OctPoWriMo

Poetry prompt Following desire

Form Monotetra

Desire is the ear at the curtain

Imagine stopping all the clocks
and uninvited mental knocks
having the cutest fox who talks
star in a box, star in a box

The veiled curtain alligator
is a mystery creator
until the reveal much later
gator traitor, gator traitor

Alight with pockets full of rocks
flights of fancy with soaring hawks
who don’t care why you stopped the clocks
translator squawks, translator squawks

Writober

The poetry theme made me think of the movie It Follows, so the visual prompt is a photo by Ben Ward which also makes me think of the poster for that film.

micro-story: The jolt of the car suddenly stopping had flung my phone from it’s holster into the backseat. I crawled back there to retrieve it. I didn’t want to even look out into the foggy pitch-black night without the ability to call for help. I didn’t see it anywhere. While I was pretzeled, rummaging under the seat, I heard a click and the creak of the driver’s-side door opening. I froze, but it wasn’t like I could hide. My leg was in the air between the seats.

Read for inspiration and craft

Horror short story Active Imagination by Michelle Wilson

Horror online magazine 50-Word Stories These are fun. I recommend reading a bunch of them.

Today’s horror movie is It Follows. There was a lot of hype for the film when it came out in 2015 and I remember being unimpressed, but since it appears to be my theme for today, I’m willing to give it another try.

NaNo Prep

Today, I’m going to get back to some Futurist Thinking (the class I’m taking on Coursera) to develop the future of my story-world. I’ve been collecting signals–things that are happening now that could influence possible futures–and have a bunch. So I think I’ll try the exercise of randomly selecting three to combine into forecasts.

Hopefully, this will help me get away from things that people are already exploring and find completely original possibilities.

Once I find a few forecasts that excite me, I’ll play around with putting my protagonist in a few scenarios and see what happens.