If you missed this morning’s prompts post, I am responding to the prompts from Beware the Cat.
For today’s images, I jumped out of bed and put on my thermals to hunt ghost cats in my Halloween lights before dawn. It was a little foggy near the street and frost sparkled on the pavement, but the sky was clear and the stars were out. The perfect morning for some Halloween ghost hunting.
I put a cut out of a cat shape in a house shape, and then tried my new technique of taping the cut-out to a clear plastic filter and found a ghost cat on a star.
OctPoWriMo 2023:Facing Our Fears
Lost Hope
What can’t be replaced
What is lost
Lost in time
Lost forever
Forever remembered
Forever missed
Missed opportunities
Missed the target
Target of theft
Target of cruelty
Cruelty of memory
Cruelty of forgetting
Forgetting them
Forgetting the lost
Lost in the woods
Lost to time
Time stole its luster
Time dulled desire
Desire for objects
Desire to find it
It wasn’t just a thing
t was memories
Memories of happiness
Memories now nostalgia
Nostalgia locks us in the past
Nostalgia blurs then with better
Better than now
Better than this
This is not the same
This is cheaply made
Made to fall apart
Made to be replaced
Replaced is only copied
Replaced doesn’t have the right feel
Feel the sneaky repeat of loss
Feel the empty space
Space—a void it filled
Space left vacant
Vacant stares
Vacant room
Room for rent
Room for everything
Everything breaks
Everything is lost
Lost cause
Lost hope
Hope for tomorrow
Hope is eternal
Eternal rotation
Tomorrow will come
Writober 2023
The 13 Days of Samhain prompt “At the Crossroads” sparked an idea that goes well with the image prompt.
Of One Mind
That misty morning the gray and black short hair neighborhood cats all disappeared. They raced through the overgrowth, meeting along the dirt tracts to the abandoned building at the crossroads of Nowhere and Don’t Go There. Each cat slowed and stopped equidistant from the cat in front of them. If seen from above, there was a grid of almost identical gray and black cats spreading south under the power lines, sitting still in the muddy road staring, hissing and mewling at a derelict wood structure of no apparent purpose. The ground shook. The building appeared to breath a few times, creaking and groaning. Then the roof splintered and broke open. Giant vine-like tentacles protruded in every direction. The cats’ heads followed the movements of the vine-like limbs slithering down the wood siding and expanding, reaching along the ground. They growled and hissed, but did not move.
Many believe that cats have psychic abilities, and how else could one explain these cats’ all coming to witness this monster emerging. But it also made them susceptible to its control. Each vine curled around a furry body, lifting it without resistance into the air, into the building. The whole town was plastered in missing signs for months. All of the cats in the posters looked the same to me, but each spot or marking was a different heartache to someone. But I can’t imagine that’s why all of the owners are now in the hospital, the jail, or dead. They all walked around with blank stares like they were seeing nightmares we couldn’t see, then they just lost their minds. Some became outwardly violent, others inwardly. Those who weren’t violent started hissing and licking themselves in public.
I’m excited to say that I’m prepared for Halloween tomorrow. My decorations are up. I put my house on the Neighborhood Treat Map, and I’ve got a bowl full of candy. Prepared for NaNoWriMo? Not so much. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m trying a new genre, or because I didn’t give myself enough prep time, but I feel like ‘m flailing about in a void of vague ideas. Luckily, I do have an ideas for the opening scenes, so today and tomorrow, I’ll be brainstorming names and putting those names with faces for the characters in the first few scenes. Then I’ll outline those scenes the best I can, so I’m at least ready for day one. One day at a time. I can do this. It’s going to be fun.
As for my quilt pockets reward system I talked about yesterday, I’m going to try rewarding myself with permissions to take time away from writing to do something active. The pocket can have a slip of paper in it that says, “10 minutes on the mini trampoline (I like to bounce), or “take a walk around the neighborhood,” or even “go do an X-box Dance.” Other rewards can be slips of paper that say “You’re doing great!” or something else I need to hear, or fun prompts to try in the next scene. So now I have to decide when to give myself these rewards. They need to work as incentives to reach my goals. I think I get my first reward for handwriting three full morning pages, then for each 500 words I write on my novel. I’ll see how that goes.
There’s a Global Write-in Event today on Discord that I think I’ll take a look at. And a write-in tomorrow on Youtube that I hope will help me feel more prepared. How are you preparing for November first?
Experience Writing 