What is your recipe for happiness?
Oh, I know there is no “Happy Recipe.”
But let’s say there is . . . what is the secret ingredient?
What makes you, or your fictional character, happy?
Interesting article on happiness (if you have vertigo, quickly scroll past the swirly circling thing). I love the quotes from Elvis and Jim Carry. Ted, Moreno’s Happiness and the Hypnosis of the Culture, Part I
So many possibilities for this prompt. You can write what you learned, what someone else learned, what your fictional character learned. Just write!
Today’s writing prompt is inspired by Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance.
On a chilly December evening in 1926, 36-year-old Christie vanished from her English estate. While the famed author reportedly left a note that she had gone on vacation, the discovery of her car suggested otherwise. The vehicle was found at the edge of a quarry not far from her home, abandoned with its hood up and lights on. Inside sat Christie’s fur coat, her old driver’s license, and a bag of clothes.
News of Christie’s disappearance spread quickly, and a massive manhunt commenced. Over a thousand officers and 15,000 volunteers combed the countryside while dredge teams scoured the surrounding lakes and streams. A fleet of biplanes searched from the skies – the first in England’s history for a missing person case.
By the end of the week, Christie’s disappearance had become a national obsession.
Who could have murdered the Queen of Crime? Many suspected Christie’s husband, Colonel Archie Christie, who had struck up an affair with a younger woman named Nancy Neele, and made no attempt to hide his affair from his wife. On the day of Christie’s disappearance, the couple reportedly quarreled after Archie announced he planned to spend the weekend with his mistress.
Agatha was found on December 14th, at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, England when a musician recognized her. Agatha signed in to the spa as Theresa Neele, strangely using the last name of her husband’s lover. Perhaps disproving the theory that her disappearance was due to amnesia.
Biographer Andrew Norman suggests Agatha was in a fugue state or, more technically, a psychogenic trance, a rare condition brought on by trauma or depression.
Christie rarely discussed the matter and the episode does not appear in her autobiography. In the days after her return, Agatha blamed her vanishing on a mysterious dream state, in which she took on an entirely new identity. “For 24 hours I wandered in a dream, and then found myself in Harrogate as a well-contented and perfectly happy woman who believed she had just come from South Africa.”
Details excerpted from: The Line Up, (Matthew Thompson), History Extra (Andrew Norman) and Hercule Poirot Central.
Writing Prompt: Write whatever inspires you from these details.
OR
Imagine what your fictional character could do. Perhaps show his/her normal activity, an every day scene. Then, the bizarre happens. It can be logical and make sense. Or, it can be totally unpredictable with no logical explanation for what happened.
Just start writing and see what happens.
As I searched for Agatha Christie quotes for Agatha Christie Week on The Write Spot Blog, I came across this one: “Put that in your mustache and smoke it.” ― Agatha Christie, Hallowe’en Party
I think it’s so funny. Let’s see how it works as a writing prompt.
“Put that in your mustache and smoke it.” Ready? Write!
You can respond to this prompt, using your personal experience, or write from your fictional character’s point of view.
Writing Prompt: Behind the shutters.
I would love to see your writing, using this prompt.
Posting is kinda simple: If you aren’t registered on The Write Spot Blog. . . go ahead and register. Wait for a password. Then Log-on and post your writing.
Photo Credit: Pro_Deluxe Photography by Jeff Cullen
Write about a time you were scared.Share your writing here, on The Write Spot Blog.
First time posting: Register. Look for your password in your email. Then, log-in and post your writing.
Photo Credit: Pro_Deluxe Photography by Jeff Cullen
Last night I dreamt about the University of Georgia Arch. My son gave me a selection of photos he took in 2015. He and his fiancée now live in Athens, Georgia, supplying him with a variety of photo opportunities. Thus, the arch.
I dreamt about the arch as a portal—a path—to writing. How we can walk through the portal, like walking through an airport screening arch, and come out on the other side with ideas for writing. It felt like walking towards inspiration—being open to new ideas.
In my dream I saw words over the portal, curving like a rainbow, “This is where dreams are made.” And “Promises are kept or broken.”
Either way, I see these words, these concepts, as inspiration for writing. Okay, I see almost everything as inspiration for writing: song lyrics, opening sentences in books, first lines of poetry. I see interesting items and think “writing prompt.”
Today’s Writing Prompt: Write about your dreams. Or, write about promises made. Or write about the idea of being changed after walking through a portal.
The University of Georgia Arch photo by Pro_Deluxe Photography by Jeff Cullen
“Commissioned in 1856, the Arch was built sometime between then and 1858, but no one can say for sure the exact year it was constructed. It was part of the iron fence erected to secure the campus. Gates were part of the structure, closing off the passageway beneath the Arch at night. The gates disappeared sometime in 1885, likely the victim of a midnight prank.
For most graduates, visiting the Arch after commencement is a rite of passage. Since the 1900s, tradition has held that students may not pass beneath the Arch until they have received a diploma from UGA. Legend has it that the tradition began when Daniel Huntley Redfearn (BL ’09, BS ’10) arrived as a freshman and vowed not to pass beneath the Arch until he had graduated. One of Redfearn’s professors heard the vow and repeated it to his class, and the story stuck.
If only that Arch could talk.
It could tell of political protests and silent vigils, memorials to deceased students, and long lines of happy new graduates waiting to pose for a family photo beside the three pillars of the Arch, which stand for wisdom, justice and moderation.
For 150 years, the black iron arch—fired at the old Athens foundry—has served as the University of Georgia’s most visible symbol. Yet it is cloaked in intrigue, its past a mystery even to the most educated scholars.”
Writing Prompt: Choose a book, write a spoof and submit to Writer’s Digest Reject a Hit.
“In each issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, we ask one reader to step into the role of the unconvinced, perhaps even curmudgeonly or fool-hearted editor. . .
If you’d like to be the one doing the rebuffing, channel the most clueless of editors by humorously rejecting a hit in 300 words. . .
Reject a Hit is humorous, but not mean-spirited. It is not the place to list all the reasons you hate a particular book. To help you understand the spirit of Reject a Hit, browse through the archives of published rejections.”
Books that have been spoofed in the Writer’s Digest Magazine, Reject a Hit column (last page of the magazine):
Note: Amy Marincik (March/April 2013) and Daniel Ari (July/Aug. 2014) are Sonoma County writers (home of The Write Spot Blog). Amy has participated in writing workshops facilitated by Marlene Cullen (host of The Write Spot Blog) and Daniel has been a Writers Forum presenter twice. We liked him so much, we asked him back.
2013
January Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
March/April Great Expectations, spoofed by Amy Marincik
May/June Burning Down My Masters’ House: My Life at the NY Times
July/August The Exorcist
October The Lorax
Nov/Dec The Hobbit
2014
January The Road
February The Old Man and The Sea
March/April Good Night Moon
May/June Tess of the D’Urbevilles
July/Aug Tulips & Chimmeys, spoofed by Daniel Ari
September The Shining
October Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy
Nov/Dec Runny Babbitt: A Billy Sook
2015
February Our Mutual Friend
Mar/April Middlemarch
May/June A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning
July/August First Blood
September The Bonfire of the Vanities
October Inferno
Nov/Dec Winnie-the-Pooh
2016
January The Scarlet letter
Your Turn: Come on now, you can do this. Choose a book, write a humorous rejection and submit to Writers Digest Reject a Hit.
The Sun
New York, New York
DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Dear Reader Here And Now,
You probably know the story: Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps. Newseum
Writing Prompt: Write about something you believed in and later discovered it wasn’t true. Or, write whatever comes for you after reading this story.
Homonyms (also called homophones) are words that sound like one another but have different meanings. Some homonyms are spelled the same, like bark (the sound a dog makes) and bark (the outer layer of a tree trunk). Enchanted Learning
Freewrites mean writing freely. You are free to write whatever you want.
Use any or all of the following words in a freewrite:
Flower – Flour Beach – Beech Bough – Bow
Fur – Fir Morning – Mourning Birth – Berth
Red – Read Time – Thyme Eye – Aye
New – Gnu You – Ewe You’ll – Yule
If ewe are knew too freewwrites oar kneed eh refresher . . .
If you are new to freewrites or need a refresher:
Freewrites . . . What Do You Call Them?
What is a freewrite and what is a writing prompt?
If yule cast yer aye on the Festive Spirit Blog Hop ewe mite read sum thing gnu and interesting!