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Category: Writing Prompts
I found some topics on Pinterest grouped monthly. Thought I’d give it a whirl.
I don’t wanna write, I wanna gripe. Common courtesy is dead. But if I write about it, I’m gonna get all wound up here at bedtime and I need to get some rest tonight. So, I’ll save it for a day I’m already mad. Writing prompt #911, courtesy of Barry the Chigger. Those of you on my Facebook know him as the guy who’s obsessed with the Kodak library. I know him as the guy who published my words about the helicopter crash and shit hittin’ the fan. I’ve unintentionally beguiled him with my Southern charm, but you never know when you might need a New York Yankee retired fireman to proofread an article on growing petunias. So here we are. #911 You gain control over a magical door. All you have to do is write a location, any location, at the top of the door and when you open it, it brings you to where you’ve written. Gained control? Makes it sound like I’m in a coveted spot, indeed. Like I had to sword fight for this right. Hmm. The “all you have to do” part seems a little suspect, too. And my handwriting is atrocious, so I better be very careful, indeed. “Historic Downtown Savannah Georgia,” I scrawled. Best to pick a place I’m familiar with to get my bearings on how this was gonna work. I opened the door, stepped through, and whoosh! It was like those…
Writing Prompt #466 “The fog rolled in, this was our first warning sign.” It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It was a beautiful, clear day. And lemme tell you, the trout were bitin’. I adjusted my G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised In The South) cap and pushed up my polarized prescription sunglasses. I twitched my rod. “Woooo!” Came my uncle’s war cry from the back of the boat. “I wouldn’t be you for apple butter!” This was a common enough phrase heard every Thursday when the weather was fair, TVA was runnin’ “big water”, and a bearded man and his redheaded niece could be found in the middle of the Clinch River in an aluminum boat. I kept my mouth shut and twitched my rod again. We slowly propelled across the river. Back and forth, back and forth. Only pausing to unhook. Which, to be honest, was happening a lot more from the stern than the bow. But as a wise person once said, “a bad day fishin’ is still better ‘an a good day at work.” The Clinch River is something to behold. It’s wide and green and swift and cold. It’s perfect for the sleek rainbow trout. It’s also home to the “elusive” yellow perch (named by me, sarcastically, after that was all I caught one afternoon and I had to make them sound more exotic and sought after), salamanders, white tailed deer, eagles, and the healthiest crop of…
Trigger warning….vomit ahead. If you don’t wanna read about snot vomit, please skip to the third paragraph. I spent the second half of my day irritated because my coworker is the single most disgusting human being alive. He throws up because he refuses to blow his nose. I am not even joking. He admitted to it today, freely, with no urging from me. It is a regular occurrence. It happened just yesterday afternoon and he didn’t even bother washing it off before he came to work today. He also never washes his hands. I mean never. And by the way, I’m not talking about Double Fries David or Addison the Saving Grace. This is a new guy, y’all don’t know him. And you’re not going to, because I am embarrassed by him and wouldn’t want to make you feel obligated to pretend you aren’t totally repulsed upon introduction. This is not to say he isn’t a nice guy. I feel confident in saying his mother has done the best she could. He’s not intimidating or anything like that. He’s just nasty. And this is nothing I wouldn’t say to him, and have, multiple times a day, since he started three months ago. I’m trying to help him improve his hygiene habits. It’s not working. If I wind up sick, I’m gonna string him up by his toes like a crow caught in the cornfield…
Writing Prompt #752 You’re the last person on Earth… but somehow the internet still seems to work. I don’t even know where to start with this one. Like, how would it even be possible for me, of all people, to be the last man standing? Highly unlikely. I’m more apt to be struck by lightning and hit the lottery in the same day. Because lemme tell you, I’m looking forward to my big reward and have zero interest in fighting tooth and nail to merely survive. But anyway, here we are, plunged into this story because I decided I was short on inspiration tonight. ************************ After four months in my home and observing no other humans, I decided to take the show on the road to see what I might find. The wildlife certainly seemed to be enjoying having free run of the place once again. I’d seen my first ever bobcat, loads of deer, turkey, birds of all kinds. Foxes, rabbits, and even a bear. I had found myself constantly reaching for my Redfield Talus binoculars (a gift from last Christmas before humankind ceased to exist), so often I generally just wore them around my neck. I was continually searching for any movement, human or animal, in assurance it wasn’t just me and Chess in the great big world. It appeared I was the last person in this neck of the woods, anyway. Searching for other humans would have been easier in the…
Writing Prompt #475. You’re asked by the love of your life to define what love means to you. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me…don’t hurt me…no more… Love is time. Love is effort. Love is listening. Love is saving the cabbage stem in a little bowl of water all day for the one who enjoys it most. Love is sacrificing something you enjoy doing to do something the person you love enjoys doing. Like sitting on the beach under an umbrella all day when you burn like a lobster and you’d much rather be touring old houses and being gently buffeted by porch ceiling fans, hung from haint blue ceilings. Or not going fishing, but instead taking your wife to the beauty parlor because she’s nervous about driving on the highway. Love is a dog who meets you at the door even though you’re an hour late. Love is bringing you a Sprite with the good ice when you’re sick. Love is starting your car for you on frosty mornings. Love is telling your children no, even though it hurts your heart, because you know it will benefit them more than giving in. Love is tulips on a Tuesday in April. Love is coconut cream pie like your granny made. Love is picking them up from the airport at one in the morning, even when you have to be at work at eight. Love is simply good morning texts…
Where did the day go, I ponder, as I sit down to type this out. One fingered, as it was brought to my attention the other day. Even turning my iPad sideways and trying to type still feels wrong. Today went right on along, lost on the highway with Miranda singing about pushin’ time. Sometimes songs will rip your heart right out and show it to you, pulsing in its grip. Songs are poetry, and poetry is songs. Jewel is a prime example of that. Life is poetry. Sometimes it’s carefree and whimsical, sometimes it’s brooding and murky. Poetry is not just O Cap’n my captain stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. Poetry is Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss and Guns ‘n Roses singing about rain in November. Dinner was consumed at 10:30, because I wasn’t feeling like breakfast. Which meant I ate like a hobbit the rest of the day. Second lunch was eaten at 3:30, followed by hot fudge cake at 4:30, scarfed down in the Hobby Lobby parking lot. And then, in an effort to even things out, I had a salad at 7:30. And that was my day, in food. So as not to short y’all, I have selected from my book of prompts a little something. The other two I landed on were about zombies and gangs, and I just wasn’t feeling zombie-ish. Writing Prompt #27 [WC: 40] Write a poem that…
Writing Prompt #8 How’d you get that scar? Most everyone has a scar. Talk about it as if it you were about to get that scar for the first time. Scar free? Then you need to invent one! Or talk about another person’s scar as if it was your own. Oh, at the scars I have. I guess the most unpleasant one is the deep tissue muscle scar I got when I was 16 or 17, when my horse accidentally kicked the dog snot out of me when I released him back into his field. He didn’t mean to, I know. He got me in the head, too. And NO, that isn’t what caused me to act this way. I was already crazy. And no, I didn’t know why it didn’t knock some sense back into me. Anyway, the scar was on the inside of my right thigh, visible through much of my twenties as a half horseshoe shaped indention. Then I got fat and you can’t tell it anymore. So is it still considered a scar? Would it come back if I lost a bunch of weight? The world will never know, because I’ve eaten eight chocolate chip cookies today. I’ve also got a scar on the top of my foot from where my water glass fell off my dresser and busted and a shard sliced right into me. It hurt like the devil dickens and I had…
Writing Prompt #6 Describe the perfect home. Make that home come alive; put yourself in your mind in that place. How large or small is it? Where is it located? I’ve often thought about this very thing, as I believe we all have. I remember playing MASH in grade school with the notebook paper folded to fit over our fingers. What was it called? Chinese something catcher. Anyway, mansion-apartment-shack-house. Of course mansion was the one to shoot for. Back in those days an apartment was out of the realm of our comprehension, and we didn’t know a mansion in Seymour until the Creutzinger monstrosity was built. I could see my dream house clearly, probably pulled straight from Gone With the Wind: a Greek Revival with the two story columns, dark red brick, circular driveway, a Juliette balcony off the master bedroom, swimming pool (mine would have to be indoor, or at least covered with tinted glass to keep me from frying like an egg), stables for my many breeds of horses (at least seven: one for each day of the week), a greenhouse, and the river out back. There would be magnolia trees lining the alleé, a black wrought iron gate with scrolls that would swing back from the monogrammed center to admit you after you cleared entrance via the intercom system. The fences would be curvy brick, except where they were black wood plank. Back then I admittedly never gave much thought to the…
So I’ve got this book, “1000 Writing Prompts”. It’s been super beneficial when I’m stuck in a rut. I asked my friend to pick a number. Immediately, “Seven.” My favorite. #7. How were you named? If you feel that your name is boring and the story behind it equally so, make up a name and come up with an interesting story behind that. I honestly don’t know how I came by Amelia Marie or Amy, either one. I also can’t believe I’ve never written about it. But I haven’t. I reckon Amy is a common nickname for Amelia, even though Rhonda said if she had named me Amelia and people insisted on calling me Amy, she’d pinch their little heads off. I think I chose to go by Amy when I started school because I had a hard time making the “e”. I got to be lazy before I ever got started good. What I don’t understand is why we didn’t spell it Ami, because that would have been my initials, and also a bit perkier. I remember mom often telling me it was a good thing I was born a girl, because if I had been a boy, she would have had to named me Maynard, after my dad. I can think of nothing more mortifying. I made the mistake of repeating this to my then-friend Jena, who promptly told it all over the Co-op because, let…
I’m not crazy, I’m just bored. Allow me to explain how this “seed” was planted: a few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend. She was leaving work early that day to go home and can beans. This is a pretty common reason to miss work around these parts, at least in my circle, this time of year. Whether it’s harvesting hay, soybeans, tobacco, or canning, farm work won’t wait on office work. ‘Gotta make hay while the sun shines’ as the saying goes. It would be more accurate if it was ‘while the sun beats down and tries to kill you’, but close enough. So anyway, I was telling her I still have beans my grandmother canned, and she died in 2008. I wouldn’t be scared to eat them; they look alright and have been kept in a dark cabinet upstairs where the temperature doesn’t fluctuate. My friend said that one of her wedding presents from her in-laws was several jars of green beans. They’d been stored in the basement, wrapped in newspaper. And it got me to thinking about the life of a green bean. Some country music artists have written songs about teardrops, and I don’t see much difference. So here goes. I am told that my mother plant was designed and cultivated on a vast farm in Oregon, among many other certified seeds. I only remember life since I became packaged with roughly 400 of my…
