• thisisby.us writing
    • Driving West
    • Driving West II
    • Driving West III
    • Your Own Cadence
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    • Unwilling to be Told
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Daughter of the King

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Daughter of the King

Tag Archives: prompt

9. Janice

07 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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100, affection, character profile, death, drugs, girl, http://ibecameashepherd.blogspot.com/, hundred, one hundred words, past, prompt, relationship, writing exercise

Janice, with her ponytail over her shoulder.
Janice, with her apple blossom cheeks, flushed when they smiled sweet.
Janice, arms draped around and around, limbs askew on him, on you.
Janice, with her long lashes touching, droopy-eyed, lost too long in her high.

Janice, always in a Mister’s lap.
Janice, wearing your baseball cap.
Janice’s arms lazy and limp around your neck.
Janice, climbing in that car, minutes before you left.

No nights, no days, no sleep to differentiate.
No tears for you, no coffin in the ground.
Just a daze, eyes all a glaze.
Years before you would awake.

6. Hot Water

30 Friday Sep 2011

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100 words, acting, chorus, coffeeshop, creative writing, drama, exercise, finances, http://ibecameashepherd.blogspot.com/, money, one hundred words, play, prompt, Starbucks

Just a cup of hot water for me, said she.

What for? the chorus, cheerfully, from rafter beams.

I have that Via coffee packet from Starbucks, she explained, hands drawing stick figure pictures in the space between. Casually gesturing toward her things. The chorus transitioned from listening to snickering as she blahblahblahed about baristas and markout coffee, explaining these actions of anomoly to the air.  Words on mute floated towards high ceilings.  The chorus departs; she remains there.

Surely they could not see. The facade hidden beind her, behind me. A free cup of hot water and no money.

5. Contest Winner

23 Friday Sep 2011

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100 words, cell phone, driving, exercise, http://ibecameashepherd.blogspot.com/, Kentucky Derby, London, one hundred, prompt, radio

The stop sign came  so quickly, the white line disappearing beneath the front tires with friction and force, pushing me toward the dash.  He’d nudged his cell phone from his front pocket, between  seam and seatbelt and was juggling it like a hot potato in his fat welding fingers now, driving, but not well.

The answer was Giacomo.  Dad would be the twenty-seventh caller.  “Oh my gosh, it’s ringing,”  he whispered.  “It’s never rung before.”  London, London, London, he breathed.  Held the phone to my ear, I nodded.

“Keep listening…” the radio boomed.  The flip phone clicked in Dad’s hand.

4. Concussion

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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100 words, athletics, concussion, exercise, hockey, http://ibecameashepherd.blogspot.com/, life, NHL, one hundred, Pitsburgh Penguins, prompt, Sidney Crosby, sports, writing

I felt the hit, lowered my shoulder.  With my face like flint, pads lowered into the force, I waited for the pushback. For the equal and opposite push that him hitting me and me hitting him would return, smashing us both into the corner boards.

Instead, I felt a falling sensation. Not the equal and opposite that I expected from a solid shoulder check. My vestibular sense had betrayed me. I’d misjudged his angle. I felt his shoulders graze and bump me on the wrong side as I writhed and twisted to see where I’d gone wrong.

Black. Ice. Nothing.

Week #6: Hiatus

27 Sunday Feb 2011

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break, career, change, exercise, goodbye, grill, hiatus, money, practice, prompt, songwriting, writer, writing

Dear Six-and-a-half Readers,
The writing exercises that have been showing up a few times a week on this here blog (Fun little games like this and this) will take a temporary vacation while the writer of such simple exercises tries to live her life uninterrupted. Her responsibilities have increased, her desires have changed, her priorities are shifting and thus, these prompts are being pushed to the ever popular back-burner.

Many things, when pushed to said burner, never return to the grill, don’t reach the desired warm pink center, and are never enjoyed with sautéed mushrooms and onions as they should be. This particular blogger, however, desires (ultimately) to be a writer so I reckon she will surely return to these prompts or others like them.

The journey may take her to another state, it may strip the digits from her bank account (has it not yet?), it may take her through school of another kind (yes, again), it may surprise the folks who love her most and have known her longest. But, they’ll return, however they return.

As I used to say, pretending I was cultured, Konnichiwa.  Except that I also pretended it to mean Peace or See ya later, which it–in fact–does not.

Week #5: Waiting (17)

24 Thursday Feb 2011

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creative writing, exercise, lines, music, practice, prompt, songwriting, story, waiting, writing

Date: Thursday, February 24
Consider the last time you waited. Waited for the train, waited in line, waited on a call, waited for the end. If the last time you waited was boring, rewind the tape a bit.

Was there value in the waiting? What did you consider, contemplate or observe while you waited? Of all those details, consider which ones are worth hanging on and give them more time in your lyrics or paragraphs. Build scene or story around these images.

Week #5: Photo Prompt (16)

22 Tuesday Feb 2011

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creative writing, creativity, exercise, music, photo, pictures, practice, prompt, songwriting, story, writing

Date: Tuesday, February 22
Take a look at this photo.

After viewing the photo, write about whatever comes to mind (at least 500 words, or two written pages) that is conjured up by something in the image. Feel free to use the image as only a starting point for themes, characters, emotions, questions, a personal experience. Allow the picture to remind you of something or someone. If you have trouble getting started, begin by asking a series of questions and break to answer some of your own meanderings.

Week #5: Light Bulb (15)

20 Sunday Feb 2011

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education, exercise, experience, journal, learning, life, light bulb, mentor, prompt, revision, story, teacher, writing

Date: Sunday, February 20
Think of a specific time you learned something brand new. What was this light-bulb experience like? How did you learn it? Who helped you through? Did you retain that information, or later learn that it was untrue?

Use this flash non-fiction piece as an aide, if you desire.

Week #4: Lyrics Again (14)

19 Saturday Feb 2011

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books, description, editing, exercise, journal, music, prompt, quotations, repetition, revision, songs, story, writing

Date: Saturday, February 19
Repeat the prompt from Thursday about favorite quotations, songs, song lyrics, books, or poems or pull from the list you’ve already created. Create a creative and original storyline from one or more of these “borrowed” lines.

Delve deeper into the character. What is he or she struggling with beneath the surface? What things led up to the lyric/quotation? What will result?

Prompt #13: Holiest Temptation

18 Friday Feb 2011

Posted by lbcarizona in Uncategorized

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Tags

13, beauty, Beauty of Who You Are, Cold War Kids, cryptomnesia, exercise, intimacy, life, love, lyrics, Marc Broussard, prompt, relationship, sensual, sin, temptation, touch, Willet, writing

I have a confession to make: I haven’t been faithful to my own exercises. I haven’t been drafting responses to the prompts that I’ve been writing. You already know this if you’re a GoogleReader subscriber or another variety of regular visitor, because you took note of the way I skipped two posts this weekend. I don’t apologize. I was driving to New York City, and my absence is, by my standards, excused. But still. I’ve failed, leaving blank pages where I should be crafting responses to my own efforts at squeezing out our collective creative juices.

My friend, Jenn, made me respond. She sometimes makes me do things I didn’t intend or want or plan. She’s a junkie for a challenge; if you knew her, you’d see how it flows so naturally. And so many days the flow is unto me, forcing me out of my comfort and into unnatural poses, positions, postures. What results is praise. It’s good, this process, this intersection where we engage.

Anyway.

Marc Broussard sang me into hours of wandering around with my own words this afternoon with his Beauty of Who You Are. The lyrics swim in and out of seamless lines like this: There’s a soft sweet space on the back of your neck/Smells like rain/There’s a way you look at me baby/Heals my pain/I’ve studied every inch of your body/Baby what’s on your mind/The touch of your skin just pulls me in/Every single time.

They’re words I wish I’d have said first.

His lyrics are intimate, but not sexual in an uncomfortable way. I don’t know what he means when he says “touch of her skin,” but if cut and pasted into my life, they don’t mean anything they shouldn’t mean. They mean my hand, his fingers laced with mine when he calls for my paw, he means my bare, sunstruck shoulder in the summer, he means his thumb a brush over my temple when my hair falls in my face on the subway platform and my gloves are snug over my hands. He doesn’t mean every actual inch. Not today anyway.

He doesn’t mean my stomach when my shirt creeps up; is that what they think? He doesn’t mean sneaking up my legs, cheating my skirt or my shorts for a rush. He doesn’t mean his hand on my back, skin on skin, sensual, creating heat, more than what’s already burning between us. Lustful child’s play doesn’t know this kind of intimacy. If Broussard sings about lust, he has me fooled and the pieces don’t quite fit.

With invisible seams, Broussard stitches these last lines in: You are a sensual salvation/You’re the holiest temptation/Baby I’m never, never, never gonna be the same/I can’t explain it or begin to conceive/All I know is that you make me believe.

Holiest temptation is my favorite line. Maybe for the supposed paradox in its nature. Maybe for hours of philosophical depth I can see it cultivating. Maybe for the way, when I stop to think about how these months have stacked up, the play on words starts to soak, naked, towel around the waist, in a sauna of truth.

Tempted without pause, without break or breath or aberration, but never the negative pull, the spiral of sin, the darkness that swallows us whole, isolating from all that which is good. Never once. Only freedom and moving forward. Temptation takes on a connotation of a different nature, just for an artistic moment. Just to shift perspective, to shine light, to reflect a slice of beauty in this intimacy. I can dig that.

So Broussard had me wrapped up today, humming his lyrics, adopting them as my own for the day. Pretending I had written them. Maybe even slipping for an unnoticed second into cryptomnesiac state to take them as mine own, though it will be no fault of my own (see Willet).

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    • Students Over Security
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