I’m at 1% complete. I should finish prompt #1,000 right around the same time I turn 1,000 years old. Come on, technology, keep me preserved so I may accomplish this tremendous literary feat.
Prompt 10
(from Chapter 1: Time and Place):
It’s been said that the negative events of the past will repeat themselves if we fail to learn from our mistakes. Do you agree with that statement? Why or why not? How might the statement apply in your life?
Answer:
Do I agree that if we don’t learn from our mistakes we will repeat them? Let me give this some serious thought here.
No, let me skip that because what a stupid question. This is a stupid prompt. It’s like asking, “If you stand at the top of a staircase and someone comes up behind you and gives you a hard shove and you tumble down the stairs and break many bones as a result, will you learn that tumbling down a flight of stairs kind of sucks?” Hmm. Maybe!
How might this statement apply to my life? I learned that eating barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds when you secretly have the stomach flu isn’t a good idea because you will barf those barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds all over the dining room floor, which, by some miracle, is the only room in the house that isn’t carpeted. By incorporating this lesson into my life I have never repeated the mistake of eating barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds when I secretly have the stomach flu.
Seriously, though, it did suck, though not as much as being pushed down a flight of stairs (the stairs were carpeted, too). I was ten years old, didn’t feel at all unwell, was happily noshing away on the sunflower seeds, and then suddenly the flu switch flipped to ON and everything in my stomach had to leave RIGHT NOW. And did. I went from no flu to very flu in a second.
It also left me sufficiently traumatized that I didn’t even touch barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds for twenty years. And then only once. (I didn’t throw up the second time.)
[spoiler title=”Explanation of this exercise” icon=”plus-circle”]These are prompts featured in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 (Goodreads link). My intent is to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long, working through the prompts in order. When I am done I will perhaps have a party of some sort.Sometimes the short stories will be longer and sometimes instead of a story I will answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).[/spoiler]
