👻💀Happy Halloween! 🎃🦇

If you missed this morning’s prompts post, I am responding to the prompts from Show Off Your Costumes.

For today’s image prompt I thought it would be fun to have a “Costume Contest” of the photographs I took this month in response to the prompts. The photos on this page are my three favorites.

OctPoWriMo 2023:Facing Our Fears

Today’s final OctPoWriMo prompt revisiting Maya Angelou’s “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me,” fits well with the Poetics prompt at the dVerse Poets Pub. Dora from PilgrimDreams challenges us to choose a dead novelist or poet, and write a poem on a work of theirs.

Failure Doesn’t Frighten Me
after Maya Angelou

This last hope fractured
another misadventure
I am not afraid of failure

Rejections injure
with another expenditure
I am not afraid of failure

Don’t need the lecture
or the obscene gesture
I am not afraid of failure

The tire’s puncture
another missed future
I am not afraid of failure

I capture
this nature
and pressures
escape through fissures
this pure
disclosure
is a texture
of treasure

I am not afraid of failure

I follow procedure
and send in my picture
I am not afraid of failure

The waiting is torture
to only find closure
I am not afraid of failure

You offer exposure
but I still have to eat
to be part of the culture
requires shoes on my feet

Don’t praise the infrastructure
but demean the ones who fill it
fill the void with nomenclature
with no one to define it

I have a soothing tincture
unrelenting creativity
that persists through this juncture
and will probably be the death of me

I am not afraid of failure
Failing doesn’t scare me
Fear is not failing

I am not afraid of failure

*Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (amazon associate link) was released as a children’s book in 1993. Maya Angelou, first famous for her novel I know Why the Caged Bird Sings published in 1969, died in 2014.

Don’t forget, the daily poetry prompts continue tomorrow with the Writer’s Digest Poem-a-Day Chapbook Challenge.

Writober 2023

The 13 Days of Samhain prompt “Magic Words” sparked an idea that goes well with the image prompt.

Logline: A man whose twin died in the womb, is triggered by a voice in his head when it says “Say the magic words.”

Dead Twin Powers

People called him Split Rick, Cracked Brat, Double Mumble because he often spoke to himself in his two different voices. His mother said he was a twin, but his brother died in the womb. So when he heard the voice in his head, he imagined a little man that looked just like him curled up in his head, trying to get out, trying to take control. Most of the time, Rick didn’t mind him; he liked having a brother any way he could. But sometimes when people were mean, and he got really mad, his brother would whisper, “Say the magic words,” and he would get a little scared because he knew he was in trouble, because he had to say the magic words. He had to. And he would say, “Come out. Come out. It’s time to play.” Then Rick would go away. Usually until the next day. Sometimes for several days. He never remembered where. Usually bad things happened and he would get in trouble, but he didn’t feel bad because he didn’t do it.

Yesterday I finished making the quilt pockets for November and spent this morning setting up my office to be inspiring and productive. I made a butcher paper timeline and plot line for one wall to put post-its of scene ideas on. I filled in my small dry-erase calendar for event dates. I put away the room air-conditioner, and put up my magnet board for magnetic poetry. Some of my pocket rewards will be magnetic poetry words, so that over the week my rewards will make a poem. I enjoyed the YouTube Write-in. I’m getting excited about my novel.

November Photography Challenge

I will be continuing my daily photography practice through November. Each day I will attempt to make an image that shows contradictory abstract nouns in one image. I started this study over a year ago. If you’re interested in learning more about it, you can start by reading my post Contrasting Abstractions. All of the contradictory abstract nouns I chose for November are related to my new Big Five. I discuss how I chose them in my post Continuing My Contradictory Abstract Noun Study. The Big Five I’m studying in November, and using to model my characters’ personal journeys are:

• Certainty / Doubt
• Determination / Reluctance
• Creativity / Actuality
• Value / Worthlessness
• Patience / Impatience

Here is the calendar of daily prompts for November:

Have a Great Halloween. See You Tomorrow!!