Who Controls Our Minds?

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

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🐦‍⬛Example poems are copied here for educational purposes.
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🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Psychic Powers

So far this Writober we’ve been looking at physical sensations that trigger our fears. Many people believe we have a sixth sense: extra-sensory perception.

The sixth sense is often talked about as intuition: something known from a feeling rather than conscious reasoning; instinct or impulse. These feelings of intuition are often contrary to our more rational thoughts. If we follow our instincts and they turn out to be correct we may say, “Look, I’m psychic.” But what if you encountered someone with mental powers that could reach into your mind and take over, controlling your thoughts and actions?

Last Writober we explored the five universal human fears: ego death, separation, loss of autonomy, mutilation, and extinction. Loss of autonomy means loss of self-control: not being able to care for oneself, but also not being in control of one’s thoughts and actions. This is one of those deep, dark fears every human experiences.

It’s also a deep philosophical question: Are we really in control of our own lives? Destiny vs. Free Will. This is why people fear the idea of psychic phenomenon. If people can predict the future, does that mean we are not controlling our futures through our choices? If people can hear our thoughts and project their own through telepathy, what’s to stop them from messing with our thoughts, taking away our control. If governments are experimenting with psychic observing, are they spying on our personal moments? Are advertisers, media companies, governments, and others using mind control techniques to control our choices and thus our possible futures?

If you could develop only one psychic power what would it be? Telepathy, telekinesis, mind control, predicting the future, something else? What would be the most frightening aspects of this power?

As writers, it’s important to stay open to and listen to our sixth sense. There are many ways to do this:

• stream of consciousness journaling the moment you wake up, or late at night when you’re tired
• keep a journal and pen next to your bed and keep a dream journal. Jot down your dreams when you wake up, especially if you wake up in the middle of the night.
• use the spoon and bowl technique when feeling nappish during the day: Like such visionaries as Edison and Dali, hold a spoon in your hand over a metal bowl on the floor while sitting in a chair. Close your eyes. When you fall asleep, you will drop the spoon and the sound of it hitting the bowl and wake you. Write down everything you recall.
• write as your character: let your characters tell you their wants and needs and tell you what they are going to do next.
• when your writing seems to run away from you on a tangent, follow it. Though it may not fit in the project you’re working on, cut it and save it in a different file. It may inspire a different piece, or be part of another scene.
• create a compost journal, binder, or box where you collect everything you are drawn to: favorite words or phrases, pictures, clippings, colors, shapes, small objects, anything that you’re instinctually drawn to.

Using the Sixth Sense in Writing from Writers in the Storm has some ideas.

You may find some inspiration at New England Society for Psychic Research (N. E. S. P. R.)

OctPoWriMo

How can we use our sixth sense in our poetry? Many great poems start in one place, with one question, statement or idea, but through the writing of the poem, the poet ends up in another place. Follow those instincts. Let your poem leap, following free associations that may not seem to connect at first. Let those gut feelings guide you. We can also connect dream imagery with specific sensory details in the present, using dream symbols to inform our understanding of our poetic themes.

Example Poem: “Strangers” by Philip Larkin from Collected Poems_(Aal) by Philip Larkin

Strangers

The eyes of strangers
Are cold as snowdrops,
Downcast, folded,
And seldom visited.

And strangers’ acts
Cry but vaguely, drift
Across our attention’s
Smoke-sieged afternoons

And to live there, among strangers,
Calls for teashop behaviours
Setting down the cup,
Leaving the right tip,

Keeping the soul unjostled,
The pocket unpicked,
The fancies lurid,
And the treasure buried

~Philip Larkin

Does this poem evoke a fear of strangers? With psychic powers would strangers remain strangers? Or are people only strangers because we cannot know what is in their minds? And if we cannot see into another’s mind, can we ever really know anyone?

Prompt: Use similes (comparative phrases using “like” or “as”) to describe suspicions of being controlled by another’s psychic powers. What does it feel like? Why that specific person? What is the experience like?

Possible form: Ghazal – How to Write a Ghazal Poem from Writers.com

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Six Image

Click on the link and take a look at the image. How might this image relate to today’s theme? Write a piece of flash fiction, anything from a six-word story to 999 words. Feel free to bring in the OctPoWriMo prompt and the Photography Challenge prompt, anything that inspires your story.

Halloween Photography Challenge

Thank you so much for joining me for this year’s October challenges. Remember to support each other by visiting and commenting on as many links as you can as we explore our Deepest Fears in anticipation of Halloween.

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.

Some music to get us moving: