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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
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October 28, 2015 at 1:21pm October 28, 2015 at 1:21pm
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Prompt: Your creative imagination can be good for writing novels, poems, short stories but can be your worst enemy when it invents worse case scenarios. Do you agree?
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When worse case scenarios happen in my writing, I celebrate them. Coming up with worse case scenarios and then making the main character get out of them creates suspense which keeps the reader reading. This also helps to deepen the conflict.
Yet, when the same thing happens in real life, that is when I imagine the worst to happen, it is not a comfortable feeling; however, it is a useful one. Without falling into despair or panic, if I can imagine how I would act in such a situation, and my thinking along those lines helps me to handle that situation or a similar one better, should such a thing come to pass. From this point of view, creative imagination can be an ally instead of an enemy.
What hurts anyone is fearing the future and suffering from anxiety over it. Even under worst circumstances, it is the better option to design a solution beforehand or to find a way to survive with the least amount of damage to oneself.
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October 27, 2015 at 5:15pm October 27, 2015 at 5:15pm
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Prompt: Is there an image, a storyline, or a scene that keeps coming up and persisting in your writing? Do you know why? Do you put it there knowingly or does it show up on its own, unannounced?
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Yes, I have written a ton of things like that. Remember Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory painting with the misshapen clocks? My writing is exactly that.
Some of those motifs I know why. They are the distorted versions of somewhat life altering, or rather, impressing and influencing events in my life. Others that keep repeating I don’t know from where they originated. With those, I am totally at a loss. They might be some stories or life experiences of others that I listened to while a child and was affected by them without realizing.
In addition, a few things resurfaced while I was writing for contests and for Slam of a long time ago in WdC since several of those prompts were asking personal questions. Some of my answers to those prompts stayed with me, and they keep popping up like a Jack-in-the-box. Sometimes, I don’t recognize them immediately but a bit later, possibly while doing a quick edit. At other times, I recognize them instantly right after I’ve written the last word.
At this time in my life, I don’t use them knowingly, but I am not surprised either when they show up unannounced. I just roll my eyes and say, “Here we go, again!”
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October 26, 2015 at 12:55pm October 26, 2015 at 12:55pm
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Prompt: Willful Blindness: The concept of “willful blindness” comes from the legislature passed in the 19th century —that you’re responsible for the damage to you or to someone else, “if you could have known and should have known, something [that] instead you strove not to see.” What are your thoughts on this or has willful blindness ever taken you under its power?
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Willful blindness happens, according to the 19th century legislature, “if you could have known and should have known,” but looked the other way or ---according to me—willful blindness sometimes happens because of psychological reasons when your mind altered or made light of the facts and you subconsciously skipped over the truth without wanting to.
The type of willful blindness in the 19th-century legislature is inexcusable, and I think it should pass as some kind of a crime or misdemeanor if it isn’t already so. There is no excuse for not acknowledging the wrongdoing if one consciously knows about it.
As to the second type willful blindness that happens with psychological reasons and subconsciously, I assume most of us have been guilty of it at one time or another. This starts at a very young age when we regard our parents as a supreme authority and we get the idea that nothing they do or say or make us do can be wrong. Then this behavior repeats itself in later adult life with the ones we love and build attachments to. We always find good reasons for the misbehavior of those close to us even when we are able to see their errors as errors. It takes a very astute person to not fall into this trap, and I think such people are very rare.
Of the second type of willful—should I say, stupid--blindness, I am guilty to the nth degree, as when I look back I see how gullible I have been, which goes to say, I am probably as gullible, still. Having lived many years doesn’t erase any gullibility, but at least, it makes one think, at each step, if one is repeating the errors of his or her past. I hope I am better at this now, because of experience, but still, I can’t guarantee it for sure.
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October 23, 2015 at 6:19pm October 23, 2015 at 6:19pm
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Name a fashion or a trend that is currently out of style that you wish would make a comeback? Or name one that you wish would disappear forever.
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I wish all fashion trends would disappear. If it did, no one on earth could make women cover-up or open up to the nth degree and make men wear ties that make them look as if they are choking to death.
I don’t know who made fashion become a reflection of social, economic, political and cultural changes, but someone did it sometime. Leading the culprits is the greed of the luxury industry. The industry’s modus operandi is stamping a logo on everything and enticing the rich and famous into becoming the leader of the craze.
Rather than using clothing as a defense against the elements, we have turned into maniacs who wear the latest things. It is not just the clothing, though; fashion trends show up in house and garden decorations and in the designs of the vehicles. As a result, this creates impulsive shopping habits. Except, a few savvy customers have learned to follow their own hearts and do with their belongings whatever strikes their fancy.
I know any industry is valuable in producing jobs, but should job creation serve to empty the pockets of the people? I don't think so. I think job creation should serve the people, without corrupting them. |
October 21, 2015 at 10:46pm October 21, 2015 at 10:46pm
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Prompt: The FBI show up at your door. Why are they there?
Easy and I don’t blame those guys one iota, either. On an alert by Google Chrome, they have checked my browsing history and found these search questions:
Arsenic
Nightshade family
the deadliest poisons that don’t leave a trace
how to hold a gun
how to fire a gun
the different kinds of firearms
dirks, scimitars, and other sharp blades
lonely women moving to Syria
erasing blood stains
why people kill
Stoning
Book Gorilla
Revolutionary Petunias
Arms race and phallic symbols
18th-century hanging practices
murdered kings in history
How to become a member of the mob
Cryogenics
Alien influence
Punishments for adultery
I tell them I am a writer and I have a right to do all kinds of research. They tell me they don’t know of any books by me and they ask if I've sold any.
I tell them, I am not a vendor; I am only a writer.
They say nobody just writes. They can’t believe that I just write.
I tell them to check my portfolio in Writing.com.
They glance through my port, and then, they look at me and say: “Idiot, loser!”
Obvious, isn’t it? From those two words, I immediately understand that they were sent by a presidential candidate.
I say: “You are not the real FBI agents. You are only acting the part."
They say: “And you are not a real writer. You are only acting the part.”
Losers!
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Note: This is fiction. This is only fiction. Don't anyone get any misplaced ideas! 
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October 21, 2015 at 7:32pm October 21, 2015 at 7:32pm
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Prompt: My Dad told me that he helped Daniel Boone move in and rode with Jesse James! Did your parents ever tell you tall tales like this?
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My childhood is so far away that I don’t recall any tall tales. My mother used to make up stories and fairy tales on the spur of the moment, only if we had a few children visiting and they were making too much noise. She rarely told me a story when I was alone; earlier, however, before I learned to read, she read to me, but I was already reading myself when I turned four, so she didn’t bother after that. To the best of my memory, tall tales were out of the circulation in our home; it could be that they were probably considered as bad as lies. The first I heard about them, such as Paul Bunyan tales was at school.
A tall tale has farfetched elements, related as if they were facts. Some are exaggerations of actual events. Some take their plots from historical events and people.
I guess it is all right to tell tall tales for the fun of it, but tall tales become counterproductive when the tall-tale teller believes them himself, such as a pretty young girl strongly believing that every male in the universe will fall for her.
As a tall-tale teller, I can remember one guy from another country while I, my husband, and our sons were traveling overseas. This guy told us he’d be the next prime minister of the said country as all wheels were in motion, and it was a done deal. So much so that our sons referred to him as the prime minister. From what we heard and read later on in the papers, he didn’t even make it to the preliminaries.  But then, it is the nature of the beast. Just listen or watch the political debates going on with both parties. Tall tales abound.
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October 20, 2015 at 10:33am October 20, 2015 at 10:33am
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Prompt: The little things in the beginning usually cause the big things at the end. Can you think of something minor that can turn into a big deal in the world, in your life, or in your city?
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Something small, something unnoticeable even, can cause big problems. Then, reversely, a tiny smile or a pat in the back can help save a life or encourage a person to do big things.
More than 2000 years ago, before Ceasar’s assassination, earlier in the day, just as Ceasar entered the building, a man named Artemidorus tried to warn him of eminent danger by thrusting a small scroll into his hand, but Caesar ignored it. If he had stopped to read the scroll, he wouldn’t be killed.
During the 1960s when the Soviet space missions were at the height of their success, a loose bolt in a very expensive rocket ship was sucked into the fuel pump, which shut everything down and the rocket plunged back into the earth causing a major explosion, which the Russians hid from the eyes of the world then until a few years ago.
On the plus side, “Wilson Greatbatch was working on a contraption that would record human heart beats when he accidentally inserted the wrong resistor. It ended up perfectly mimicking the heart’s rhythm and thus gave birth to the first implantable pacemaker.” From http://list25.com/25-accidental-inventions-that-changed-the-world/3
What can happen in the future, if I am expected to trust my imagination? Our electrician may insert a small chip by mistake, and my house can self-clean or is this just wishful thinking!
Or someone may push the wrong button somewhere and all warring equipment in the world may be rendered useless. Yay for eternal peace!
Or a microbiologist can implant the DNA of a flower into the DNA in a drop of testosterone to change everyone in the world into peace-loving people. Heaven forbid that he or she doesn’t use the DNA from Venus’s flytrap.
Now that I stuck a branch into a bees’ nest, all day today, my mind is going to come up with little things turning our lives around in a big way.  Eeeeek! 
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October 19, 2015 at 12:45pm October 19, 2015 at 12:45pm
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Prompt: What are some of the ways you make your non-writing time serve your writing?
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Most anything I do and feel will have an effect on my writing. This is a given, but there are a few things I do when I am not writing that can count for writing practice.
If I am doing something, a mundane activity like potting a plant, for example, I repeat to myself the steps I am taking. This can come in handy when I have two characters talking. One could be potting a plant, and the steps he or she takes will enhance or even replace the ‘he said, she said’ tags. Since I am telling the steps to myself, my brain will recall them more easily.
Taking a walk is a good form of exercise. Not only that but also the things I see on my way end up getting inside my writing. If I have any means of taking notes, I take notes, but if I don’t, I take pictures for reference. It is also possible to dictate short notes in my cellphone, although I've never tried that.
Watching a good movie or a play and reading are among the other activities that help, by offering new metaphors, ideas, and at times, good plot construction pointers.
Talking to people, friends or strangers, help with characterization. Not only I can focus on their mimics but also I can imitate the way they pronounce and use words to express themselves.
In the same vein, when I go to the mall, I sit down on a chair and watch people. Everyone’s walking and dressing styles are unique, and they will come in handy with character action. Not just the mall but everywhere I go, people watching is a habit. Good characters make good stories, and I can’t have enough character information in my head if I don’t watch people.
Traveling, when I did it, also gave me my world view and I am sure in some roundabout way helped my writing. Yet, traveling is difficult in later ages, but for the younger set, it is a good idea to take every opportunity to travel, to see and experience different things, places, and people.
Writing down notes sometimes helps but they, too, count as writing. Still, I carry odd pieces of paper in an envelope in my purse, to jot down a sentence or two just to remind me of what I have experienced and seen.
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October 18, 2015 at 12:01am October 18, 2015 at 12:01am
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 American Airlines bought USAir: This news upset me if nothing but for the memories. My husband and I, together and separately, had countless miles of flights on US Air and we were always better served than with the American Airlines. In fact, I have a slew of hair-raising, terrible experiences with American Air, so much so that I swore them off. Based on my experiences, shouldn’t the news say that US Air bought American Airlines?
Oh, well. Long live Jet-Blue!
During the week sometime on Dr. Oz, several women didn’t shower for five days in order to spend that time with their children. The time saved per person was estimated to be 3 hours and 45 minutes. You know, we don’t have to stink to spend time with family. When in a bind, I take showers that last no more than 10-20 minutes. My question is: How and why has this become a health news?
Then on Slate.com, an article goes on and on, about why and how creationists hope to never find life on other planets. Well, I expect there is some kind of a life somewhere in the universe. Yet, forget about us finding them; my hope is they never find us. First, I’d die of shame for the upheaval and unrest on earth. You know, one never likes to have visitors when her house is upside down. Second, what if like all conquerors they enslave us? I am too old to serve as a slave. Eeeeek!
Second to last, on WdC, why do people ask for reviews from other members and make their items private? You know, they could at least send the reviewer a passkey. This happened to me numerous times and then again during the last week. I e-mailed the requesting writer and asked her/him to make the item available for my eyes, and then waited until the last day for her/him to do so. No way, I don’t think the writer even logged on. I ended up rejecting the offer on the last day.
Yet, last but not the least, why do I keep straightening up my desk and workspace to turn it into a strewn dump of papers, notebooks, and pens during the next couple of hours or so? This is my biggest rant of the week and I am sick and tired of me doing this. It is disgusting as well as tiring. I think my desk needs a chambermaid.
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October 17, 2015 at 6:33pm October 17, 2015 at 6:33pm
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Prompt: Do you think "take it one day at a time" is good advice? Why or Why not?
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As advice, the usability of “take it one day at a time” depends on the circumstances. It is true that, if I am always worried about the future, I’ll never live happily and enjoy the present. Taking one day at a time helps to focus my attention on the situation or the problem at hand, and if there is a problem with immense proportions, to handle one aspect or one detail of it at each step may assist me in tying up the entire loose ends at the finish line.
There is also the possibility of a drastic change in everything and every situation around myself in the future. This may even happen in the blink of an eye, and no can predict anything extreme that may occur at any time. Then all the fretting, planning, and worrying will be for nothing.
Still, I cannot just ignore the future or what I’ll need to do in the future. I can’t spend all my money on a Maserati today, if I may not even have bus fare, ten years down the line; therefore, instead of fretting about what’s to come, I can make some preliminary plans for it, so I’ll be ready to take on the problem and hopefully sail through its complications with success.
Applied to writing, if the writer has some kind of an outline, a premise, or at least an idea, when he sits down to write, his writing will flow more smoothly. To be specific, that is why NaNo Prep helps so many of us each year, although this year the daredevil idea that is in my head can’t fit the prep work.
Having praised the getting ready and outlining practice, I have to add that the best writing practice I like happens when I just sit down to write without lifting the pen and let the mind and the heart guide me.
For writing or otherwise, probably the easiest course of action is to make a few rough plans without worrying over them and then taking one day at a time alongside those plans while re-adjusting them when necessary.
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October 16, 2015 at 2:07pm October 16, 2015 at 2:07pm
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Prompt: Do you ever feel like an impostor when you read other writers here on WDC? How do you handle that insecurity that strikes us all?
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All writers are insecure sometimes. This is a fact. In my case, it doesn’t have anything to do with other writers here or anywhere else. For the highly accomplished and for those with brilliant ideas, I only feel admiration.
It is true that I always worry about what I write. Did I skip something, overlooked an idea, or could an ending or a beginning be written better? Does the middle sag? Although I feel great pleasure while I am writing, I am never absolutely sure of the quality of the work that I end up with. Maybe for the same reason, also, I don’t like revising all that much. What if the revised version is worse than the original?
I don’t feel like an impostor, though, but more like a below-average learner, as with each new work and with each approach, any writer is a newbie, unless he or she has succumbed to formulaic writing. To be an impostor, you have to imitate someone. I imitate no one, and for better or worse, this is it. I have done the best to learn anything that came my way concerning this craft. Still, this much or this little is what I can do. As the saying goes, it doesn’t help to kick a dead horse.
Yet, to start a new project and apply my butt to the desk chair requires a strong feeling. That strong feeling, I think, is hope; hope that the next piece will meet my standards, or at least, in the end, I’ll feel lighter as if I just came out of confession. Probably that’s why I like free-flow so much. What comes out always surprises me; although, what I write as free-flow is on paper and not on the screen, and since it is free-flow, I don’t expect perfection.
Probably, that’s why I like blogging, too. My blog is mostly free-flow, even if I first write an entry in a computer file, then copy and paste it into my blog, with a slight, superficial editing afterwards. In addition, I don’t write for money or fame, but I’ll try to help those who do. There is nothing wrong with wanting those things, even if to me, how much I progress and how good a time I have while writing are important.
I write because it is second nature to me. During the times when I couldn’t write due to real-life, I always felt less of a person.
I am sure many writers share my insecurities. Even the most noted, accomplished authors of yesteryear must have felt insecure at one time or another. Franz Kafka, for example, didn’t want his work published at all. Hemingway was never sure of himself even though he talked big and sometimes put down his contemporaries. In some authors’ cases, fame makes them insecure. Some stop writing after becoming famous, like Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird who wrote her second novel decades later.
In short, we writers cast our darkest shadows on our writing, and that’s why our view of our own work is always hazy. Precisely, because of this, despite our high expectations and insecurities, we must keep trying, for our very personal reasons that transcend publication, fame, and money.
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October 15, 2015 at 3:34pm October 15, 2015 at 3:34pm
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Prompt: What books do you have on your shelf that you haven't read, yet? What books do you hope to reread?
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If the question is for in-print-on-paper books, I have on the immediate list, Milan Kundera’s The Festival of Insignificance and May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude. Then as the third immediacy, The Portable Faulkner is on the shelf just for skimming through, since this book has pieces of Faulkner’s work. Although I have read most of it, I am curious to look through this compilation and remedy what I have missed reading.
Even more immediate than those, waiting in my computer, is StephBee’s Windsor Diaries 4: A princess is Always Right, which I promised to read.
Then I have close to two-thousand e-books in my e-readers. For those, I’ll need another lifetime or two. Yet, among them, are at least a hundred that I paid good money for and I’m eager to get to. Then I have many classics I downloaded from Gutenberg.com. I’d like to read or reread.
As to rereading, I am not much in the habit of it. Yet, some of the classics that I read 50-60 years ago, I’d like to look through again. And also, I’d like to read the Outlander series, slowly. The stories have so much exciting action in them that the curiosity makes a reader rush through the beautiful passages, and there are hordes of those beauties. The last time I read the series, I dashed through those books with my half-cooked speed-writing skills, and I didn’t stop to enjoy the beauty of Diana Gabaldon’s writing, especially in the earlier books.
My gluttony with book hoarding makes me embarrassed, if not in front of anyone else but myself, when I look in my internal mirror. In fact, I am a spendthrift when it comes to anything else but books. With books, I am a gluttonous nut.
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October 14, 2015 at 12:24pm October 14, 2015 at 12:24pm
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Prompt: Think of your blog as a mirror. What does it reveal? Blog name, theme choice, design, bio, posts.... What does each element say about you?
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I’ve had several blogs; all of those were very different from one another. This shows that any one of my blogs as to their name, theme, or design cannot reveal anything about me. Regarding the posts with this present blog, they are answers to prompt questions, which means the questions dictate the content.
If I had a blog, however, that I wrote free-flow in it without prompts and without a specific design or anything else, such a thing might serve as a dull mirror; just maybe. I have notebooks that I write free-flow in them with a pen that may be considered more of a mirror since they reflect my conscious thoughts as well as what goes on in my subconscious. Even that wouldn't be a perfect mirror, for I wouldn't like to limit myself or my self-image to just a thing, any one thing.
The fact is, thinking so much about me would make me self-conscious. For the same reason, I don’t like to think about what anything says about me, be it where I live, what I wear, what I write, or any vehicle I use for my writing.
In short, I just am and I just write.
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October 13, 2015 at 1:30pm October 13, 2015 at 1:30pm
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Prompt: What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in a terrifyingly dangerous situation? Could you keep your calm? What would be the first reasonable thought to occur to you?
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I was never in such a situation, but I think doing trial runs in one’s mind for such a situation would help. Even if the situation were to be a different one than what was imagined, the mind can adapt to it by analogy.
I guess I could keep my calm. I usually do. If I know of a dangerous situation before it happens, I usually get ready for it and hope for the best. We have been in two hurricanes and because we had taken precautions, I was calm even though some people who stayed with us lost it.
The worst dangers pop up when we least expect them, however. The closest thing that came to a sudden perilous situation was several decades ago when my cousin and I were listening to the radio, which suddenly burst in flames. Worst yet, the radio was on a shelf in a wall unit made of wood. My cousin screamed at me, “Do something!” although she was sitting closer to it. I ran to the wall unit, reached behind the unit and unplugged the radio. Then I threw a small afghan over the radio to smother the flames. It worked. In the meantime, my cousin was trembling, whining, and cowering where she sat. I had to turn to her and calm her down, afterwards. Luckily not much harm came from this. Even the shelves weren’t scorched. We just wiped them off and they were fine. The radio was a goner, of course.
The first reasonable thought that occurred to me, then, was to stop the fire before it grew. I don’t know what the reasonable thought would be in a more perilous situation, if it were to occur suddenly; say, someone with a submachine gun shooting at everyone in a crowded place. I don’t know what I’d do then. I’d probably call 911 if I could and then look for something to throw at him. Or maybe I’d lose it and cower and hide like my cousin did. It is very difficult to figure out what one can do when faced with such a situation, but trying to stop the attacker or the danger’s origin in some way has to be the only sane thing to do.
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October 12, 2015 at 2:05pm October 12, 2015 at 2:05pm
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Prompt: Where do you think fear of failure comes from? Was there ever something that you had feared you’d fail at but didn’t?
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I think the fear of failure comes from the vision of the desired outcome and from surmising that one doesn’t have the necessary means or circumstances to make that outcome a reality.
Once a person realizes that such a vision is just that, a vision, and an imaginary one at that, he doesn’t mind failure all that much. If anything, he may see failure in more positive terms: as a trial run or a test result. If science and scientists have made progress to change the world through failure, why can’t anyone else, also? Thinking of failure as a test result helps, for test results always bring success closer.
Yet, that fear is always there, isn’t it? It is something boiling in us, which most of the time, we cannot help.
Did I have a fear of failure ever? Surely, I did. Tons of it. Most of it, however, proved out to be false. Through it all, a Montaigne quote helped me immensely. Since I couldn’t find the exact quote now, I’ll re-word it as: The worst disasters that happened to me are the ones that I imagined/feared.
The essence of this quote saw me through many a dilemma in my life. To start with, the one huge fear I had was of marriage, based on the disaster that my parents had and the prattles and rants of the women my mother had made friends with. Still, I took the plunge and have been married quite successfully for 49 years to turn 50 in January.
It has been decades since I read Montaigne's essays, and out of that book, the idea behind this little quote stuck out among the many other impressive ones. Who says quotes are just quotes? Some of them can be lifesavers.
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October 10, 2015 at 12:36pm October 10, 2015 at 12:36pm
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Prompt: Name one thing you wish your cell phone did for you that it currently does not.
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All right, since you asked, be warned that this is going to be a rant.
That one thing I wish for my cell phone to do is to shut up. Even though I programmed it so that only my kids can call me, I don’t know how every merchant in the whole world can have access to it. Thank you very much, AT&T. With each part of your many services, you have managed to stink all areas of my life.
Needless to say, I hate cell phones of any kind. Mine is prepaid, called a Go-Phone, and it better go away, too, because I don’t touch it much, since it is buried in my purse, sometimes losing its charge. So much the better. The phone has many so-called helpful features like a calculator, memo, address book, a very bad camera, internet, etc., none of which I use.
Now that I grumbled and whined, for the sake of objectivity, I have to find something good about it, don’t I! Okay, I’ll say it is the tiny keyboard on it that lets me text instead of talk, even if its functioning perfectly is at best iffy. I’ll text instead of talk anytime. That way I won’t have to put up with the wavering connection to have me or the other person ask, “Would you repeat that again?”
People who know me know that I hate frivolous talk; although, for writing purposes I eavesdrop to all the frivolous talk going around me. If someone wants to get in touch with me, idle talk won’t do it. They have to have something solid to say. I especially hate it when people talk and talk and say the same thing day in and day out. I avoid wasting my time with such stuff and such people.
Besides, why should I bother? My hubby has an obsession. As well as opening every snail mail, be it junk, he answers every single call. Anyone who can’t get through to me knows to call him. He is like having my very own answering service. Isn’t such a husband wonderful?
On the other hand, to carry a personal, just-in-case cell phone with me was his idea.
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October 9, 2015 at 3:37pm October 9, 2015 at 3:37pm
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Prompt: Vladimir Nabokov is noted for his playfulness of his language. One example "Do not be angry with the rain, it simply does not know how to fall upwards."
Describe something in an unusual manner by forming an unexpected association, let's see some playfulness in your writing.
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I can be fast, in other words swift, like the moth called Swift that lays eggs underground and becomes a pest. Most pests are usually swift. There are many ways of being pest-like, by trying to be swift, such as the hotel guest who jumped out of the window in order not to pay what he owed to the hotel. Now, that was swift action on his part and would have worked, if he hadn’t broken his leg.
I am trying to be swift, too, pest-like with this prompt, although I am slow and can only think of people right now, who are Swifts, such as Taylor Swift, the singer who is said to be swift with the men in her life, just like Jonathan Swift, the author who was just as swift with women and satirical writing, but I bet both Swifts would be slow to learn the new programming language called Swift created by Apple for building iOS and Mac apps.
Although I wanted to take a bite from that Apple or Mac for a very long time, I am still lingering around Windows afraid to jump, thinking of the man who jumped from the hotel window. Any such swift change would break me in a worse way, and I don’t have many more years, let alone decades, to live.
Then, for writing all this, if I were to be sued by Taylor Swift, my death would be swift, too, due to the slowness of the courts.
As a note, I apologize for beating around the bush in swift, disconnected thoughts while holding my slow, sluggish pen.
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October 8, 2015 at 2:28pm October 8, 2015 at 2:28pm
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Prompt: What kind of music did your parents listen to? Did it influence you to listen to the music you listen to now?
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My mother and her friends loved romantic popular music of their time. If my mother’s eyes could reflect the music she loved, her irises would show double hearts, like this:  , instead of brown circles.
I guess, just maybe, she influenced me but not to the greatest degree. I like the lovey-dovey music okay, although I am a lot more into Classical, starting with Beethoven. Given an option, say between Sinatra and Moonlight Sonata, I’d definitely pick the Sonata any time and at any place. On the other hand, if the lovey-dovey music was piping from the speakers while I am in a department store, I wouldn’t go, “Eeew!  .”
In addition, I also like folk music from different cultures. That, my mother really didn’t care for. Had she lived to hear it, she also wouldn’t have cared for the cacophony in heavy metal, and neither have I, although I have to say, depending on the piece, some of those sounds-non-grata sometimes had a good beat to them.
One thing both my mother and I liked and stopped to listen was the natural music, such as the pitter patter of the rain, teakettle’s humming as the water boiled, waves lapping the sands, thunder and wind, birdsongs, cat meows, etc.
I think listening to sounds around oneself can be pointed out to little children, but the appreciation of music is a personal thing and it can’t be taught, unless the person is a copycat and hasn’t developed his or her own tastes.
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October 7, 2015 at 4:18pm October 7, 2015 at 4:18pm
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Prompt: October gave a party. The leaves by hundreds came. The chestnuts, oaks and maples and leaves of every name. Write your thoughts on this.
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I haven’t watched and enjoyed the leaves of October in years, but I remember them.
The loveliness of a single fall leaf even a dried coppery one, with its gentle curls is a sight to behold. Yet, October in The North is a multi-colored month with stunning hues, particularly when a calm day allows for hiking, sightseeing, and reflecting in solitude.
Not everything is always calm, though; there is the rain that leaves leaving its drops shining like pearls on everything, and there is the wind swirling the colors off the trees. Maples and some of the oaks paint their leaves blood-red, and gusts make them fall like scarlet rain, letting them stain the hollow parts of the ground. Beech trees, on the other hand, dress in the getups of the Buddhist monks; whereas, cottonwoods, birches, and poplars reflect the neon yellow of a once cheery sun. Then some ornamental trees like dogwoods turn a deep maroon, one of my favorite colors.
These hues and tints and then a party with tiny ghosts and goblins trick or treating, and all things pumpkin. I can taste the pumpkin pie inside my mind even when the season isn’t fall, as it is a taste is etched in my brain cells.
In New England, spigots milking syrup from the maple trees is a sight in addition to all the color and taste, with anything maple being offered to people at the roadsides with apples galore. Cooler temperatures also bring flannel shirts, warm Levis, and boots that I now know I won't wear again and won't experience once more walking on sepia grass and hearing the crispy, snapping leaves.
How can I when, even on a cooler day, the temperature doesn’t fall below 85 degrees and the grass and the trees flaunt all shades of green? Where I am, colors come in flowers, birds, and sunsets, but not from nature getting ready for the underworld. |
October 6, 2015 at 7:34pm October 6, 2015 at 7:34pm
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Prompt: Which things inspire and aid your fictional work? Do you use arts or music other than the writing craft itself in order to come up with storylines, symbols, characters, etc. for your fiction?
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I don’t have a problem finding inspiration as it is everywhere. Anywhere I look--inside a room, looking out of the window, in nature, on the street, while traveling, waiting in a line, etc.--there is an inspiration. I can even close my eyes and find it inside my head. The first idea or inspiration is a cinch.
Where I hesitate is what happens after the first inspiration. To come up with characters and events, I check the prompts, brainstorm and free-flow, and make lists. Character building is not a problem. Plotting is a bit difficult, though.
The visual arts do help but not music because, with music, and especially the kind of music I listen to, I find myself getting lost in it and I cannot think. To me, music is a mind-cleanser and something a bit emotional to fall into. It doesn’t give me ideas for fiction or any other writing; nor does it inspire me for anything else.
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