April 20, 2005
Even though Word believes that to be the date, it is well past midnight and I've gotten my nights and days so confused again that I can't sleep. The cable is down for "scheduled maintenance" and I'm thinking that if Time Warner can send me newsletters trying to get me to enter contests for things I don't need or want, they could have actually advised me that we were going to be offline tonight.
But that requires customer service….
I've started to write several things here, a whole laundry list of potential topics spinning through my head…. But the needle doesn't seem to want to stop on any of them. I wish I had a menu of topics; I can ramble on about anything.
But I find I'm tired of my real life and want to give Lily or Megg a chance at the keyboard. Only Megg is sulking because she's not getting the attention she wants, and Lily is quite the girl about town lately. She's still trying to recover from the blow that her favorite writer crush is gay. Just breaks all the rules. He's a writer damn it! That carries responsibility!
Eh.
Okay, when worse comes to worst, I have a bunch of resources on my bookshelf, I could be like a, you know, REAL writer and open up a book with writing prompts. I could even dive into the Jar of Magic Writing Topics that the girls made for me one year when they got tired of brainstorming WITH me… it is a mason jar (where does that term come from you think? Like Masonic masons ala Da Vinci Code (I never did get through that) or like the Mason Dixon line? Preservation of food seems to be more of a southern thing… northerners had natures deep freeze if they could get things to last that long (I just made that theory up and yes, I know it makes no sense. Humor me here.) Anyway, inside the jar is black sheer fabric, speckled with gold stars, the kind you'd see on a wizard's cape. Inside the fabric lining are several tiny little scrolls. Each scroll is taped closed with Magic Transparent Tape. Inside each scroll is a writing prompt, intended to inspire short stories suitable for framing... er... giving away to my friends. I started to write a novel from them last fall during Nanowrimo, thinking if I got on a roll and let each story link to the next that it might serve several purposes… but I got stuck. The jar itself captured my imagination and I wasn't able to conjure up any magic from the prompts.
So here is a randomly chosen prompt from Megg's Jar of Magic… want to write with me?
Gay men in 19th Century England often wore green carnations in their lapels as a signal to those in the know. (The pun is that green carnations, like homosexuality, are "unnatural."
Now let's just set this record straight. I am not homophobic and neither are my daughters. They just think it's funny to try to get me to expose my ultra liberal thinking among my not so liberal colleagues. Any other day, and they'd get their wish. (He's a writer! What is that about? What's wrong with bisexuality anyway?)
Okay, you write about nature if you want. I'm pulling another prompt.
Get a dead man to tell a tale. Preferably sans help from supernatural la-la land.
That's just too easy. It's CSI. They must have been rushed on these. Not like someone in my family to push a deadline….
One more try.
Huysman's "Against Nature " features a protagonist who orders his life completely around aesthetics. (insert here from me…. Do we see a theme developing here???)(back to prompt)—giving a party at one point which is completely themed around the color black, with all black décor and costume, serving Black Forest cake, caviar, marinated Portobello, etc.; the garden done over only to feature igneous rock and of course it's on a moonless night. You're invited.
Well, who doesn't love a party?
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