Complex Numbers

The Challenge Channel

So, it has come to this: my penultimate entry into "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  [13+].

We've been asked to come up with potential prompts for future rounds of the contest. Now, keep in mind that for the last 10+ years, I've come up with prompts for "The Writer's Cramp"  [13+] approximately once a week, usually at the last minute, but I still have no idea what makes a good prompt - whether for a story or poem, as in the case of the Cramp, or for a blog entry. Still, it's easier to come up with ideas than it is to actually execute them, so let's give this a shot. Grab your donuts.

Write a blog entry from the point of view of your evil (or benevolent, as the case may be) twin. Be sure to have the twin plot your downfall.

Write a letter to your parents from before your birth, warning them about what horrors lurk in their future in the form of you.

Include the following words in your blog entry: syzygy, nihilism, ramifications, turtleneck, and theobromine.

Describe a missed opportunity you encountered, and how things might be different if you hadn't missed it.

Start your blog entry with "So, it has come to this..." and go from there.

Write about an invention that would make your life better... or worse.

Eh, I think I'll stop there. That's six prompts, and I'll have to save some ideas for if I do this challenge again.

One of my favorite things about blogging; that is, one of the reasons I keep doing it in these days of bumper-sticker sound bites, selfies, and superficial life updates, is the opportunity to go into depth about something. I've said before that I'm not one for depth, opting instead for breadth, but some things just can't be expressed with any kind of nuance in 140 characters or fewer. I appreciate one-liners as much as anyone and more than most, but the brief formats of social media just can't do justice to a lot of ideas.

Consequently, when it comes to these blog prompts, I like it when I have to think (but not too hard - that would be work). So if I had to pick my favorite challenge day theme, it'd be "Talk Tuesdays," where I'm sometimes guided to consider things I haven't considered before. But honestly, I've enjoyed most of the prompts, and I've especially liked seeing other points of view on the same topics expressed in other contestants' blogs - and their comments in mine.

In this month-long exercise, I've tried to make the prompts my own, to go beyond what was asked for. But I've also put off writing about some of the things I want to write about. That's okay; I like having a backlog of potential topics, and I can always get to them after tomorrow's final Challenge entry.

I do hope you will stick around for that.