New Thing: Challenge # 24

Challenge 24 – Do 50 writing prompts in one day

Attempt 1 (Tuesday 15th June 2010)

Prompt 1: Word exercise. 1) Choose a word at random. Any word. The first one that comes into your mind. Open a dictionary and let your finger fall on a word. Write down the word. 2) Write down a type of flower: orchid, rose, violet, whatever. 3) Write down a human quality that you particularly admire, such as courage or humility or intelligence. 4) Now write three sentences using all three words in each sentence. This is a timed exercise. You have three minutes. GO!

Alien, orchid, courage

It took a lot of courage for the alien to taste the orchid, when you consider that on his planets most plants were poisonous.

He stood at her door, feeling like an alien in this town, holding the orchid he’d brought for her, and gathering the courage to ring the bell.

The alien took his place on the platform and looked out at the crowd of humans who had gathered to watch him receive the Orchid of Courage.

Commentary... I’m completely going to fail this challenge. I can’t even get past the first damn prompt. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to writing. I can’t just complete each prompt with rubbish. If it’s no good I delete it and start again. I’ve attempted five different prompts already, and not actually completed a single one. Technically, I finished prompt one. The prompt was to write three sentences, not to have a piece of writing triggered by one of them. But that was the whole point of the prompt. The whole point of all the prompts is to trigger a piece of work. Do I leave it at the sentences? Or do I write something?

Prompt 2: Trigger word – naughtiness

Naughtiness Madness Neediness
Emptiness Blankness Clearness
Darkness Stillness Testiness
Blackness Prettiness Weariness
Senselessness Ugliness Aggressiveness
Happiness Greyness
Friendliness Attractiveness

It’s only the naughtiness that holds back the darkness.
The senselessness that haunts me.
My neediness and friendlessness.
My weariness and testiness.
Nothing breaks through the bleakness.

Day after day the emptiness is endless,
And the only thing that brings me out,
The only thing that saves me from the madness,
Is the clearness and happiness that naughtiness brings.

Prompt 3: Change the ending of another writer’s work.

“For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet, and her Romeo.” – Shakespeare

Two lovers, two young and handsome lovers.
Their families at war and their romance forbidden.
Tender kisses and whispered sweet nothings,
Desperately kept secret.

A friar and a handmaiden entrusted with the secret,
That could tear a dozen lives asunder.
Brothers and kinsmen fighting in the streets.
Fathers and mothers arranging unwanted marriages.
Chaos and disaster disrupt the flush of fresh love.

One fight, one death, one crime, one sentence.
One banishment. One heartbreak.
One mock death to perform.
One heartbroken lover rushing to the bedside...

But let us pause for a moment,
And contemplate the consequences
Of the star-crossed lovers’ actions.

Does Romeo’s broken heart take him to his grave,
Followed swiftly by Juliet’s real death?
Or does Juliet awake a second before Romeo’s kiss?
Are our young and handsome lovers reunited?
Do they face their families, protest their love?
Perhaps such desperate actions make stubborn parents think.
Perhaps feuding families are soothed and calmed,
By their star-crossed heirs.
Perhaps peace comes to Verona, and this tale,
Of Juliet and her Romeo, is one of love, and not woe.

Attempt 2 (Wednesday 16th June 2010)

Okay, so yesterday didn’t go too well. Actually, it wasn’t too bad, because I did manage to create two poems that, with a little bit of work, will be pretty good. Which is good news, because I haven’t written anything new in months. Heck, in years. But I didn’t finish the challenge. Didn’t get anywhere near. I got distracted by visitors and grocery shopping and junk food. So, let’s have another go.

Prompt 1: Poetry Express 1 – Talk to Animals (and Stars): Write a poem addressed to some animal, object, place or maybe even to a person, whom you don’t know or expect to read this. You could write to your cat, to a lemon, to a trout, to Madonna, to Martha Stewart, to the Empire State Building, or...

This sort of poem is called an apostrophe. William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ and Walt Whitman’s ‘To a Locomotive in Winter’ are examples of apostrophe poems. Keep your poem between six and sixteen lines long.

To My Laptop

You see so much of what I do,
I have no secrets I can keep from you.

You know where I go, which internet sites,
The pages of my diary, the words that I write.

The games that I play when I’m overly bored,
The music I download, the pictures I hoard.

Everything I own and everything I do,
My passwords and secrets are all locked inside you.

Prompt 2: Poetry Express 2 - Shift Perspectives: Write a companion poem for the apostrophe poem you wrote for the last exercise, this time writing from the perspective of whomever or whatever you addressed. Again, keep your poem between six and sixteen longs.

The Laptop’s Reply

You are right, my friend, I do know what you do,

This one isn’t working. I know what I want to say, kind of. I’m just very out of habit with the rhyming and the rhythm. It doesn’t HAVE to rhyme of course, but having written the first poem in rhyming couplets I really want this one to match. I’ll take a break and try again in a bit...

It’s official. Challenge failed. Everyone I spoke to said that 50 prompts in one day was far too many, so it’s gone back in the box as “50 writing prompts in one week”. I did get some writing done though, which is always good.

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