Writing Prompt Wednesday: Goals

Image © Lori Gravley, Grayton Beach, FL, 2015

SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.  I don't make resolutions, but I'm always setting goals.  Now might be a good time to think of your own goals, write your mission statment, decide what you'd like this year to bring.  What we attend to grows.  I hope I've helped you grow your writing practice this year with my writing prompts.  What will you do next year?

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Stop Here to Pray

Image © Lori Gravley, Murano, Italy, 2016

See the little coin left in front of the icon (the Virgin Mary and Jesus surrounded by angels).  Imagine the person who left the coin. Before, after, during the leaving: choose one.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Shoot

Image © Lori Gravley, Bangkok, Thailand, 2013

Writing Prompt Wednesdays: Door to the Sea

Image © Lori Gravley, Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, 2016

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Coke and Razor Wire

Image © Lori Gravley, Accra, Ghana, 2016

Write about juxtapositions: joy and razor wire, Coke and concrete, red of advertising and blue of sky. 

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Roses in the Window

Image © Lori Gravley, Brooklyn, New York, 2014

Who left these? Who were they for? Imagine someone takes one.  Why? What else might happen to them?  Who saw them but left them alone?

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Caught In Her Gaze

Image © Lori Gravley, Nashville, TN, 2016

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Market Day Blues

Image © Lori Gravley, Road to Adadi Miriam, Ethiopia, Market Day, 2013

One of the things I love about travel in Africa is the intensity of the manufactured colors versus the colors of the landscape.  You can get a sense of that in this picture.  So, use color.  And, if you're so inclined, send a prayer out for the people of Ethiopia, this village included, who are suffering from a terrible drought.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Golden Fetching in the Snow

Image © Lori Gravley, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 2016

Play with point of view--dog, ball, snow, thrower, watcher, neighbor, other small dog (not pictured).

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Swing

Image © Lori Gravley, Portal, AZ

Writing Prompt Wednesday: What God

Image © Lori Gravley, Tucson, AZ, 2013

How did he get turned to stone?  What if he came to life?

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Wordless

Tia Steele, Ethiopia, 2013 © Lori Gravley

Writing Prompt Wednesday: From the Hood

Imagine this figure to life--before she became a hood ornament, after, when the car is parked.  Imagine a life for her.  Image © Lori Gravley (from the Packard Museum)

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Wordless

Image © Lori Gravley

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Wordless

Image © Lori Gravley

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Spill It

 My Magnetic Poetry Kit spilled.  Use at least seven of these words in a poem or story.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Spin

Tiblisi, Georgia © Lori Gravley

Did you know that if your brain has to react a certain way when you spin.  If you don't get dizzy, you should go see an occupational therapist who will have an entire protocol to use with you to reset your brain so that you do?

Anyway, I came across this little girl, all dressed up, spinning joyfully for her mother's camera in Tbilisi, Georgia.  

So, write about this girl, about her mother, about spinning.  Remember those tires you could spin and spin on or swings, how you could spin until the chains tangled right in front of you and how it felt to let go, or that ride at the carnival where you spun around and stayed in place even as you went horizontal becuase of the force of the spin?

Oh, if you must, you could write about politics and this weeks latest spin, but that probably wouldn't be nearly as much fun as hanging out on a swing. 

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Reversal

Image © Lori Gravley

I know, this is a thing, but the first time I say one of these was in an airport in Thailand and it made me laugh out loud.

It's funny because of the reversals.  The deer head has a body attached that's wearing a shirt and a frock coat.  The deer head is framed, but not a two-dimensional image as we are used to seeing in frames.  The picture is absent of color (or suffused with it depending on your reading of physics).

So, play with either the idea of reversals here or with the amazing image itself.  Write a world where animals dress in frock coats or a world where photographs take on three (or more dimensions).  Have fun.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Technology

Image © Lori Gravley  

This image is from a funny pinball game about an airplane ride at the farm where I pick up my goat's milk everyweek (when I'm not off flying somewhere).  Let the idea of flying, of pinball, or of technology, both the outdated and the advancing, inspire you to write something this week.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Late

I love how the edges of the letters have been worn away by the hands that delivered the mail or perhaps even by the mail itself.  Image © Lori Gravley

I missed my Wednesday post this week.  My lateness inspired this prompt.

Write a story or poem in which a letter sent late or never delivered has some bearing on events that follow
.