Daily prompt : Imitation is flattery

Tags

blogging, inspiration, postaday2013, writing

Write a post in the style of (or simply inspired by) a favorite author. Photographers, artists, poets: show us HOMAGE. Thanks for the great idea, dwbb96!

I will not even try to imitate my favorite authors, I would not want to insult their talents. I can pay homage to them by stating why I admire them so much. I love Emile Zola for his social commentary about the many facets of French society, he had the capacity to paint not just the environment but the people into true living portraits where the reader’s understanding of another country’s culture is deepened while being engaged in remarkable works of fiction.

Jane Austen, all things Jane Austen, I love all of her stories. My favorite couple of all time is Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. I also loved Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Jane Austen’s amazing ability to paint young ladies and their relationships in Victorian England is the primary reason why I adore her so. I have been fascinated by her heroines for so long and her writings have never gotten old in my estimation. I could only dream to hopefully infuse my heroine with half of the relate ability that say Lizzie Bennet has, I can only hope to aspire to Jane Austen’s talents, a hopeless illusion I know, but with writing as much as anything else, it is good to have goals.

Another favorite of mine is the late Robert Jordan of the Wheel of Time series. I am still mourning the end of the series. I made a nice bunch of friends during that series; Rand, Elayne, Matt, Perrin, Nynaeve and Egwene. He made their universe as real as ours for me. I am sad that he won’t be able to paint another universe into existence with his words.

What I am saying essentially I guess, is that all of my favorite authors know how to paint with their words and know their characters inside and out, so well that they know how to reveal them to us so that we get to know them and love them. That is what I am hoping to do eventually and probably clumsily, but still trying to achieve, the ultimate goal of having my heroine become beloved.

Daily prompt :2100

Tags

creative, inspiration, postaday2013, writing

The language of the future: what will it be like? Write an experimental post using some imagined vocabulary — abbreviations, slang, new terms.

I am so bad with these prompts. Interestingly enough though, I have a book called Parlez Globish written by Robert McCrum in 2004 and it is based on the work done by Jean-Paul Nerriere and his development of a subset of the English language. Jean-Paul Nerriere’s work was designed to make English a globally more efficient language in the work place. It was very interesting, I read it almost ten years ago but I do remember finding the idea intriguing though in reality, the idea didn’t go farther than a book because as far as I know, no one is speaking Globish at the United Nations or anywhere else for that matter.

I would imagine that is what the prompt is really all about, the globalization of language and effacing the barriers between different peoples and cultures. Personally, I love the differences because that means there is more to learn and differences are to be celebrated. I remember that I was sad when the European Economic Community threw out the foreign currencies for the singular currency, the Euro. Part of the fun of traveling from Holland, to France and Belgium was handling the different monies and converting each from one to the other and always referencing the dollar so that it made economic sense.

Moreover, as I stated in the opening paragraph, the book Parlez Globish didn’t go very far so perhaps that is an indication that a future language really isn’t in the cards for us citizens of the world. People no matter where they are still hold onto their unique customs, heritage and language and I think that this is a good thing.

Daily prompt : Non sequitor

Tags

blogs, forklift, inspiration, postaday2013, writing

Write a post about anything you’d like, but be sure to include this sentence somewhere in the final paragraph: “He tried to hit me with a forklift!”

Our small town Blandford is lucky in that our Main Street rests on route 23 which used to be “the” state highway and it is still considered to be such on the books, since that puts our Main road in the responsibility column of our state. I say that we are lucky because we don’t need to allocate funds for snow plowing or road repair, if we were to be financially responsible for the snow and the repairs, I think that we would wind up cut off from the rest of the state. Our meager tax dollars go to snow plowing the secondary roads and their road repairs and trust me, those aren’t pretty.

We have been experiencing a lot of road work on Main Street over the past two weeks and every morning starting at 7, we are greeted to the sounds of huge trucks backing up and dumping gravel off to the side and countless other loud noises, Jack really doesn’t like to be woken up in such a way and he lets them know it with his barking.

Jack especially doesn’t like the loud and slow moving trucks making their way up and down the road. He gets squittish and jumps away, he is easy-going, but being so little you can’t blame him for being scared of those big trucks, they are very loud for his little ears. I am sure that since he doesn’t know the proper nomenclature for trucks and other types of road equipment, if I were to tell him that those big trucks were called forklifts, the first thing that he would tell his Papa upon our return from walking around the streets of Blandford would be to say “He tried to hit me with a forklift!”

Plinky prompt :Writer with a cause

Tags

blogging, causes, inspiration, postaday2013, writing

If your day to day responsibilities were taken care of and you could throw yourself completely behind a cause, what would it be?

Way back, when I was contemplating a career in law, I was passionate about the environment and the health of our oceans. That passion hasn’t gone anywhere, if I had the wherewithal and the education to set me on my way, I would very much like to do work for the United Nations in reference to safeguarding our seas, especially in the Arctic Circle, the very fact that the ice has receded to the extent that it has and that countries are competing over oil rights, natural gas rights and any other mineral rights makes my stomach clench. How much more climate chaos do we have to undergo before the greedy conglomerates understand that we are at an impasse. Our planet may survive these climate catastrophes, but we humans may very well not. I want to leave our future generations clean air, clean water and soil that hasn’t been depleted of all nutrients. I think that our humanity is on the line, we need to embrace compassion, empathy and self-awareness to fight for our climate’s equilibrium.

Daily prompt: Bookworms

Tags

books, inspiration, postaday2013, writing

Grab the nearest book. Open it and go to the tenth word. Do a Google Image Search of the word. Write about what the image brings to mind.

Flee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpUat90_k7c
Dec 10, 2012 – Uploaded by Christina Clemente
When I see the word flee, I have images of wings in the sky soaring high up amidst the clouds away from here. Another image that comes to mind is someone racing on foot, away from here. I do not know where here is but when fleeing the objective is to get away from here. So if I were fleeing, I would be getting away from here, no matter where here was. My here is someone’s there or elsewhere. Everything is relative.

I got the word from Inferno by Dan Brown. I haven’t cracked it open yet, but it is on my to read list. What I have enjoyed reading Dan Brown’s books are the tours of Paris, Rome and London. I didn’t really care for Mister Brown’s latest which dealt with Masonic symbols, the adversary didn’t make sense to me and I found the story a little forced. I am hoping that this one will be more in keeping with Angels and Demons or The DaVinci Code, I love reading about masterpieces and architecture. I’ll let you know what I think about his latest as soon as I am finished with it. Here’s hoping for a good review.

Could frittata’s get predictable?

Tags

cooking, dinner, food, inspiration, postaday2013

All this travel over the past few days left the refrigerator more or less empty and I was too tired to go out and do some proper food shopping. I walked down the road to an acquaintance’s vegetable stand and I bought myself zucchini and radishes but that was all she had, this summer hasn’t been kind to her garden, the weather was off; either too hot and dry or too cool and wet. The zucchini was perfect for me but what to make for the menfolk?

This is where the frittata comes in handy, I had left over ham and Swiss cheese, coupled with a generous helping of minced garlic and chopped onion, the chives from out back and thyme as well, add that to ten eggs with some Pecorino cheese, salt and pepper and hooray! Dinner is served.

My baby boy loved it, he is easy to cook for,as is my baby girl, she would have loved it as well. I miss her, sniff, sniff.

That’s all I got, I’m a little frustrated, the red, burning rash with bumps is back on my rib cage from last summer and the summer before that. The first time I had it, the doctor said it was the Shingles but how can it be Shingles again, the same spot and now it is the third time that I am dealing with it, weird. I am going to take it easy and not move for the next several days, this is why frittata’s are so great, barely any work to make and everyone is happy.

Slim pickings in the prompt department

Tags

blogs, inspiration, postaday2013, posts, prompts, thoughts, writing

As I said, today there are some slim pickings in the prompt department on either of the websites; Plinky or the Daily Post at WordPress. I am still having issues with Plink, I e-mailed them about my dilemma, but I was still planning to respond to their prompt over at WordPress. I was disappointed to see that today’s prompt was a repeat, “What would you un-invent?”, I have already answered this question several times in its different forms; the cell phone. Over at WordPress, I think that the DailyPost had either “describe your most special meal in exquisite detail” and I know that I have done this one more than once, or write about your VIP person and I have already done that as well. So I got nothing, well not really nothing. I suppose that I could come up with something else besides the weather today.

Spring forward! Today we woke up to one more hour of sunshine since last night we turned the clocks ahead. What a difference an hour makes in your outlook. It is 6:30 in the evening and it is still light out,

See what a difference an hour makes. It already feels that much closer to spring. I am not talking about the weather, I am talking about seasonal moods and how daylight can lift a mood like nothing else can. Hooray for longer days and shorter nights!

Inspiration derived from a young Earnest

Tags

hope, inspiration, postaday2013, stumbling block, wall of silence, writing

As many of you know, I am writing a book and whenever I take to my blog to write about it, it means that I have hit a snag. The snag is me. I need to force myself back into my groove; writing everyday at least one thousand words. All that needs to be done is for me to sit in front of the computer and type. On a good note; I have someone who is currently reading the novel in progress and so far she loves it. Hooray for her and hooray for me. One caveat; she is a family member, the brilliant, talented artist Nancy, our cousin, so she is being kind but she still loves it.

Now why did I title this post “Inspiration derived from a young Earnest”? I am reading The Paris Wife; the marriage between Hadley and Earnest Hemingway and their married life in Paris. So far I am reading about how difficult it was for Earnest Hemingway to get his momentum going and his groove, I am nowhere in the world comparing myself to Earnest Hemingway, but if a brilliant writer can have a time with his writing then I can let myself off the hook just a little bit when I feel depressed and stressed because I hit a bump/snag in my own progress. I don’t know why I’m not feeling it to write Madeleine and Jack out of Paris, but I am.

I need to kick myself in the pants and get down to work. Tomorrow is another day and if Earnest can do it then so can I, minus the drinking and the smoking.

Inspiration provided by my readers

Tags

audience, inspiration, NaNoWriMo, postaday2012, writing

I received such a wonderful response to my post titled Confessions of a NaNoWriMo Slacker that this morning I decided to grab the bull by the horns and sit myself down in front of the computer and not stop until I got to 20,000 words. I did it. I wrote 9,900 words today, I have to admit that I am a little cross-eyed right now and my brain feels a little fuzzy, I think that my brain overheated a bit today. However I do feel good about plowing through writing today.

I was initially going to title this post Walk and Write, Walk and Write because essentially that is all I did today; I walked Jack and then sat down and wrote, walked Jack, sat down and wrote and then I walked Jack again. I did this pattern until I got to 20,000 words. It wasn’t difficult per se, the story is unfolding nicely and I love my characters. That being said, it is challenging to sit down for hours at a stretch and type word after descriptive word.

As I was walking Jack, it came to me that I had to title this post in honor of my readers who provided me with the support and the proverbial kick in the bottom to stop complaining and sit down to write. Not question, not analyze, not procrastinate and as in the words of the wise Yoda, no try just do.

So thank you all of my readers for helping me in my hour of need. I really appreciate it. 🙂