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: Unexpected Spoon

Image © Lori Gravley, Clifton, Ohio, 2015

Write about things left behind.  Write about unexpected beauty.  Write about addiction. 

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: 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: 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: For the Bees

Image © Lori Gravley

 When I was in elementary school in the 1970s, I remember the stories about the African Bees that were making their way to the United States from South America.  There were dire warnings of bees that would readily attack even cautious people outdoors.  I'm sure I had dreams where I was chased by bees.

Now, the worry about bees is different.  What will we do when there are no bees?  How will plants be pollinated? Many scientists and climate scientists warn us of what will happen if the bee populations continue to decline.

What would a world be like if bees were somehow other than they are--aggressive, nonexistent, or some other permutation that we can't yet imagine.

Write about it in a poem, a story, or a creative non-fiction essay.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Beauty and Terror

A view from the window of the slave, the tension between the calm beauty and the inate terror of this window are the 

source of today's writing prompt.  Image © Lori Gravley

This is a view through a window at the Slave House on Gore Island in Senegal.  The house was a famous stopping point in the West African slave trade, and almost below this window is the Porte de Non Retour (The Door of No Return) through which slaves left Africa knowing they would never return.  It's a beautiful view, but for the slaves kept on the island before transport, the view would have been one of terror and not serenity.

Can you write from that place of tension either about Gore or about another place that has beauty and terror?  If you'd like a to write about Gore, you can find more information on the island from the links below.

The UNESCO World Heritage description of the island can be found here.

Wikipedia has an interesting entry for Gore, here. 

An interesting article about Gore and the extent of the slave trade and "sincere fictions" is here at the Washington Post.