It’s Week 9! The penultimate trip in this series! I’ll have to line up the series reunion tour soon, and re-post each one*.
When I began this blog, I was on maternity leave and needed a space carved out in my life for something that was creative (outside of the little bundle I had a part in creating) and just mine. I decided to do a 30-day writing challenge and stuck to it for the most part, with the exception of about a one week break due to an unexpected calamity at around the twenty-something day mark. On most days, I’d find a prompt in the morning, then ponder on it over the course of the day while breastfeeding, cooking, changing nappies, cleaning etc, allowing the seeds to germinate in my unconscious mind. Then I’d seize moments when my baby slept, and write, sometimes at awkward angles if he was asleep in my arms. Discovering the world through motherhood and exploring my writing through the blogging world made me feel like I was truly living the dream. Well, there was not much time for any other kind of dreaming through those sleep deprived days!
This week’s journey takes us to day seven of that 30-day challenge, by which time I’d warmed up, getting some dud posts out of the way. On day seven, I chanced upon Steven Savage’s incredible random prompt generator that took me where I had never gone with a story- into the realms of Science Fiction! As a result, Dr Stephen Woodrow entered my world- eminent scientist working within the system to subvert it for the greater good. Dr Woodrow went on to feature in another more recent story, set in a different place and time, but with the same rebellious spirit. If you follow the prompt generator link, you’ll notice it also features a fusion food generator- proceed at your own risk! Oyster banana dumpling anyone? On the other hand, curried tomato chickpea on chips doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
Light up your bunsen burner, and click on the image to be transported through the tumbleweed. Beware of flammables and shady characters!
If you want to read other posts in the series, you can find them under menu item ‘travel through the tumbleweed.’
Work in Progress 
I’ll have to check out that prompt generator. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on completing your challenge.
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Thanks Marissa 🙂 yes, looking forward to your poetic interpretations…
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P.S. I just went there but can’t find how to generate the prompts. Am I missing something? I went to the food one too and it worked just fine.
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Sorry- requires a bit of clicking to get to the right spot. As great as the tool is, looks like Mr Savage hasn’t re-vamped the site since 1995.
Here is a link to the right spot:
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writeprompt
You can also get there following the link in this post. Select ‘writing’ from the drop down list for Generator Types (in top toolbar), then select ‘writing prompt generator’ which is the last link under the header ‘Story Inspiration’
Once there, go crazy with the options of how many prompts to generate. Endless possibilities for poems! 🙂
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Oh yes, got it to work now. Thanks! Going straight to the link did the trick!
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Ooops, led you to a prompt generator, but what I had used was a Writing Challenge Generator, allowing you to choose the complexity and number of challenges:
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writechallenge
You can navigate to it the same way as for the prompt generator, but select ‘Writing Challenge Generator’ rather than ‘writing prompt generator’ in the last step I described. Or- just follow the link for a simpler life 🙂
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Oh, think it was actually this one that did it. I was here earlier trying to write something to no avail so went here specifically to see if you had posted some sort of link, then went to check out over there. Pretty cool but nothing inspirational yet!
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The key (in my experience) is to go with the first prompt you get and find the inspiration in that, otherwise you’ll just keep waiting for something that might not come…
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Yes, I do have that trouble because I’ll come to a site with prompts and get overwhelmed and not be able to focus on one. On the other hand, I’ve taken a writing course where the teacher told us that most prompts will not work for most writers so sometimes I just have to move on.
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I think it’s like anything where there is a lot of choice. Oh well, seems you regularly get inspiration from somewhere! Did you write stories in your course? Any posted on your blog?
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I wrote poems even though most of the other people in the course wrote stories. I did end up posting one of the poems I wrote in that class. It was something like Roommate Wanted. As the instructor predicted, a lot of the prompts didn’t work for me.
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Oh no! But was that a self fulfilling prophecy? I’ll look up that title on your blog.
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Oh thanks. I definitely got something out of the course and it wasn’t terribly expensive so I can’t complain. It probably would have been better if it was a bit more tailored to poets.
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Lovely to read a bit about your personal life and well done for using your downtime to such great effect. Say hi to the little one 🙂
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I’m glad you enjoyed it. I shy away from making this too autobiographical, but life seeps in sometimes. I’ll say hi to him for you- he loves saying hi/bye. You can go see the cutie on a few posts, if you look up ‘assembling dreams’, ‘a year of sunrai’ or ‘within the milky way’. 🙂
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