365 Prompts
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- War and Peace: Write about a recent conflict. (For anyone who's had an intelligent weapon in their gaming career.)
They're at it again. You'd think people who're together as much as they are would be less... fraught. People! Listen to me. I still think of it as a 'people' even knowing it's not. Farthak does too, but he's a dwarf. He has a thing for worked metal. I have no excuse at all, and if Ser Midday Sun Glinting On A Blade of Grass -- ugh, elvish names -- were to hear me call it people, I'd never hear the end of it. All of which is a way to avoid thinking about the fact that they're arguing. Again. The rest of the party is doing their best to ignore that pinched expression on his face. They know what it means too. She's haranguing him, probably something about how he's not striving hard enough to destroy evil. Sure, he killed a few goblins the other day, but that's minor stuff. She wants something bigger, and she's not afraid to tell him so. He was so excited when he found her, too! A real sword at last! A magic sword, dedicated to fighting the horrors of the world! Ser Midday Sun tried to warn him... but it was too late. Poor kid was already swinging her around like she was his own arm. I shudder to think what it'll be like when she can speak aloud to the rest of us. Of course, we can get away. The kid is stuck with her. If he 'forgot' her somewhere, she'd just show up in his sheath the next day, mumbling in his head about how he needs to go find a dragon or a demon for them to defeat. I wonder if there's a board in the city somewhere, someplace to ask if more powerful adventurers need a fancy evil-killing sword? At least then he might be able to convince her she's on to bigger, better things. The past few weeks may be enough for him to realize it's not getting better. This just isn't working out. It's her, not him. Or is it it's it?
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- Frame It: Write a poem or some phrases that would make for good wall art in your home.
This space reserved
For the art
That would have been here
If our tastes weren't
So very different
Her baroque
Me minimalist
Him anti-art entirely
And so it's just
This simple empty frame -
- Puzzle: Write about putting together the pieces of puzzles.
My good Dr. L~,
There is no small delight to be found in the writing of correspondence to a man of such extraordinary good taste and high intelligence as yourself. I appreciate your willingness to entertain my thoughts, and hope that you will find a few moments to return my letter at your convenience. Though your focus of study does not dwell in the same areas as my own, it is similar enough, I trust, that those similarities will provide a bridge to understanding.
Given the nature of the topic we discuss, you will forgive me, I hope, if I couch my phrases in something of a subterfuge. Without such niceties, we might both find ourselves in some minor difficulties. As such, I trust that through these witticisms, we maintain our respective boundaries and lifestyles. To any who might gain these personal letters and attempt to discern their meanings, I say to you: good luck! You will need it.
Let us first then describe the situation. Consider a child's toy, disassembled. The pieces are familiar, as we are all given to knowing them from youth onwards. Alas, they have been set apart from one another, and inasmuch as we might picture the end result, reaching that point is less certain. For one, the intricacies of the matter are often obscured. How does one put them together again? Should it be some form of glue, subject to solvent but otherwise solid? That would interfere in the flexibility of the finished product. Needle and thread might apply, but the edges, sir! They would peel upwards in an entirely unattractive way. Science need not be ugly, I have always thought, and trust that you would agree. Grace in practice only gilds the lily.
Even with this assembly decided -- and this is not the case, but we move forward to encompass the whole of the situation -- there is yet more to contemplate. A toy such as this should move freely when it is together at last. Gears might be useful in such a case, if they are exactingly and cunningly laid into the workings. One might provide a few moments of mobility through the advent of a winding key in that case. But it would only provide those moments. The very fundamentals of our understanding of thermodynamics suggest that the energy converted thus would dissipate all too soon. How then to apply energy in such a way that it will provide continued motion to the toy? Perhaps if a sufficient jolt were supplied at first, the system might take up itself with minor infusions to follow, much as we ourselves do? This verges on the mysteries of life, however; I cannot claim to know how it might be done yet.
Thankfully, the question of who would be interested in such an item is already answered. Though the science itself should be enough of a joy to convince the world of its worth, we do not live in such a perfect symposium. As such, I have sought out enlightened gentlemen of means who would find use in a completed object. My work continues apace, and they are as convinced of my final success as I am myself. It is only a matter of time.
Any thoughts you might share regarding the two questions at hand would be greatly appreciated, my good sir. As you are able, write back with your suggestions. Indeed, I would dearly enjoy the opportunity to hear what troubles your own research raises! I believe there is some validity to the theory that the social and life sciences in conjunction can benefit all involved.
Yours with gratitude,
Dr. F~
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- Fire-starters: Write about building a fire.
The thing that all-consuming hunger never thinks about is what it will do once it's done all-consuming. Of course, you can't reason with something like that, even if it were sentient, which is an iffy prospect in its own right. The very concept of an all-consuming hunger suggests that other possibilities have already been eaten right up. In a hypothetical situation, should you have the opportunity to speak to something with such an instinct, what would be the response? Please don't! Hungry. No stop! Hungry. What about the children! Hungry. You see? It would be like arguing with a toddler. There's nothing there but desire, and no will to leaven the urge to all-consumption.
So it consumes all. This is a rhetorical situation of course, you'd be eaten too. But in this distant future in which all things are swallowed up in the belly of the proverbial beast, what does it turn to? The only thing left: itself. Self-cannibalism is an ugly picture, but what's an all-consuming hunger to do? Perhaps it starts at the bottom to work its way up. Whether this takes a mere moment or an aeon hardly matters. Eventually it will be down to whatever part does the eating. Not a pleasant picture either, but bear with me.
What matters is that the very nature of an all-consuming hunger is itself something that cannot be eaten! How can it eat its own hunger without losing the desire to all-consume! This paradox cannot be born by the laws of science, and is thus the underpinnings of my theorem on the impossibility of beings from beyond. Only $4.99 in .epub format, no DRM applied!
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- Coffee & Tea: Surely you drink one or the other or know someone who does- write about it!
There is no grey in this war. There is no middle ground where one might pause and take a sip of something soothing or bracing as the need occurs. There is only the fight, constant and unending. Battle knows no boundaries in this place. It spills over between siblings, between parents, between second-cousins and thirds. Now and then there is a brief moment of respite, a quiet space in a Starbucks when two sides sit at the same table. But it never lasts. The complaints of scent and sound, the cries about caffeine-levels and ritualistic pouring... they are louder still after such times. Those poor few who drink neither are left helpless and wondering where they might find their anti-oxidants, their glorious energy-boost. But the division does not stop with these two camps. Within each there are the heresies, the orthodox claiming a split. Plain-jane or adulterated sweetness? Fast to get the benefits, slow to enjoy the taste? Creamed to soothe or hard-core strength alone? If only they could all see their similarities instead of their differences. Only then could we see peace in our lifetime.
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- Car Keys: Write about someone getting their driver’s license for the first time.
Transcript Begins
O Diaribot! All my friends have it! I don't even know how to say it to my besti! She wouldn't tell anyone else but they'd still find out. [sad-ji] I don't even know what to do! How could I fail the test! I studied! I sim'd! My mum even let me take hers out to practice! I got the controls lit up, I got up into the air and then bam [sick-ji]! Mum said my feed was off and not to worry but then I got to the test and it happened again! Everyone's going out to sortie and I have to ask for a ride! [ang-ji] I might just die! [risk analysis: negligible] Bekki is going to eat me alive when she hears! [risk analysis: negligible] What if there's something wrong with me?! [worr-ji] What if I'm sick arell??? Diaribot search phrase: gravity sickness! [search begins]
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- What You Don’t Know: Write about a secret you’ve kept from someone else or how you feel when you know someone is keeping a secret from you. (Writer's Note: This is muddled and unfinished, but if I don't post it, I won't keep going.)
She lays claim to privacy but it is a tattered shield, rarely fully raised. Were the ones who spoke with dread of mind reading rays so wrong? They claimed tinfoil would solve the problem, but we invite the invasion with every account signed up on social media. Every post button clicked is a declaration of pay attention to me, a demand that those Chosen Few look here look here. If we describe the self as a room, the door is either open or shut. There is no opening at halfsies in this particular metaphor. If instead it is layers of gauze and tulle, does peeling one away to allow a friend a glimpse at What Lies Beneath mean that it is gone for everyone else around? Perhaps the problem is the metaphors themselves, but we are human in the end. We think in comparisons. We could no more give up our allusion to privacy than we could give up our very skin and bones, the ultimate in guardians against the vulnerabilities hidden within. Consider me this: my privacy is not held by me, but held by the viewer. Each of you holds a lens, ground to a fine and exacting degree. What you see when you look at me depends on what prescription I have granted to you, and what prescription you may or may not have stolen from others. Privacy becomes a factor of how many have a lens and what degree each of them holds.
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- Warehouse: Write about being inside an old abandoned warehouse.
There are concrete daises and bollards scattered throughout; this was a place for industry once. The metal is gone, the memory of the workers themselves slipped away. What's left behind is a carcass, little more than bones with no flesh, muscle, organs between. I can feel a whisper of its death trickling down my spine as I walk through the great open spaces. Production has fallen still, all the sounds laid low. My footsteps and breathing are the settling of the corpse into nothing. Perhaps it will find new use some far off day; do we not carve jewelry, musical instruments, knick-knacks from the skeleton of other animals? But for now it is only silent, empty, coated in a thin layer of dust.
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- The Sound of Silence: Write about staying quiet when you feel like shouting.
It is this I will always remember: they were a people who laughed. Even as they heard the ultimatum, they stared up at us with wondering, delighted eyes. The translator informed in tinny tones that they were shouting invitations upwards: come down, sit with them, join in the day's festival, would we like something to [untranslatable]? I remember how quiet the bridge was in return, the silence echoing around those welcoming words. We all just stared at our controls. What could we say? The ultimatum was already broadcast. They'd had years now to come to grips with the situation. Still they laughed; it wasn't fearful. I've heard many incredulous, horrified titters and nervous chuckles in my day. These people laughed for joy. I almost went down amoung them to ask why, I felt that urge. Uniform and regulations held me back, but I wanted to. Desperately. I've asked the xenologists over the years, as opportunity presented itself. They don't know either. So I'm left with the laughter haunting my dreams. Who would have thought that something so carefree would linger so long in the quiet of the ship's recycled air? We've all moved on to other ships by now, different posts, new berths. That's a good thing. I don't know that I could meet the eyes of someone who'd heard it too. I pushed the button. They'd know what I cut short.
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- Insult: Write about being insulted. (Writer's Note: Two for the price of one.)
But she's such a gentle soul.
(There is so much shadow packed into the nooks and crannies cast by the light of this compliment that they could swallow the sun were they let loose. But don't you worry. The compliment about you is totally legit.)
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Okay okay okay, you want to know what it's like. Think of it... think of it like colors. Friendship, friendship is this nice warm golden brown... ugh. Nevermind, not like colors, that's not right. Scents instead! Rage is cinnamon, that sharp kind you get when you turn it into candy so you want to spit it out but it's still so sweet and tasty? No no, that's not right either, not rage'y enough. Okay. Okay okay. Feelings. Feelings are like feelings! When someone tosses shade at you, that's like getting slashed by the edge of a wet towel. It stings and then it fades but you still flinch every time you think about whoever snapped it at you maybe doing it again. Except that's not... that's not it either. I don't know! I don't know how to describe it to you. Empathy is just knowing, no matter what the books say.
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- Mirror, Mirror: What if you mirror started talking to you?
I begin to believe I am the reflection. It is the little things that suggest it. Some objects... I worry they do not exist independently of my presence. I lifted the phone to my ear the other morning, but there was no sound. Did the person I had been speaking to simply cease? Will she return when I see her again? And there is always someone there, staring at me when I look into a shard of glass. Their eyes bore into mine when I dare to look directly, but if I should only glance, they play keep-away. Only her edges appear. Sometimes there are snippets of darkness in my vision, tiny floating pinpricks. They fade. Eventually. Are these the mirror gone smudged and occluded? Is someone in the real world wiping them away when I am not looking closely at her actions? Long stretches of nothingness consume hours of my life. The world simply goes away between one blink and the next, and when I open them again, it is as if no time has passed. But it has. I grow obsessed with her, this truer, realer version of me. Now and then I seek her out, reaching for anything that might show me what she is doing. And there she is. Staring. Is she as obsessed as I am? It is a strange thing, to suspect one is a reflection. If I am not the veritas, then is anything I do my own? Every action taken is only a mimicry, no control, no volition. I hope she treats them kindly, the people she knows in her solid world. I wouldn't like to hurt anyone, even if it wouldn't be my fault.
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- Dirty: Write a poem about getting covered in mud. (Writer's Note: Is it just me, or does it feel like this prompt desperately wants you to write a poem about talking smack?)
There are tiny things alive in the dirt. Oh, you're telling yourself that of course there are, they're called bacteria Becky, oh-em-gee. But I'm telling you, there's something else! They're just as eesy-weeny teeny-tiny as that other stuff, but they're different, I promise! That's why I had to get Timmy into my house, so I could wash him off as soon as possible. I know how it looks, but I just couldn't let the tiny things in the dirt start wriggling into his skin! I could just see it, they were starting to do that little wiggly thing that makes the bubbles pop in the mud? It was horrible! That's why I had the bleach, you see? It all makes sense now, right? Sally, why are you grabbing the phone? I already told you, it was to keep Timmy safe from the tiny things!
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- Light Switch: Write about coming out of the dark and seeing the light.
It descends, it does. Slow and gentle-like. Lay yourself flat in the grass, with the sun bright overhead, with the clouds gone all puffy like little bunny-rabbits and shreds of white against the blue. Let your mum lift the sheet over you. The way she waves it from bottom to top in a sure flick of her wrist, now that's how it is. The way the white cotton undulates -- now there's a word, proud of myself for that one -- in slow motion, with the bright sun a bright barely yellow disk up behind it as it moves. The shadows play across your face too, rising and falling and falling with the breeze of the fabric to kiss your nose, right there. That's how it comes down, so soft you hardly ever know it's there until it kisses your nose. When you take in that breath and catch the scent of a warm summer day from the washing hung out, and you know you'll still find it hiding there when you bury your face in that sheet in your own bed... that's what breathing it in feels like, too. She's laughing, your mum. Real quiet-like, laughing from the joy of knowing you're there, laughing because you're laughing, and isn't it all the better for the two of you together. You can close your eyes when she settles down on top of the sheet next to you, separated by that slip of cloth. Her breath says she's there, you can hear it now, can't you, and you know she's looking at the shape of you, the child, her child, pretending to hide under the sheet. You'll pull yourself out in a second to say boo, and won't she play-pretend she's surprised then, she will. That golden moment, that's what it is. They ask me what I'll pay and the answer is anything and everything, just to have that moment back again.
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- The Stars: Take inspiration from a night sky.
When she steps out of doors, the heavens unfold above her. Tiny pinpricks in the proverbial blanket of night are proof that something larger still has been kneading with kitten-claws at the protective embrace of the sky. The light shining through is so very distant. It crosses that distance so slowly. She can feel the press of it against her skin, the glow falling like rain only gentler than any water could hope to achieve, more powerful than the heaviest geyser. The heartbeat when she first steps out into the open is the hardest. That's when the urge is strongest. It woudln't take any effort at all really. She looks up and knows that with just a shrug... just that. The weight of skin would fall away, the sensations would stop, the sound and light and tastes would fade from notice. Just a shrug would let her rise up to rejoin that oh-so-distant light.
When she steps indoors, the world enfolds her close. Perhaps tomorrow night.
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- Joke Poem: What did the wall say to the other wall? Meet ya at the corner! Hahaha.
There once was a girl in Atlanta
Who put on her cape and her manta'
She strode through the streets
Tossing fist and kicked feet
'Til they knew she was serious as shit about not putting up with this crap. -
- Just Say No: Write about the power you felt when you told someone no. (Writer's Note: This one feels just a little too topical. :p)
no no no no no no no no no no no she screams as she runs up and down the aisle with her tiny feet pattering against the tile so that you can hear the stomping just under the chanted cry that is her refusal to give up the orange otter-pop box she yanked free of the now precariously-leaning tower in the store and you wonder for just a moment if maybe while she's shouting no no no no no at the top of her lungs the sound might stop if only the boxes would tumble atop her indignantly furious head and they're cardboard with some slush in so it wouldn't really hurt her and possibly the cops wouldn't think anything of it though your husband might recognize the impulse and call you out so no no no none of that and where has she gone now as it's suspiciously quiet all asudden
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51: Sunrise/Sunset: It goes round and round.
There is no room for existential dread in the celestial bodies. They are entirely and wholly their motion. It is the opposite of anthropomorphism; though they may think, it is alien to our own. Even this much is pressing too far. It gives them purpose in what humanity can see, rather than in their own doings. Realize instead that there is no room in them for humanity itself. We are as meaningless as the concept of smallness. Can we acknowledge what may be watching us unseen and unknown? Does the cell think that perhaps the bodies moving through space have personality and thought beyond its own? The comparison is like to like, metaphor repeating in layers further and further contraction outwards and upwards, expansion inwards and downwards. Each time know that you are farther from yourself in ways that you cannot begin to imagine.
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- Memory Lane: What’s it look like? How do you get there?
Elevator Pitch: The Memory Palace App
We each of us have the capacity to use a memory palace for those bits and pieces we deem important. Numbers, dates, paragraphs, the flotsam and jetsom of no importance and all importance. But so few build that palace, even when they know it can be done.
Enter the Memory Palace App!
Meant for training purposes, the MPA is designed to allow the user to take photographs -- whether personal or from stock -- and place them on a map in whatever order makes sense to the user. The MPA comes with a wide variety of icons and other methods of marking those photographs, all the better to insert the mental-visual cues that will bring up the memories in question. Using one's phone to assist in traveling through the individual's palace, the user is thus guided through the process of developing the necessary internal steps.
The MPA is free, with in-app purchase available for larger and more complex maps in which to place the images of choice.
(Sigh. If only I knew how to code.)
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- Tear-Jerker: Watch a movie that makes you cry. Write a poem about that scene in the movie. (Writer's Note: PUSHY. No. :|)
Shame: I didn't help. Guilt: I made it worse. Uncertainty: I'll never know how it turns out. You can say it's enough to try until you're blue in the face. You can say someone already falling can't be caught from above. But I still want to bury my head in a loving shoulder and hide. I am helpless in the face of so much pain and loneliness that the only answer is to stop. The futility of crying only adds a dash of self-directed anger to the mix: tears do nothing. Get back on the proverbial horse. Try again with the next.
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- Dear Diary: Write a poem or short story about a diary entry you’ve read or imagined.
O Diary! The most amazing man has entered my life! He is tall, and handsome with a chin that juts out with the tastiest aggressiveness, and a dark head of hair that begs for the stroke of a finger! The muscles alone deserve singing hosanas! I simply cannot wait to toss him into the sands to see what he's worth! Such a spectacle of manliness! Imagine that fine form rippling with exertion! And if he should live, might there be a chance at pitting him against something greater still? O Diary, I tremble to think of him fierce and fighting for his life against Madame N's favorite toy soldier! Let the games begin!
