking for interesting things, the planets that look like big stars, the moon in all of its various phases, and all of those bright and shining stars. Lovely!

These are the big things I love, I also love writing, reading, eating good food, and coffee. The writing prompt on this fourteenth day of February is ‘Love – What Do You Love?’

Take this prompt anywhere you want to take it, and have a good time doing it! If you found this prompt boring, challenging, weird, not interesting, fun, excellent, or whatever else, tell me about it, let me know, leave a comment, ‘cos I’m interested in knowing how other people are going with this Fabulous February of Writing Prompts!