prompts

Penny Prompts #3 – Art vs Artist

Standard

This quote is from the eleventh book in Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, The Nature of the Beast.

The story itself centers on a play written by a serial killer, and Armand questions the appropriateness of performing a play written by someone with questionable to no morals in addition to his heinous actions. This is something that I sometimes struggle with, in the past, currently, and imparting my feelings to my children while letting them make their own decisions on the subject.

Armand and Reine-Marie seem to disagree in the quote below.

What do you think? How would you or how have you separated the art from the artist? Have you had to do this? Have you dropped someone or something completely because of that internal, moral struggle?

Think deeply and then write your thoughts.

“Should the creation be judged by its creator? Does it matter?”

…

““So it has nothing to do with Fleming and his crimes?” asked Reine-Marie. “Nothing to do with him as a man?” “It has everything to do with him,” said Armand, his voice clipped, strained. They looked at him. Never had they heard him come even close to being upset with his wife. “If John Fleming created it, it’s grotesque. It can’t help but be. Maybe not obviously so, but he’s in every word, every action of the characters. The creator and the created are one.””

Pardon My English

Standard

As you may know, and as I may have mentioned at least once, I have recently been obsessed by Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache book series. This could be a good as well as a bad thing. I’ve read the series twice now and have taken a few forays into the depths of some plot points. I am immersed. One of the negative things I find in binge reading and re-reading so closely together is noticing things like continuity errors that pop up on occasion, things that would typically slip by the reader if the books were read as they were released rather than all at once, the change of a pet’s name or a grandchild’s nickname; the age of someone when their parents died. There is also the redundancy that follows a book series in order to catch-up new readers with things that series regulars know, like the physical characteristics of the characters (I’ve had some issues with a couple of the women characters’ descriptions), their phobias (heights & closed spaces) and their foibles, their likes and dislikes (like Beauvoir’s love of steak frites – why mayonnaise with fries, someone please, please explain this to me, and his dislike of Anglos), their idiosyncrasies (the poetry), their hidden agendas and pasts that play into how they act and react to others and to situations. One of the things I do love about binge reading and re-reading is discovering the Easter eggs hidden and the foreshadowing that are only visible in hindsight.

Continue reading

Writing Prompts and Resources

Standard

Writing prompts. Where do they come from? I once read a tweet by Benjamin Dreyer who I defer to in almost all matters of grammar and copyediting, but there are two things I disagree with:

1. an historic is correct, and

2. He is incorrect when he says that not everything is a writing prompt.

In fact, EVERYTHING is a writing prompt.

That bird nestling in the tree outside your garage. Writing Prompt.

That car that went through the stop sign. Writing Prompt.

A sink full of dirty dishes. Writing Prompt.

Your child’s laughter. Writing Prompt.

Everything around you is a writing prompt.

Take for example this week’s Target ad. Advertisers tell you what you should be focusing on in the new year and encourage you to better yourself whether you need to or not. The first couple of weeks of ads focus on that new year, new you spirit, and of course they want you to buy things. If you follow the seasonal editorial/advertising schedule you’ll also see what people are interested in and looking for.

Going through the Target ad there are easily ten separate things that can be written as features, blog posts, listicles, and whatever else you might think of. Just like “Low Prices!” Target copywriters can offer titles or sub-titles to a longer piece: “Home Refresh” and “Clean Every Surface“.

The subjects include, but of course are not limited to: laundry, cleaning, restocking essentials, baby stuff – diapers, formula, furniture, vitamins, exercise equipment, office and stationary organization and “essential items” now with taxes right around the corner, and at the end of the ad is the reminder that Valentine’s Day is coming soon so get those blog posts written and those pictures taken.

Personally, I’ve already made my list from the ad of most of the things we’ve run out of over the holidays while we were preparing and celebrating Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s. We made do with what we had, but now it’s time to restock.

I’ve also started writing in my new calendar/planner so I need to begin writing with some of the prompts I’ve been collecting.

These are some of my go-to resources:

Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer

Thesaurus dot com

The Writer magazine

Merriam-Webster dictionary

Evernote app

Business Calendar 2 app (I use the free one, but I plan on getting the pro version sometime in 2022)

Writing in the Pandemic (Updated 4/13/20)

Standard

As a writer, I’ve hit the proverbial road block. It is so hard to just sit down and write about anything that isn’t coronavirus related. I spend my entire day reading Twitter, watching Governor Cuomo’s daily briefing, finding interviews with Dr. Fauci, and listening to relevant podcasts. It’s exhausting.

But I feel that I need to stay informed.

However, my writing also needs to continue. Whether that means weekly election connection posts or finally sitting down to get serious about my two books or any number of writing projects that I want to work on. I need to re-balance my life to include my writing, and for better or worse, some of that writing will need to be about what I am going through now.

I wanted to share with you some of the things I’ve discovered on my online sojourns and internal discernment.

The Writer Magazine Writing Contest Short Story Contest due June 2, 2020. (There might be a fee to enter.)

Historian Suggests Keeping Record of Life During Pandemic

Journal Assignment. Graphic posted below. Link is to other assignments and a place for students to upload their work. This was originally from Bryan Shaw of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District in California

Podcast from Writing Coach, Ann Kroeker: One Thing Writers Can Do in a Pandemic: Document the Days

From Actor, Misha Collins:

Breathe in what?

Breathe out what?

“I was explaining one of the simplest meditation techniques to the kids: “Sitting, eyes closed, you breathe in good things you breathe out bad things.”

Maison [his daughter] said, “So you breathe in sparkly rainbow unicorns and you breathe out broken guitars?””

Remember to respect Authors

Haiku Writing with John Pavlovitz

30 Day Writing Challenge beginning tomorrow (April 1, 2020) from IngramSpark, a self-publishing company. They will send daily emails for the writing challenge from The Writer -30 Day Writing Challenge – these are daily emails from a self-publishing/pod (publish on demand) company.

Camp Nanowrimo for the month of April!

Camp Nanowrimo – nanowrimo.org

Journal Assignment by Bryan Shaw. (c)2020