prompt

Prompt: Being Brave

The prompt this week is from Pat Schneider’s book “Writing Alone and with Others,” a book we use as one of our key guides for our writing group. The exercise on being brave.

Write something that feels too huge, or too dangerous, to tell. Courage is not the special prerogative of those who have experienced some dramatic suffering. It is a part of the human condition, related to the danger and the suffering we all experience. Once a writer friend said, when she learned that I had been in an orphanage as a child, “Pat, you are so lucky! What hurt you is so clear and obvious!” She grew up in a proper home where church and community kept things in order. How do you find what went wrong, when the table is set with silver and the candles burn and everything is so proper? It takes courage – perhaps more than for those of us who have dramatic material in our background.

The following poem, of which this is an excerpt, served as the prompt example You may read the whole thing on Google Books for free.

The poem was written by a young woman in Japan during one of Pat’s workshops there. The woman is C. Misa Sugiura and speaks of the shame a child feels when ridiculed, focusing on the poet’s attendance at an elementary school in the United States.

When I was little,
people laughed at me
and called me
flatface.
They pulled their eyes into
slits
and said,
“Me Chinese!”
and laughed.

I didn’t know my
face was flat
so I went home
and looked in the mirror
to see…

So I went to school
and said, “I’m Japanese and
my face
is like yours,
isn’t it?

And they said,
No.
It isn’t!
It’s flat like a pancake.
Me Japanese pancake-face!
And they laughed.

And I went home again
and looked in the mirror
and I cried because
they were right.

Prompt: Forget About Today Until Tomorrow

From Mr. Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan:

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Prompt: Limerick

The prompt this week was to write a limerick. A limerick is a poem style that gained popularity in the early 18th century and has a strict form and rhythm. It is such an accepted form of poetry, many can finish the last line if the writing compels them to do so with rhythm and rime.

According to Wikipedia:

Limerick is a form of poetry, especially one in five-line, predominantly anapestic meter with a strict rhyme scheme (AABBA), which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The third and fourth lines are usually shorter than the other three.

According to some experts, a limerick isn’t a true or pure limerick unless it has an obscene element, and that clean limericks were just a “passing fad.” Edward Lear (19th century poet) truly popularized the form and was published in the papers, though he claimed these were not limericks.

An example of an early form of limerick by an unknown author is:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

A limerick consists of the standard form of a stanza of five lines. Using the measurement of a “foot” as the limerick’s meter and pattern, it is ta-ta-TUM, an anapaest. The first, second, and fifth rhyme with each other and have three “feet of three syllables each.” The third and forth lines are shorter and rhyme together with two “feet of three syllabus.”

The storytelling order of a limerick is:

Introduce a person and a place, with the place words at the end of the first line.
Line two continues the action, and rhymes with line one.
The third line sets up the “fall” of the person and is short and sets up the rhyme for the next line.
Another short line continues the action and rhymes with the line above it.
The last line is the punch line, and rhymes with the first and second lines. Sometimes this is a repeat of the first line through a twist of works, but not always.

One of the most famous examples of limerick forms is:

There was an Old Man of Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
His daughter, called Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
– Anonymous

The prompt was to write a limerick. Play with rhymes and storytelling, and attempt to create a twist at the end.

Vernonia Library Writers

The Vernonia Writers met at the Library this past Thursday and worked on nouns and modifiers. As we began the class, each participant wrote a list column down the page of ten nouns; puppy, book, potato chips, etc. Each writer then made a second list column of ten modifiers; steely, damp, rotund, etc.

Once the list columns were complete, papers were traded around the table so that the author of the list was not the one working with the words. Participants were given 20 minutes to match or mis-match the two lists in an effort to come up with individual sentences, poems or complete stories.

It was more difficult than first thought, but several wordsmiths were able to use all the sets and put them into a story. Most were able to use about 90% of the sets. All of the writers were able to stretch their common vocabulary and sentence structure during this prompt.

This prompt can also be done alone with the words that you decide. Some have found the list by random dictionary pages. Try it yourself to see how you do.

The next class for the Vernonia Library Writers is scheduled for February 18 at 6pm. Hope to see you there.

Prompt: The Haven

The following prompt comes from the book “Beasts in My Belfry” by Gerald Durell from chapter 2, “A Lust of Lions.” The following describes an official building at Whipsnade Zoo in the UK, one of the first zoos to attempt to provide “natural” quarters for their wildlife, and his adventures as a young man working there, determined to become a wildlife specialist.

The nerve centre of the section was a small, tumble-down hut hemmed in by a copse of tangled elder bushes. The hut wore a toupee of honeysuckle at a rakish angle, practically obscuring one of its two windows and so making the interior dark and gloomy. Outside it sported a battered notice-board on which was the euphemistic title “The Haven.” The furnishings were monastic in their simplicity – three chairs in various stages of decay, a table that rocked and jumped like a nervous horse when anything was planed on it, and a grotesque black stove that crouched in one corner pouting smoke through its iron teeth and regurgitating embers in quite incredible quantities.

The prompt was to describe something, preferably an inanimate object, using anthropomorphic descriptions. Make us see the character of the thing.

November 30 Prompt – WalMart

The following prompt is by Shannon, a Writers in the Grove member, a part of our Prompt-a-Day project to support NaNoWriMo during November 2015. Each prompt was generously donated by our Writers in the Grove members. You are welcome to take this prompt in any direction you wish.

Your character is waiting outside a WalMart. Describe the people they see coming out of the store.

Place them outside a Nordstrom department store. Describe the people they see coming out of that store and compare them.

November 29 Prompt – Shopping

The following prompt is by Chuck, a Writers in the Grove member, a part of our Prompt-a-Day project to support NaNoWriMo during November 2015. Each prompt was generously donated by our Writers in the Grove members. You are welcome to take this prompt in any direction you wish.

Take your character to the grocery store. How do they see and experience the store?

November 28 Prompt – Despair

The following prompt is by Anne Stackpole-Cuellar, a Writers in the Grove member, a part of our Prompt-a-Day project to support NaNoWriMo during November 2015. Each prompt was generously donated by our Writers in the Grove members. You are welcome to take this prompt in any direction you wish.

Describe one small thing or event which pulled your character away from despair.

To quote Robert Frost:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Poem from The Poetry Foundation.

November 27 Prompt – Policies

The following prompt is by Gretchen, a Writers in the Grove member, a part of our Prompt-a-Day project to support NaNoWriMo during November 2015. Each prompt was generously donated by our Writers in the Grove members. You are welcome to take this prompt in any direction you wish.

Your character is disagreeing with a policy. What is the policy and their argument for or against it? Why?

November 26 Prompt – Body Parts

The following prompt is by Susan Schmidlin, member of Writers in the Grove, a part of our Prompt-a-Day project to support NaNoWriMo during November 2015. Each prompt was generously donated by our Writers in the Grove members. You are welcome to take this prompt in any direction you wish.

Have a discussion with a body part.

The character just stubbed a toe, sliced a finger when making dinner, or fell off a step and twisted an ankle, broke a bone, etc.

Write the dialogue between the character and the body part.