Writing Prompt: Carry on.
Sometimes a word or a phrase enters my mind and I think “that would be a good prompt.”
That’s what happened for today’s prompt. But then I wondered, why did this phrase pop into my head. What have I been thinking about?
In the July 2021 issue (page 51), Sonoma County Gazette book reviewer Diane McCurdy compared the genesis of The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year with Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron:
“In the 14th century when the plague, the black death, was ravaging through the cities of Italy, a writer and a group of friends fled Florence to the caves above the city and to alleviate boredom in what was one of the first sheltering in place locales, they told stories. Giovanni Boccaccio recorded those stories in what became a classic, The Decameron.”
I didn’t know about this, never heard of it. How brilliant of Diane to relate this to the inspiration for Musings.
She got it right, “Adversity frequently fosters creativity . . . This little book [Musings] is a highly artistic presentation. Something we really need right now as we emerge from the abyss.”
A friend researched and found this excerpt about the Florence exodus, written by Joan Acocella in the Nov. 3, 2013 issue of The New Yorker.
“In the morning and in the evening, they will take walks, sing songs, and eat exquisite meals, with fine wines, golden and red. In between, they will sit together, and each will tell a story on a theme set for the day: generosity, magnanimity, cleverness, etc. They will stay together for two weeks. Two days must be devoted to personal obligations, and two to religious duties. That leaves ten days. Ten tales times ten days: at the end, they will have a hundred stories. That collection, with various introductions and commentaries, is the Decameron.”
Writing Prompt: Carry on.
Or: Write whatever pops into your head.
Just Write!
