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 |   Second blog -- answers to an ocean of prompts |
 "Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." CHARLIE CHAPLIN  Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. David Whyte        This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts. |
| Prompt: Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don't see what goes on underground - as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don't see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree. - Joyce Meyer ----- Yes, trees and humans are both living things that inhabit our earth. People through the ages have looked at trees and have seen the connections between humans and trees. Trees resemble humans and have awe-inspiring qualities that enrich the existence of this planet. Visually speaking, both people and trees stand upright and have hair/leaves on their heads and while people have legs and feet they walk on the ground, trees have root systems that explore the underground. The rings of a tree across its trunk reveal the age of a tree just like the bones reveal the biological age of a human. Trees also signal for us a sense of place. Many times, I have found spiritual and emotional healing under the trees wherever I have lived. The fig tree and a huge plum tree in our backyard, while I was growing up, was there behind my first family home. Huge oaks and an apple orchard depict the place where my husband and I raised our children, and the palm trees where we now live adorn our present state. People’s interconnectedness with the trees is more evident when we view them through an abstract or rather psychological and spiritual sense. While the people’s education, upbringing, and moral and ethical values may show in their behavior, we find in the trees beauty, fruitfulness, and the quality of providing shelter from the sun for any living thing. No wonder, trees are sometimes planted to commemorate special occasions and they are symbols in our myths like the tree of life. And even to depict our ancestral backgrounds, we have come up with family trees. Then, we can rarely figure out what can go inside a person, which also is true for a tree. We can’t know what scars or feelings a person may carry inside. We can’t easily see what’s hiding inside the trunk or the roots of a tree either. Furthermore, like the sap running through a tree, blood runs through our veins and lots of things run in our head, as our inner speech, which is much faster than our verbal speech and more condensed. But then, who knows what runs inside a tree to correspond to that? Maybe we’ll find that out someday because some tree specialists and scientists now insist that trees have a language with which they talk to one another. |
| Prompt: What is your playground as an adult? ---- Wherever I can read is my playground. I read in bed every night, using my Kindle e-reader, and I invented a dark tent to hide under, not to bother my husband. I was going to start this entry by saying my bed, but I worried about some imaginative connotations. Coming back to my reading places, if it is a print book, I read it inside the covered porch at the back of the house, only if the weather permits, but usually, someone finds me there. Sometimes I snuggle on the couch and read, but that, too, doesn't last for very long before someone finds me. Then sometimes, I read on the computer, but that is rather rare in comparison.  Prompt: "The family is one of nature's masterpieces." George Santayana Do you know any families, maybe your own that are like masterpieces? Write your thoughts about this. ---- I am not sure about the masterpiece part but the family is always there as the single most important influence on a person’s life, especially if one comes from a large family. A family is where our earliest memories are born as well as our view of the world in general. Good families are the ones that receive you with open arms when you are hurt or in trouble. This is because they know us better than anyone else as they have seen us grow into who we are. My extended family is very important to me. They helped me greatly during my growing up years, taking extra care of me since my parents were separated. I learned a lot from my uncles and aunts as they went out of their ways to cater to me. In addition, they were all morally straight people likes of whom I have rarely encountered in my later life, and they still kept their humanness, never losing their sense of humor or their goodwill toward everyone. My cousins, too, are wonderful people. In fact, my best friend ever is a cousin who is my age. Now, although long distances separate us, we never feel the separation because we are always in touch and we still laugh at the silliest things as if we are still teens. I don’t know if my family is nature’s masterpiece or not, but I certainly am glad I belong with them. |
| Prompt: Here is a William Faulkner quote. “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” What do you think he means and is what he means relatable for you?” ------ Although there are many ways of interpreting this quote, I’ll first look at it from the point of risk taking. Risk taking, to begin with, means facing a change. How big or small that change is depends on the risk. To begin with, unless we let go of the status quo, or our comfort zone, or what we are used to having or being, we cannot get into and succeed with risk-taking, simply because a person cannot be in two places at the same time. For someone to take a big step or to make a hugely risky move, that person probably has readied himself or herself by taking a few smaller risks to build up courage because risk-taking means courage. It means being brave enough to face the challenges and the deficiencies that may arise as the result of risk-taking. Some, like Mark Zuckerberg, say the biggest risk is not taking any risk, and they may be right in saying that. This doesn’t mean, however, that everyone should jump into every risky situation, but what it means is, even with uncertainties, being negative doesn’t work. With those who are afraid of taking even the surer risks, negativity bias is a block on their road. Then, without experimenting, how can we know what may work for us? It is important, however, to act smartly with the risks we are taking. This doesn’t mean every risk will produce great results. Some will fail, but this is okay, too, because we learn from our mistakes. Whatever we want to achieve, we have to start taking positive, calculated risks. This means, determination, courage, and hope. When armed with all three of these strengths, risk-taking can open us to new challenges and opportunities. It will also release the old limits our minds inflict upon us and open us to new boundaries, encouraging us to become more creative, even if not every step is carefully planned out. Best of all, it will give us a clearer view of what we really want for we can now break free from the average style of thinking and living. As its result, we’ll build self-confidence and self-respect and even more courage to take on new endeavors, making life an exciting place to be. |
| Prompt: What do you make of the advice for fiction that says, “Revise, revise, revise”? Could too much revision kill the original spark, and what is your advice concerning revision? ==== Revision helps us to become better and more efficient writers. Through the revision process, we learn not to make the syntax, grammar, and other compositional errors. Although it is certainly possible to kill the original idea or spark in a piece with extensive revision, we may be able to avoid such a mishap by paying attention to the process and gaining experience in revising our work. Revisions are important, and there exist many different kinds of fixing a text. Of what I can think and recall at the moment, those are: • On a smaller scale, when we think some part of the piece is not working, we pay attention to that piece and how it relates to the overall composition. • On the larger scale, we look for everything and anything that seems or feels off. If we find too much of what has gone awry, then we may re-write or re-structure the entire piece. • Editing is important, too, but simple edits are not considered revisions. Editing is fixing maybe the structure of a sentence or correcting typos and misspellings or cutting and pasting different parts of the paragraph to give it a better readability. • Proofreading is another more advanced form of editing and is usually done after all revisions and edits are finished. It means using a spellchecker or fixing errors When we proofread, it helps if we read the text aloud to hear how the writing sounds. One of the most important aspects of being a writer is developing our objectivity. After all, no parent likes to see the negatives in their offspring, but then, good parents do. This kind of objectivity comes in time and after we gain enough experience, but the idea is letting go of our love or pride for our own work and trying to see it through a reader’s eyes as clearly as we can. Some of the questions we can ask ourselves during the process of revision can be: • Did I put on the paper or the screen what I intended to say? • Is the language, viewpoint, tone, and voice proper for this work? • What are the weaknesses of this piece? • What are the strengths? • Is the structure of the piece is so that the reader is not confused as to who, what, where, and when? • Is each point relevant and, if it is fiction, is each event or scene part of the unified whole? • Does every part of the text relate well to the general theme? Or are there any logical fallacies? It is a good idea to get other people’s (beta readers’) opinions, also, before posting it for everyone else or submitting it to a publication, but those people should be ones who are experienced in good writing, so their advice can help our work. |
| Prompt: “The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.” ~Tahereh Mafi Your thoughts? ============= Tahereh Mafi as a fiction writer may reflect on her own sentiments and project them on the moon. Yes, from the points she makes, the moon has human-like qualities, but as a dreamer or a fiction writer, I could look at any object, living or non-living, and ascribe to it human qualities, too, and this is fine as it sounds poetic. Yet, the moon is a rock and is totally made up of materials that compose the rocks, some of which may be grated down or cracked to pieces, as the moon rock samples from the moon landings show. Then, even if the moon may understand what it means to be human, it doesn’t stop from emanating its operational frequencies that affect our minds, feelings, and desires. Neuroscience has found out that the moon’s frequencies have the power to make the thoughts in our subconscious to surface to the conscious mind, and in doing so, mixing up the positives and negatives and the necessary with the unnecessary, to make us feel all mixed up. I believe this may be related to the same mechanism, the gravitational pull, of the moon that affects the tides on the oceans, and since the brain is kind of a moist organ, is it any wonder that it is thus affected? Still, on the nights when there is a full moon, don’t we all stare at it to enjoy its brilliance? From our vantage point, we can only see one side of the moon, just like meeting a person for the first time and not knowing what is hiding inside him or her. Then, we are all emotional about the moon, too, seeing its human face far up in the sky, and in our imaginations, we have adapted it to be our inspiration, so we can write our artsy, sentimental poems, myths, and romantic stories about it. |
Prompt: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”― Aristotle Your thoughts. Do you agree or disagree? ------ I certainly agree. Aren’t all our problems in the personal, social, and political areas due to our tribalism? If everyone took a moment to mull over thoughts and ideas that may seem alien to them, we wouldn’t be fighting with each other tooth and nail over the simplest things. This certainly doesn’t mean that we should accept everything against what we have stood for or believed immediately, but why not give the opposing thought a bit of breathing space and just reflect on or wonder if that idea can be used at least in a limited way? Listening to a different idea and weighing it for a second or two is a much better solution for all kinds of relationships, before coming up with a clever zinger to throw the conversation our way and encouraging sharp exchanges or even fights. If we cannot agree with that other thought, we can at least agree to disagree with the other person and not act like enemies. Respecting others’ thoughts and opinions doesn’t mean we have to be convinced and bent to their way of thinking. Plus, it is one thing to disagree, but it is another thing to be rude or combative about it Respecting others’ opinions, although they may be different from ours, shows maturity and mental and emotional stability, and as Aristotle said, an educated mind. One more thing, I’d like to clear up, here, is that an educated mind doesn’t mean a long duration of schooling. There are lots of intolerant people as hordes of professors and those who have attended top schools for decades. An educated mind, I believe, is what we, on our own, can grant ourselves through life experiences and maybe some schooling, too. |
Prompt: "A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates to more to our opinions of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." Jane Austen What are your views on this? -------- I think, here, the word pride is used instead of self-respect. A person can be proud of who he or she is inside himself or herself without showing off and bragging to other people. Vanity shows its venomous head when bragging enters the arena. I think this is what Jane Austen meant to say. People may say pride goes before the fall, but the word pride carries and implies several different meanings. A group of lions is a pride for example. At first, the word pride brings to mind a negative meaning, which is a high, overpowering opinion of one’s own qualities, successes, and riches, which implies superiority and even contempt for other people. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen shows the different types of pride and the importance of having the correct pride as she presents those two different kinds in the manners and morals of the characters of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bennet in a satirical social comedy that is also full of sensitivity and feeling. Pride is prevalent in all orders of society since there is no other passion more universal than pride. Every individual or group at some point may show haughtiness and imaginary superiority over the less advantageous. Only in more civilized societies, this negative kind of pride is somewhat tamed. Even countries and certain groups may value themselves over other countries and groups as a matter of honor. Imaginary or real, the positives we believe we possess should never make us act conceited and self-important to offend other human beings. That would be arrogance and vanity and not self-esteem or pride in its positive meaning. |
| Prompt: "Oh, I can't describe my home. It's home and I can't put its charm into words." Elizabeth Gaskell Use this quote for your Blog entry today. ====== I have in PDF the book, North and South, the origin of the quote, which I might read probably next month for "CLOSED!The Monthly Reading Challenge"  . Since I haven’t read the book yet, I can’t tell in what context the quote was said. It could be sardonic, like something I would say when my house is not orderly. It could be said in earnest, alluding to the physical aspects of her home, or it could be said in an emotional way while talking about the sense of belonging the house evokes in the author.In my case, as to the physical aspects of charm, I am in love with the old southern houses with wrap-around porches, cupolas, and secret places in them. The home I live in now is a one-story ranch on a golf course, and although it has its charms, I sometimes miss my earlier home on Long Island, which was also a ranch on two plus acres. I sometimes think the grounds of it was more my home than the indoors. As to the emotional aspects of the home, I subscribe to the saying ~ the home is where the heart is.~ This is because a strong attachment to where we live has to do with the present happiness and the hope for the future stability in that place. We are people, not trees; yet, we still like to establish our roots with affection, meaning, and some feeling of order in our lives. In that context, our sense of the place we call home is tied to our sense of who we are. Our home is not only a predictable and secure place but also the main connection between us and the world. From this point of view, home is where we make it because a home is much more than a place. |
| Prompt: Do you think “Know thyself" to be a highly overrated piece of wisdom? How can anyone know oneself perfectly? Along the same line of thought, how can anyone know someone else perfectly? Your thoughts… ---- Well, if it is not highly overrated, it is somewhat overrated even though the origin of this wisdom came from Socrates. If anyone claims they know themselves perfectly, I would say they are full of hot air, lava-hot air. On the other hand, self-awareness can be a lifelong study and hopefully an achievement at the finish line, as self-awareness means being fully perceptive about one’s innermost everything, which is not easily accessed because as human beings, we tend to hide things not only from others but also from ourselves. This is also a highly entertaining habit of us human beings since, if I didn't surprise myself once in a while or spotted a change in another human being, my life would be very dull. One other thing, there is also the danger of claiming to know a self—one’s own or that of others—perfectly because it is a one-sided view and may cause an overestimation of positive qualities, and therefore, interpreting actions and events to make one look or seem more favorable to others. That, I would say is over-perception or a distorted view at best, if I may label it somewhat politely. Then, I am sure, Socrates meant to say, “Study thyself” and the lack of proper translation distorted his true meaning. If so, I am all for it. And here on this site, being writers, we certainly should delve into a good deal of self-study and human psychology. |
| Prompt: "If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!” says Fanny in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Do you agree with her and what are your thoughts on memory? ====== Memory is the faculty by which the brain stores and remembers information. It also encodes what it stores; therefore, it is an integral part of our perception, even if most of the stored memory lies outside of our awareness and might be accessed either after a sudden crisis or by hypnosis to decode what was stored. That is why it “is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control.” It is beyond our control because, sometimes, an event or faculty juggles the brain and we recall at the most inopportune times what we don’t want or need to recall for what we recall affects our behavior and mood. Yet, imagine not being able to recall anything or recall things by pieces, only to forget them. It is a well-known fact that when the memory part of the brain is affected, patients may even forget to eat or take care of their bodies. If our memory is affected, we wouldn’t be able to remember words to write or talk effectively. If our memory would be affected, we wouldn’t recall our loved ones, our beliefs, or our experiences. For all those things, I think Jane Austen’s Fanny was absolutely correct in saying what she said. |
| Prompt: Use these words in your entry today: lyrical, elemental, brewing, power, ostracized, and bones. A Whole New World In tales elemental, stars with powers long burnt out are ostracized and their bones swallowed into black holes with brewing power, and when their fermenting is done they are born anew. Then, just maybe, we, too, may find-- past the fumes and the eddies of our murky nightmares and lyrical dreams-- a whole new world of peace under a huge blue sky where sweet things can grow. |
| Prompt: If you could only speak one word today, what would it be? Why? ========== Hahaha! Can you ever imagine me saying only one word? Don’t you know I am usually stumped when Support asks us to describe an image or a concept in only two or three words on the Newsfeed? Honestly, by the time I come up with two or three such words, my mind has conjured up several novel-length whatever. Well, since you asked for one word and we are talking mostly about writing and lit, that one word is IMAGINE! Imagine is so flexible. You can add any one word to it and you’ve got a universe of concepts. Imagine traveling, Imagine Singing, Imagine giants, Imagine forgiving, Imagine Life, Imagine Art, Imagine Worlds, Imagine Love, Imagine Friendship…etc. Then imagine has so many words and ideas hiding in it, like conjure up, cook up, see in your mind, build castles in the air, visualize, fabricate, devise, create, dream, brainstorm, fantasize, scheme, envision, sense, appreciate...Get the picture? When my kids were little, I invented the Imagine Game with them. We usually played it while driving long distances. I’d come up with a word or a concept like ‘toys’ and the two of them would get into a verbal race imagining toys that aren’t in existence or unknown to us. It made long drives a cinch. Even after they had grown up a bit, I would overhear them say things like, “Imagine what the backyard would be like if the grass turned red.” Luckily, our backyard stuck mostly to being green, except in autumn. Imagining is loftier than dreaming because we do it consciously. Imagining makes everything seem so much better. Imagining is fun. |
| Prompt: "I'll not listen to reason-reason always means what someone has to say." Elizabeth Gaskell What are your thoughts on this quote? -------- What others label as reason, meaning what is reasonable for them, may not work for someone else. Everyone has to think for himself or herself and find what works for them. In that way, everyone’s reason, or reasoning of the general public or the ruling class, may not apply to any one individual. This has to do mostly with the personality, which means how people usually relate to the world and their inner selves. Related to one’s personality, one’s reasoning includes openness to experience, agreeableness, achievement, conscientiousness, and above all his or her freedom to make choices. Since a person makes his.her choices upon the dictates of his personality, other people’s choices do not correspond with his or hers. As this is a quote from a Victorian short story, in which Martha, who is a caretaker and companion for an older woman, rebels when the old woman pushes on her what she wants rather than what Martha wants. What Martha wants is to make a pudding, but the woman doesn’t want anything sweet and she orders mutton or something like it. Over this, Martha is ready to resign, despite a certain financial agony for her, but when she is presented with the fact that the old woman would suffer without her, she comes to terms by deciding to make the pudding with her own money for she is sure of the outcome that the old woman will eat the pudding and will like it, too. |
| Prompt: What fictional town from a novel or TV Show would you like to visit or live in? ======== This is something I never thought about. Probably Heaven as depicted in some fictional works, Shangri-La or Utopia or Atlantis or Emerald City in Oz, or Light City from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams. Those places above, maybe I’d like to visit, but I like where I live, despite the-summer-into-fall hurricane stress every year. For me, what is the most valuable isn’t the place so much but the inhabitants, the person or persons living there. Prompt: Whether we are aware of it or not, we negotiate, or meet people halfway, every day. What do you think is the success in negotiating? ====== I was going to start this entry with, first, you should have something to negotiate about, but on second thought, even a simple question in a household like, “Can we change our lunch and dinner times, so we all can eat together?” means negotiation. Fact is we negotiate little things every day, if not with others, then with ourselves. ‘Should I indulge myself with new shoes even though I don’t need them or should I use my money for something else?’ That, too, is negotiation since it ends with a decision. On larger issues, some of us refuse to negotiate because we are afraid of rejection. However, even if there may be rejection, we have little to nothing to lose if we try to negotiate and maybe something to gain because negotiation, in reality, is conversation with the goal of reaching an agreement. If one of the negotiating partners enters this conversation with set-in-stone demands, in other words, my-way-or-no-way attitude, that negotiation will fail. You have to give something to get something. Although money is sometimes involved, a negotiation isn’t always about money. Mostly it is about better conditions, security, and the satisfaction of various needs. People, who are good with negotiating, claim that this skill is all in the negotiators’ heads. The more knowledge on the situation, the more you know about the person you are talking to, what he or she wants, and the more you are willing to give some and take some, the more your negotiating skills will strengthen. Also, neither side has to prove that what they want is justifiable; all they need to do is say it, put it out there, so it can be talked about. As the Supreme Court has ruled, there is no such thing as a false opinion. |
| Prompt: Why do you think nightmares happen and what is your scariest nightmare that you can remember? -------- A nightmare is a dream gone wrong, mostly as the result of stress during the day. Some dream researchers assume that nightmares help people through traumatic life problems. Some nightmares repeat in one form or another. When this happens, it is a good idea to figure out what the elements of the nightmare may represent, especially if there is no medical condition or if the medications, drugs or alcohol are not causing this problem. The scariest nightmare I can recall happened only once, and it was so real that, to this day, I am not sure what happened really didn’t happen. One night about a few years ago, in the middle of the night, I opened my eyes feeling a presence in the bedroom. I then saw a very thin man, possibly nine or ten feet tall, bending over me from the side of the bed. He was totally blue. His skin, clothing, hands, everything. Not light or very dark blue but something like royal blue and glowing. He literally glowed in the dark. I was scared and I screamed. His face suddenly grew very sad and he moved back. I felt bad for his feeling bad, but I was terrified out of my wits, too. So, I let out another scream and sat up in bed. My husband woke up immediately. “What happened?” he asked. I looked at him but couldn’t talk. So I turned my head again to point to the tall blue man, but he had disappeared. To tell the truth, I don’t think he meant any harm. I think he was just watching me or something. When I told my husband, he insisted that it had been a nightmare, but I was sure I had been awake the whole time. I guess the mind can play tricks on a person or I had some kind of a supernatural experience. In the long-ago past, I may have had a few disturbing dreams about relationships or whatever, but they had never scared me to the degree of this nightmare. |
| Prompt: “The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better.” -Barbra Pletcher “Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.” -E. Cossman ======== Yes, I agree with both thoughts, but only in general. When extreme situations arise and no way exists to make them any better, what can people do but escape or fight? A good example to it is the predicament the German Jews found themselves in during the mid to late 1930s. They considered themselves German and didn’t see the danger ahead. In fact, they did try to make things better with the expectation that they could make them better. The rest is history. We usually create goals for ourselves because goals keep our attention focused on the road to reaching them. I agree that small things like a dent on the road or someone pushing us from the back or sides shouldn’t make us stop, but what if there is a huge fire all over the road ahead of us? What should we do? Run into the fire and burn? As I tried to say earlier, it all depends on the obstacle. Certainly, if there is even a tiny opening on the way to our goals, we should take it. If any opening doesn’t exist, what else we can do but take a roundabout route or find another goal? |
| prompt: Let's talk about funny superstitions on this day noted for many. ======= Many of the superstitions arise from our incomprehensible or unexplainable beliefs in the existence of monsters and ghosts. When the brain can’t explain something, it makes stuff up. We writers should know a lot about that performance, shouldn’t we! Yes, today is Friday the 13th, the creepiest day, although there is no logical reason for it being creepy, but you know, it is our creative minds that come up with stuff that makes even those nonbelievers uneasy. Funny thing is it is reported that on any Friday the 13, hospital admissions arise even though the accident reports may be lower. But every Friday the 13, who can keep away from fearing black cats, shadows in the mirrors, walking under a ladder, and bills that add up to 6.66 or 66.6 or 666. Then heaven forbid if you see a funeral or happen to be around a cemetery or on the 13th floor of a building, on any Friday the 13th! You’ll end up fearing for your life. In fact, there is nothing to fear from Friday the 13th. Our very own The StoryMistress was born on such a day. Now, shouldn’t such a great luck undo anything unlucky for any day? And I wrote a witch story for my each-day-a-story project. "July 2018 - A Story a Day" Prompt: A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher and a little bit friend. Write anything you want about this. ====== My grandmother took care of me as soon as I was born since my mother took to bed and didn’t get up for a month, they say, and not that she was really sick or had a difficult birth. I am thinking she might have suffered from those postpartum blues. I always had a special bond with my grandmother, which probably began as soon as I was born. My grandmother always knew how to console me or how to show me the right way. I couldn’t take the serious look that came over her face when what I did wasn’t right. So I never liked to displease her. Not that she was ever strict, but her approval meant the whole world to me. I still feel her soft touch and the joy dancing in her eyes when she looked at me. Her face always filled with pride and love when I achieved something. Nowadays, demands on grandmothers seem to increase with every passing year because almost all parents are at work. Even when grandmothers do not live with their grandkids and they have lives and jobs of their own, they still provide emotional security and extra love for their grandchildren. Plus, they make the best babysitters even when stressed and sleep-deprived because a grandmother is a blessing for everyone in a family. |
| Prompt: Write about ironic things that have happened to you or other people. ------------ If irony is something that’s contrary to what one expects, then those of us of the older set know that our need to use the bathroom flares up at the most inopportune times. The best retorts to insults or answers to questions come to me much later after they are answered by others. I sometimes get sick when I am about to go on vacation. If not me, it is my husband. So I am telling him, I’m never traveling again. I also ask myself why my hubby wants to fix the outside porch’s fan and other stuff there just before the hurricane season. A hurricane’s very first damage is usually directed at the porches. Then, I have sometimes felt that my dog understood me much better than my kids ever did. We all need and want money, but when it comes to its wise use or at least the planning of it, most of us ignore it or we are at sea about the how to go about it. I read somewhere that in one of the Webster’s dictionaries, more than 300 words were misspelled. Nice going! Then, at the end of things, by the time we think we have finally figured life out, it is over or we are too old to care. |
| Prompt: Jeff Vandermeer, in his Wonderbook, talks about a “scar” or a “ghost of a scar” or a “splinter”, which exists in a writer’s background that inspires or causes him to begin to write. In his case, it was his parents’ divorce when he was a child. What other kinds of “ghosts of scars” can inspire the urge to write? Do you know of any real-life examples of it? ----- Some of us can't know where the love to write came from. In my case, it was probably with me ever since I discovered books, which was at a really early age because I was read to and told stories quite a bit ever since a baby, ever since I can remember. In addition, when scars happened, they added to it. When I look back, even my beginnings when I was the only spoiled child to four women in the house could have been a scarring experience because I must have felt inundated and clobbered with everyone’s attention, and because of that, I probably mistook what the world was about. Then, when my parents broke up later, it became the greatest shock of my life. Other stuff followed, too. Yet, I can’t blame my love of writing on the misfortunes of my life because my love of making up stuff was there all along. To begin with, I loved the letters and words and lines and books so much so that I practically taught myself (or so they say) when I was three by asking my grandmother the names of the week and the letters in each day, which were on the calendar on her wall. I could read by myself before I turned four. My mom used to say that once I began devouring books no one could tell there was a child in the house. I think in there somewhere the love of writing first took root. Still, I can see how the love of writing can come about through a different way for others. To begin with, misfortunes give us material to write about. It may be therapy. It may have something to do with showmanship. It may be a way of seeking others who have had the same misfortunes. The good thing is, no matter how successful or unsuccessful we may be, we’ve all found out that writing rocks.  |
| Prompt: “Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings.” George Eliot Why is telling the exact truth so difficult? Your thoughts… --------- Finding the exact truth has to be finding the needle in a haystack, even though we all honor truth and try to be truthful as much as we can. But what is the exact truth? Sometimes that is an iffy thing. Something happens with several people watching it and each person adds to, subtracts from, or changes a thing or two when trying to tell what they’ve seen. This means even our eyes aren’t totally reliable and the exact truth of that situation is a mystery. Even when we tell the truth, and we do try because we all worship the truth, we cannot be 100% sure of it. It has to be, therefore, truth as we see it. In addition, there are those circumstances when we lie to ourselves and do not have the gumption to admit to it. Then, there are those white lies we tell to everyone else so we won’t hurt their feelings or we don’t want them to think poorly of us. Still, telling the truth, at least as much as we can come close to it, is the way to go. Besides, telling the truth as much as we are able to has a side benefit. It is called self-respect. |
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