Write 50 prompts, win a prize

I’ve created a contest for myself. As I have done before, I am going to make up a bunch of inane writing prompts, with my ultimate goal being to write fifty of these prompts. When I achieve this goal I will have won the contest. The prize is to take one of the prompts and actually use it. I am not entirely sure how well this contest will go. Winning may turn out to be losing. All I know for sure is if I move to Quebec I will be ineligible to participate.

Writing Prompts, Part 3: Follow at Your Peril (prompts 23-32)

  1. Why would a speaker be afraid of catsup?
  2. Start your story with this: “She touched the litterbox in her pocket and smiled.”
  3. In 250 words write from the point of view of a dangling participle.
  4. One day you keep eating Bits & Bites until you weigh 1,000 pounds. You sue the company for making them too delicious but you’re too big to get to the phone and call your lawyer so instead you eat more Bits & Bites. Describe the color and shape of your phone or lawyer.
  5. You are ordered to press the Big Red Button. When you do the whole world blows up. Or does it? No, it doesn’t. Don’t be stupid. Write something that isn’t stupid.
  6. A man and a woman–let’s call them Adam and Eve–suddenly find themselves kicked out of a magical garden with only the clothes on their backs but they actually don’t have any clothes, they’re completely naked. Explain in 500 words why you are a pervert who writes about naked people.
  7. A woman applies for a job in tech support because she has suddenly gone mad. She is told she can only use the words “Hi”, “Did you check the cable?” and “Try rebooting” when speaking to customers. Describe how she becomes Employee of the Year.
  8. You can be any mineral in the world. What mineral will you be?
  9. Write a story that uses the following words: witches, vampires, fairies. Then self-publish the story on Amazon and trick your friends into posting five-star reviews.
  10. List 500 things you’ll never do.

Previously:

Book review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the LaneThe Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The only problem with the short novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane is just that–it’s short. The ending almost feels abrupt and though it comes at the end of an act, the story overall feels like it could serve as the opening to a longer tale.

But in a way it’s better by being so short. Rather than feeling slight, Gaiman’s story of a young boy inadvertently tangling himself between worlds in early 1970s Sussex feels neat and proper. In the author’s notes Gaiman recalls that he read the story aloud as he wrote it and how it benefited from this. You can see the evidence in the sturdy and somewhat melancholic narration of the protagonist, struggling to deal with situations seven year olds regularly have trouble with–parents, younger sisters, getting picked on at school–let alone having to grapple with the more supernatural elements that swirl in and around the matriarchal Hempstock farm where the titular “ocean” is situated.

By turns amusing, terrifying and nostalgic, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Gaiman in fine form. Anyone who enjoys his work will not go wrong here.

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What happened to my shorts

Long ago, in the days of yore, or more specifically, on December 31 2013 I announced my intention to gather a bunch of short stories into a collection I would self-publish. Here is the relevant part of that post as a refresher:

In 2014 (one day from now, though this is not something that will actually be happening tomorrow, barring some kind of time travel trickery) I will be self-publishing my first short story collection. After looking over the collected stories I have written and weeding out those either not ready or not up to par I have settled on twenty for a collection that will be titled 10 Pairs of Shorts. Clever, eh?

And now, here is an update as of September 3, 2015, in convenient list form:

  • I have not published the collection
  • 20 stories is a lot of stories to read, revise and in some cases, also write
  • I still like the title
  • I still intend on doing this, however scaled down the effort might be

The good news is enough of the stories are ready to give me a little momentum. Apart from that I promise nothing except to report back in exactly one year with a progress report. Actually, I have offer one more promise: a more detailed status report sometime in the next few days, barring illness (I am in fact, not feeling well. I blame mass transit as always).

Partying like it’s 1982

You know how some people look better when they’re younger and some look better when they’re older after they’ve grown into their bodies, gotten sensible haircuts and no longer treat fashion as alien science? This photo of me going out for my grad ceremony in June 1982 clearly demonstrates I am in the latter group.

I did my best to fix the photo in Lightroom (it had a lot of noise thanks to the 1890s camera technology used) but there is no image manipulation program that can fix the hair, glasses or all of those dismembered heads on the wall behind me.

Stylin' for Grad 1982
Stylin’ for Grad 1982

I shall call it: The Alan Parsons Project (ranked)

Between 1976 and 1987 The Alan Parsons Project released ten albums, not bad for a band that was never really a band. As so often in my youth I was late to the scene of this prog rock outfit that featured catchy pop songs often backed by a full orchestra, coming in on their seventh album, 1984’s Ammonia Avenue (thanks to the video for “Don’t Answer Me”.) I bought their next three albums and then the project broke up, with Parsons going off to actually tour the songs he’d been recording for the past decade and his partner Eric Woolfson turning to musicals. I always kind of hoped they’d reunite one last time for another project but that never happened before Woolfson’s death in 2009.

I’ve also been a sucker for pop music backed by an orchestra, but it can be done well and it can be done very badly. The Alan Parsons Project, thanks in large part to Andrew Powell’s orchestrations, managed to wed the two types of music together in a complementary manner. I’m not a musicologist so I can’t really describe it better than that.

In any case, here’s how I rank their ten albums.

  1. Eye in the Sky (1982). The first half of this album is a seamless, perfect blend of every strength the project had, opening with the evocative (and to sports fans, very familiar) instrumental “Sirius” before moving on to the hit “Eye in the Sky” and closing with the semi-epic “Silence and I.” For an example of how effective Powell’s orchestrations were, listen to the guide vocal by Eric Woolfson of the same track on the remastered album, which doesn’t include the orchestration. The second half of the album is less substantial but still includes the excellent instrumental “Mammagamma” and closer “Old and Wise.”
  2. The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980). This album serves as a kind of blueprint for Eye in the Sky, but the strengths of the albums are reversed, with the latter half of Turn being the stronger. There is a tone of melancholy and regret that flows through the songs, even if they are sometimes close to danceable (“Games People Play”). The opener “May Be a Price to Pay” opens with a stirring trumpet fanfare. How can you not like that?
  3. Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976). Many would consider it heresy to not put this at #1 (including Parsons himself) but I feel this album doesn’t quite line up all the pieces of the project as effectively as later albums would. Still, it carries the theme of Poe’s work effectively and the remastered version that restores Orson Welle’s narration and adds a bridging “cathedral organ” turns the effort into a whole rather than two halves. While the project would never mount an epic instrumental like “The Fall of the House of Usher” again, it’s interesting to have here, even if it doesn’t mesh overly well with the other more pop-oriented songs.
  4. Ammonia Avenue (1984). This is more or less Eye in the Sky, Part 2, but it’s such an incredibly slick effort you can’t deny the attempt to recapture the previous album. There are standout tracks, from the wall of sound of “Don’t Answer Me” to the stirring title track. Maybe one of the strengths of the album is that none of the songs particularly feel like filler.
  5. Pyramid (1978). Some consider this effort slight but I’m a sucker for the theme and like Ammonia Avenue, I don’t feel there are any weak tracks. Perhaps to its detriment there also aren’t any real standouts, either, but the whole album is less than 38 minutes long, so it’s never a major commitment. My favorite songs here are opposites: the dramatic (melodramatic?) instrumental “In the Lap of the Gods,” complete with shouting choir and the utterly silly “Pyramania,” featuring the project’s only tuba solo.
  6. Eve (1979). This is an odd album in that most of the songs are openly hostile to women, yet the album ends with two sung by female vocalists that come across as apologies for everything before them. I doubt the album would be recorded with the same lyrics today. That said, the instrumentals are again excellent, with “Secret Garden” featuring an effervescent Beach Boys-inspired harmonizing and the opener “Lucifer” setting an appropriately dark tone for what’s to come.
  7. I Robot (1977). More heresy, as this is often ranked as one of the project’s top albums but I’ve always found some of the tracks too meandering and unfocused, particularly the instrumentals (excepting the title track). “Don’t Let It Show” (later covered by Pat Benatar, of all people) and “Breakdown” are my favorites here.
  8. Stereotomy (1986). By the mid-80s the project seems like it’s running out of steam. Powell’s orchestrations are minimal here and while the title track and instrumental “Where’s the Walrus?” are fine, a lot of the remainder, like “In the Real World,” feel by the numbers.
  9. Gaudi (1987). Again the orchestrations are very light here, though deployed effectively, especially the horns on the closing instrumental “Paseo de Gracia” and the opener “La Sagrada Familia.” The theme of Gaudi’s work and life elevates the album somewhat but it feels more like flourishes here and there rather than part of a cohesive whole. Some of the songs are slick but forgettable (“Too Late”, “Money Talks.”)
  10. Vulture Culture (1985). Andrew Powell was working with a number of project members on the music for the film Ladyhawke and as a result this is the only project album that features no orchestration. In its place is keyboards. Lots and lots of keyboards. The songs are solid but unspectacular, the whole thing feels nothing more than “nice.” The remastered re-release includes the acoustic track “No Answers Only Questions,” a song that would have rounded out the rest of the album on original release.

Write something every day

The key to writing is simple.

Write.

See? Simple.

I have tried to find ways to motivate myself to write regularly because I know if I do it builds momentum that carries me along from one writing project–however big or small–to the next. I have done what many aspiring writers have done. I’ve read books designed to educate, to inspire, to prod and nag and drive you to the computer, typewriter (ho ho) or quill pen and legal pad (HarlanWrite™), I’ve tried the stick approach (“No cookie until I finish this page”), I’ve tried the carrot (“If I type a paragraph, I get a kitten. Yay kitten!” This is an actual thing, by the way. See here: Written? Kitten!), I’ve tried pretty much any approach one might come across in a few decades or more of cranking out words.

In the end I don’t have any magical, surefire technique to motivate myself, but somehow I always fumble my way back to writing. Sometimes I lapse for a few days or weeks, sometimes for years. The fallow years make me sad but not regretful. If I had written during those times it probably would have been about werewolf sex.

After hurting my right leg on August 3rd–three days into my vacation–I knew I would probably not run for the rest of the month and possibly longer. This bummed me out. Running is not only good exercise for me, it’s also great stress relief. When I’m out on a trail running on a warm summer day, serenaded by the music piping through my earbuds, I feel good. Not even wayward cyclists can bother me. To have this activity suddenly shut off made me think, “My blog isn’t going to be filled with jogging posts for weeks.” I had a choice–let the blog go dry until I started running again, fill the blog up with complaints about how I wasn’t running or, perhaps, actually write about things other than running.

I vowed then to write something every day. I didn’t actually start until August 19th but every day since then I have written something. Some days it’s been slight, other days it’s been a bit more substantial. I am tending toward the inane as I get my proverbial sea legs. But for now the momentum is back. It feels nice, like a good run.

(This is post #17 for the month, my best monthly output since July 24, 2014. I am both delighted and horrified by this.)

Book review: Ghosts: Recent Hauntings

Ghosts: Recent HauntingsGhosts: Recent Hauntings by Paula Guran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ghosts: Recent Hauntings is one of the better horror collections I’ve read in the past few years. The stories are, true to the title, all relatively recent in terms of previous publication, and while editor Paula Guran confesses to fudging a bit sometimes on ghosts being the subject matter, the exceptions are still consistently good stories. There’s even some local flavor in “The Castle”, set in a hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The stories cover a broad range of styles and tone, from traditional tales of hauntings, like the 9/11-themed opener “There’s a Hole in the City” to the Twilight Zone-style twists of “Faces in Walls”, in which revenge is maybe not so sweet after all. Laird Barron is featured here and given that the protagonist of his “The Lagerstätte” is female, the tale of ghostly beasts is not dripping with testosterone and overripe metaphors as usual. Here the metaphors are only just slightly past ripe, and the story is tight and involving.

The worst of the bunch aren’t worth singling out because I found none of the stories to be poor or even mediocre, something I have found pretty rare when reading a set of stories from a variety of authors. Paula Guran has chosen skillfully here and struck a terrific overall balance. If you’re set on a particular type of ghost story you may find the sheer variety less satisfying but if you’re ready to meet insane djinns, soldiers that hanker for closure or perhaps something more sinister long after being felled in battle, ghosts that are in turn friendly, vicious, mystifying and sometimes maybe not ghosts but something far worst, then Ghosts: Recent Hauntings will leave you pleasingly spooked.

Recommended.

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Angry Carrot on a new Surface

Behold my masterwork, Angry Carrot as drawn using the stylus that comes with my Surface Pro 3 and using Corel Painter Essentials 5 software. I did no editing, as is rather obvious. Some day soon™ I may try a better drawing than this quick proof of something or other.

Angry Carrot Surface quick doodle
Angry Carrot quickly doodled on a Surface

Limping back to form

A check-up with the doctor today resulted in a few recommendations to get me back to running again. First, it was confirmed that I pulled a muscle, likely either a hamstring or gluteus maximus, possibly the most fun-sounding muscle in the human body, but one you don’t really want to injure because it is big and kind of important for walking and such. My doctor recommended a couple of things. The first was a few visits to a physiotherapist to get the lowdown on how to gently and lovingly work the muscle(s) back into shape. The second was to generally do more stretching to become more limber, as he described my legs as “tight” and in this case tight does not mean cool, hip (ho ho) or the equivalent, it means my legs can’t bend much before stopping like rusted slabs of steel. The improved flexibility should reduce the chances of the same injury happening again.

Also when I showed him the stats from one of my runs this summer, he looked at the heart rate (155 BPM) and said while it wasn’t bad per se, it would be wise to not run any faster as I’m in the upper level of safety for heart rate. Basically I am doing long distance runs at a sprinting pace (something the TomTom tools also confirmed), which is fine if I can handle it but maybe I should be less macho about the whole thing.

I also need some kind of echo test to check out a “low” murmur in my heart to get a better idea of what may be wrong (leaky valve, etc.). It’s not a huge concern right at the moment but the doc thinks it’s best to determine what is up now before I go on to emulate famous runner and heart attack victim Jim Fixx. I concur.

Finally, there is no way to remain convincingly nonchalant when having a medical practitioner stick a finger up your butt.

More writing prompts in the style of “Should I really use one of these?”

When lacking inspiration for writing I often find it helpful to make a list because I like lists and what better way to inspire than to write a list of writing prompts? There is no better way, I say. None! The utility of the prompts is best left as an exercise for the reader.

  1. You just had the Windows 10 music app import all of your music and it’s sorted your songs into genres such as Other, Misc, General Unclassifiable and Default. It believes Bruce Hornsby is Punk Rock. You decide to use Cortana to punish the music app, believing Windows 10’s advanced technology will allow this. What are the instructions you give to Cortana?
  2. One day you wake up and discover you’re a carrot, crisp, fresh and tasty. Your roommate eats you, ending your life. Write out your regrets that your roommate enjoyed healthy food.
  3. A giant meteor is going to destroy all life on the planet in 1,000 years. How do you plan out the rest of your life knowing this?
  4. Use these words in a story: agastopia, gabelle, jentacular, encephalalgia, jargogle, meringue
  5. A phone is ringing inside a locked room. If you can’t answer the phone something terrible will happen. Describe the breakfast you had.
  6. You are hired to do a 3D version of Citizen Kane set in outer space with aliens and laser beams and shit. Summarize your Oscar speech for Best Director.
  7. A mysterious man wants you to permanently remove ten words from the English language. All of the words will be replaced with the word “poop” because poop is funny. What’s the deal with this mysterious man and why does he find poop so funny?
  8. You go to work and everyone is in their underwear, just like in some crazy dream but you aren’t wearing any. How do you address this situation without alerting the Underwear Police?
  9. You are having an online chat with a friend who responds to everything you say with an amusing reaction gif. Invent a device that allows you to slap him right through the screen.
  10. What are things you can do in 85 weeks? List them.
  11. Write a light-hearted piece about orphans dying in a fiery bus crash
  12. Make a list: 7 Signs It’s Time to Change Your Pants

Hip hip not hooray

Me, August 3rd:

I’ll see if I bounce back from this quickly or if it turns into some yucky long term situation.

Eleven days later and I can now confirm: yucky long term situation.

I knew with the way the hip felt after the last run that I would miss at least the next run, maybe two. I was hoping that I’d lose no more than that, meaning I’d be running again the following Monday, which was five days ago. While the hip did feel a little better on Monday and Tuesday and I did some walks at near my usual pace I seemed to relapse and yesterday (Thursday) a 4.5 km walk was almost kind of painful. I have no idea if the hip injury is muscle, bone or a gremlin trying to pull everything apart like the one in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” but I have a doctor appointment coming up so may have a better idea then.

That appointment isn’t until the 24th, however. In the meantime I’m taking it day by day and seeing how the hip feels. I’ve played out the old man/hip thing now, I’m ready to start running again. I am open to having bionic legs attached.

Writing prompt 6: The world ends with you?

Exciting news: I’ve added a new category on the blog for writing prompts.

It’s kind of exciting to me, anyway. A little.

Breaking writing prompts out into their own category will make it easier to find them, which will be handy for me and any bots scraping the site for inane exercises based on random writing prompts.

And now, a prompt.

Prompt #6: A mystical but seemingly omnipotent being appears before you and commands that you provide the solution to world peace or all the world will be destroyed. The omnipotent being has given you sixty seconds to respond. What do you do?

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