creativity
Question of the Day 8-7,8,9-2018
Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.
What are your thoughts on creativity?
My thoughts are I don’t feel like I harbor a drop of creativity any more. I have always known life would be hard, that I had a lot to learn this time around, but I never realized how the challenges would keep growing harder and harder.
What happened to life getting easier as you go along? Shouldn’t writing get easier? Love?
Maybe my life of increasing difficult challenges has made me too cynical to see the reality anymore. The reality, you know, is that life is what you make it. Creativity is what you make it. Challenges are either problems or solutions.
I’ve started to simplify again. I started a bullet journal, but it quickly ballooned up to include so much that I was overwhelmed. If I had the choice, I would keep track of everything in my life. You might say I have control issues.
And, frankly, you would be right. I felt so out of control and unable to act for so many years, I refuse to bend anymore. Yes, I know this will break me. Yes, I know give and take, bending in the wind of adversity, is the way to survive, but it’s not for me right now. I need firm roots to bend and, right now, my roots are feeling pretty shallow and weak.
So, back to creativity. What happened?
When I was in college, I completed an 800 page manuscript, revise and retyped it 8 times. This was before computers and word processors (yes, the dinosaur days) so when I say re-typed, I mean it. That fire got lost in life, burned out maybe by the endlessness and the pain of hiding from the world.
What would have happened if I had met and married someone who respected me and loved me for who I was.
All those wasted years.
But isn’t that the way creativity is destroyed? Looking backwards instead of forwards. Regretting instead of picking ones self up and carrying on?
I don’t always get the memos on time and, this one, I may have missed altogether. The Muses or God or one of my characters reached out and tapped me on the shoulder, but I was too busy looking back to feel the touch.
How depressing. I have been struggling with my Bi-Polar these past few years more than any time since I started on medication. The depression started at the end of 2016 and hasn’t let go yet.
So what do I do? Creativity is ingrained in each and every one of us, but how easy it is to lose touch with ourselves? Unfortunately, very.
Unfortunately, I have, or I feel I have.
Tomorrow, I finalize my bankruptcy. On the 28th, I go in for surgery. If I get through these, I will be good.
That isn’t the way it works either. It’s not tomorrow or when I get a bigger house or a better job or even have surgery. It’s now. In this moment and then the next and the next. These are the times when we are whole, when creativity fills us, when we realize how glorious, strong and creative, we really are.
Let the good times roll!
FLASH FICTION FOR THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTITIONER- 5-2-2018
Flash Fiction for the Practical Practitioner
The challenge for Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner will open early Wednesday morning, May 2nd. Allow the prompt to take you anywhere you want to go! (Limit your stories to 200 words.)
This challenge is open until 11:00 pm Thursday night, May 10th, 2018.
Tommy knelt beside the drying frame, one hand touching the leathering skin. Soon, it would be ready, but for what? Nothing was made from real things any more, not in the white man’s world nor in the world he’d left behind when his parent’s moved them from the reservation to Bradford, MA.
His parents wanted him to be white. He wasn’t white; would never be white; heart longing for two hundred years ago when his people were great, when their land, their lives, were their own, not cast-off from government.
If nothing else, he could make a rabbit-fur hat for his little sister. She wouldn’t wear it to school, but she might at home. She wanted to be white. Have white friends, play white games, go to white schools.
He wanted to hunt buffalo across the plains, count coup, dance the Sun Dance, ride his pony like the wind, sleep under stars and sky.
Hands dangling between his knees, he hunkered by the frame for a long time, listening for far-off sounds he knew he would never hear.
(184)
Question For The Day 7 – Response by Embeecee
Athling2001 has some nifty answers; me? Not so much. I realized recently I’m stuck in a rut.
An on-line friend is going to the U.K. (England, Scotland, Ireland) this summer, and I thought that might be a new thing to try.
(read more at Question 7)
Gone, Parts 1-4 9-28-2017
I had forgotten I was in the middle of this series. I started with the Daily Post’s One Word prompts, then ran out of time to continue. Part V does not have a One Word Prompt, but I might go back to using the Prompts for the rest.
Below are the links to Parts I-IV and I will be posting Part V shortly.
If you like this kind of continuing story, you can search “The Midnight Hour” on my site for another.
Enjoy!
JSW Prompt 9-6-2017
Finally got the new power cord and battery for my computer so I can get my blog back on track! Yipee!
Feel free to join in and respond to the prompt. Please try to keep your response under 300 words. If you reply, I will re-blog your post to my site (sometimes I am slow, but I get there).
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FLASH FICTION FOR THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTITIONER 8-26-2017
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Flash Fiction for the Practical Practitioner
“Do you think it would be good to eat?”
She cuffed him. “Birds aren’t for eating!”
“Of course they are! I know they are!”
“You are nothing but a silly boy. You just wanting to kill everything.”
The bird’s tail feathers twitched and both were instantly mesmerized, eyes taking in every detail. Bo-Bo flicked his tail, making silent meowing sounds.
Princess curled her tail, cuffing him again on the ear with one paw. “Stop that. You’ll scare it away. It’s pretty.”
“Pretty? Pretty? Who cares about pretty?”
She sniffed, just enough to show her disdain. “Killer.”
“Fluff-head.”
“Take that back!” she hissed.
“You take it back!”
They tumbled together, teeth and claws. Neither realized the bird was gone until too late.
Both hissed, glaring at each other.
“What mother would name her kitten Bo Bo?”
“Better than Princess.”
“No it’s not! Princess is a great name.”
“Is not!”
“Is!”
“Isn’t!”
Another bird settled on the fence.
“Shuuush!”
“Pretty.”
“Good to eat.”
“Shuuuush……..”
Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 8-4-2017
This week’s photo prompt is provided by TJ Paris.
Guide for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers
1. A prompt photo will be provided each Monday pm to be used as a base to your story. Please include photo prompt with your story.
2. Linking for this challenge begins on Monday pm and runs to the following Monday pm.
3. Please credit photo to photographer.
4. The story word limit is 100 – 150 words (+ – 25 words). Please try to stay within this limit.
5. Please indicate the number of words in your story at the end.
Sunshine glittered off shimmering waters, reflecting in his sunglasses; beach silent but for the soft whisper of waves. Back in the cottage, his phone would be ringing, but he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to even be in the same universe as anybody he knew.
“You know,” he said to the salt and the sand, “I’m not crazy.”
The salt and the sand didn’t answer, nor had he expected them to. That would be crazy.
A seagull flew overhead, silent.
Water lapped his toes.
He could almost hear the ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
“I don’t need any help.”
Which was true, but not honest.
How could such a beautiful world be so ugly inside?
He imagined diving into the crystal water and swimming away forever.
A seagull flew overhead, screaming.
Slowly, he turned and headed back towards the cottage, footsteps trailing behind in the sand.
Ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
“Hello?”
(150)
JSW Prompt 7-31-2017
Feel free to join in and respond to the prompt. Please try to keep your response under 300 words. If you reply, I will re-blog your post to my site (sometimes I am slow, but I get there).
Photo by csknotts
Friday Fictioneer’s 7-26-2017
The Phone Call
He stood in the large tiled room, nervously watching the phone on the wall as if it might attack. Would it ring? Would it not?
His fingers twisted nervously before him, knuckles white. Ring, damn it!
Oh god, please don’t ring! Please!
Jumped at the sound of footsteps outside. They faded away.
Ring! Please!
The phone hung silent, cruelly refusing his pleas.
Ring, damn it! Ring!
His hands covered his eyes, willing the phone to obey. Willing it silent.
What if it rang? What if it didn’t?
He sat terrified, knuckles white as snow.
