Comfort Food and more  . . . Prompt #727

  • Comfort Food and more  . . . Prompt #727

    Excerpted from the May 2023 issue of the Sonoma County Gazette:

    Research over the past 20 years shows the same result time and time again: when we’re stressed, we want what researchers call high energy and nutrient-dense foods—those snacks, treats and meals that are high in fat and sugar.

    Comfort foods improve mood, reduce loneliness and connect us to cherished memories, often linked to childhood. A craving for comfort food typically stems from an extreme emotion, including happiness, meaning we reach for comfort foods even to celebrate.

    Comfort foods often trigger our reward system by releasing dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter. When we take a bite of that comfort food, whether it’s a hot fudge sundae, peanut butter and apples, tikka masala or a double bacon cheeseburger, dopamine floods the brain and gives us a huge boost of pleasure feelings. Any negative feelings we may have been experiencing before—stress, anger, sadness or anything in between—is diminished thanks to that hit of dopamine.

    For more info, you can read the entire article, “Why do comfort foods make us so happy?”  by writer and editor Amie Windsor.

    Today’s Prompts

    Write about food that brought you comfort as a child.

    Write about food that brings you comfort now.

    If you have replaced comfort food with an activity, write about that.

    Stressed is desserts, backwards.

    Have you backed into an activity that offers a hit of dopamine?

    I discovered GROOVE dancing with Diane Dupuis (link to her Facebook Page) and love the endorphins that dancing produces.

    Share your writing on my Writers Forum Facebook page. Note: There is no apostrophe on my Writers Forum Facebook page.

    Posts on The Write Spot Blog about comfort food and activities that produce endorphins:

    Comfort Food and the results of my informal poll.

    Ideas for activities to get a dopamine fix:

    Create a Hygge Calendar or List

    Qi Gong To Calm The Mind

    Marlene C

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  • Writing

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Writing

    By Cheryl Moore

    A silver tongue would be nice

    A pen that wrote golden prose

    Or poetry would be better.

     

    How would it feel to be Billy Collins

    Whose books sit

    On my bedside table?

     

    His small journeys

    Make magic of the mundane

    Of ordinary daily events

     

    One poem describes

    Sitting at his desk words flow

    Seemingly without his bidding

     

    I sit at my desk

    Pen posed over paper

    Nothing comes out

     

    I could doodle a picture

    Make it look like a word

    And start from there

     

    Would it be like opening a tap

    With words pouring out

    Given enough time?

     

    My words wouldn’t be golden

    Nor even silver

    Probably just tin

     

    Maybe Billie’s don’t flow golden

    Until he works and revises

    As most good writers must

     

    It’s like panning for gold

    A lot of water flows

    Before a bit of gold dust settles

     

    Maybe more discipline

    An ear for the music

    Use metaphors and similes

     

    I might rise above tin, to copper?

    Roses blooming, lilacs too

    Spring arriving, so much to do

     

    Am I running late?

    Look at that—it’s almost eight

    When Cheryl Moore came to California in the early 1960’s, she realized she’d found her home. Then moving to Petaluma in the 70’s, she was as close to paradise as she’d ever be.

    Travel has taken her to Europe and the Middle East. She has written on these memories as well as on the flora and fauna of the local river and her own garden.

    You can find more of her writing in “The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries” and “The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.”

    Marlene C

  • I wish I had known . . . Prompt #726

    I wish I had known . . .

    Response by Muriel Ellis:

    I don’t think I would really want to have known what my life would bring. Of course, I wish I’d done some things differently, made more time for the family I loved. I wish I hadn’t abandoned writing for so many years, over and over again.

    I certainly wish I’d known when I heard the grim news “malignant,” when it applied to lungs that it did not mean horrendous surgery with scant hope of recovery.

    And I wish that, before I knew all would be well, that I had actually written all those letters of accumulated love and wisdom that I planned to leave for my family—maybe even a page or two for assorted nieces and nephews and their offspring. Well, I didn’t. And, yes, I know it’s not too late, but that’s another story.

    Life is full of “what ifs?”

    It’s a delightful waste of time to ponder. Never mind the personal—the turmoil of the past few months reminds me of the heady days when my daughter’s generation took to the streets with protest marches They brought change just as the freedom Riders changed the face of the South.

    What if they’d all stayed home muttering their discontent?

    It’s turmoil time again. I stayed placidly on the sidelines in the sixties and seventies for the sake of peace in my own house. I sympathized, but . . .

    Not this time.

    A wheelchair handed down to me when my sister-in-law died served as a walker and a much needed place to sit through a lot of singing and speeches when I joined that merry creative crowd in small town Ukiah to protest on a Saturday in January, 2018.

    I just know that I needed for once in my life to be a part of something I believed in.

    “What I wish I had known” by Muriel Ellis in “The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Connections.”

    Writing Prompts:

    What I wish I had known.

    Or: Not this time.

    The anthology, “The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Connections” is not for writers only.

    The short vignettes are entertaining and some are thought-full. Like this one, by Muriel.

    “Connections” could be a “just because” gift that might inspire writing.

    “The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Connections” is available from your local bookseller and from Amazon (both ereader and print).

    Marlene C

  • If . . . Prompt #725

    Writing Prompts inspired from “The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Connections.”

    If I had my life to do over  . . .

    What I Know Now . . .

    Note To Self . . .

    Notes To My Younger Self . . .

    Choose one or more and Just Write!

    Marlene C

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  • April . . . Prompt #724

    white blue and purple stars illustration
    Photo by Bich Tran on Pexels.com

    April 1, 2023.

    April Fool’s Day.

    April: In like a whimper?

    Or, in like a bang?

    How was your April?

    Amusing? Charming? Frustrating?

    Anything new or unusual  happen?

    What did you like about this month of April?

    What didn’t you like?

    #justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter

    Marlene C

  • Someone Who Helped You . . . Prompt #723

    Write about someone who has helped you.

    Or maybe it was Some Thing that has helped you.

    Write about someone or something that has helped you.

    #justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter

    Marlene C

  • A Day In Your Life . . . Prompt #720

    Write about a day in your life.

    It could be about a miserable day.

    Or a spectacularly wonderful day.

    Or an ordinary day.

    Prompt: A day in your life.

    #justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter

    Marlene C

  • Connections . . . Prompt 718

    Write about someone you could or should connect with, but you just can’t.

    Why should you?

    Why don’t you?

    Marlene C

  • Discoveries and Inventions . . . Prompt #717

    It seems there is a new-fangled contraption invented almost daily.

    Imagine . . .  before there were cars, printing machines, and cell phones . . . when these were new . . .

    Horseless carriage . . . Motor wagon . . . Model T

    Printing Press . . . Manual typewriter, Electric typewriter

    Tin can telephone . . . Telegraph . . . Rotary phone with curly wire attached to a wall, Princess Phone

    Electricity, hot and cold water from a faucet.

    Imagine what our parents, grandparents, ancestors thought of these.

    Will you engage in the next innovation?

    Imagine what the next invention will be.

    Just Write!

    #amwriting  #iamawriter   #justwrite

    Marlene C

  • Trompe L’oeil . . . Prompt #716

    Art by David Zinn

    Writing Prompt: Trompe l’oeil

    Trompe l’oeil is a French phrase that means “deceive the eye.”

    It’s used to describe a style of painting that uses shading and perspective to make a two-dimensional painting appear to be three-dimensional. Wikipedia


    From Webster’s Dictionary:

    1. A style of painting in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail.

    2. Something that misleads or deceives the senses, illusion.

    Examples of trompe l’oeil: Creative Blog

    Write about: Trompe l’oeil.

    Artist David Zinn has been creating original artwork in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan since 1987. For more than twenty years, he freelanced for a wide variety of commercial clients while simultaneously sneaking “pointless” art into the world at large.

    His professional commissions included theatrical posters, business logos, educational cartoons, landfill murals, environmental superheroes, corporate allegories and hand-painted dump trucks, and his less practical creations involved bar coasters, restaurant placemats, cake icing, and snow.

    Now, thanks to the temptations of a box of sidewalk chalk on an unusually sunny day, Mr. Zinn is known all over the world for the art he creates under his feet. David’s temporary street drawings are composed entirely of chalk, charcoal and found objects, and are always improvised on location through a process known as pareidolic anamorphosis or anamorphic pareidolia.

    Most of Zinn’s creatures appear on sidewalks in Michigan, but many have surfaced as far away as subway platforms in Manhattan, village squares in Sweden and street corners in Taiwan. He has achieved global notoriety through sharing on the pages of Facebook, Instagram, Huffington Post, Graffiti Art Magazine, Bored Panda, Central China Television, Street Art Utopia, and Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome.

    His most frequent characters are Sluggo (a bright green monster with stalk eyes and irreverent habits) and Philomena (a phlegmatic flying pig), but the diversity of Mr. Zinn’s menagerie seems to be limited only by the size of the sidewalk and the spirit of the day.

    Marlene C