They Said It Would Make Our Lives Easier

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

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🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to each of the challenges to navigate easily to the prompt of your interest: OctPoWriMo for poetry; Writober Flash Fiction for flash fiction; Halloween Photography Challenge for photography
🐦‍⬛Example poems are copied here for educational purposes.
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🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Fear of Robots and Technology

Fear of Robots and technology includes all of the fears of inanimate objects coming alive especially puppets and dolls, but also includes fear of change and fear of the unknown. With technology constantly changing, it’s easy to feel we’re constantly out of control, constantly behind the times. We’re constantly being told that these new technologies are for our convenience and will make our lives easier, but we are no longer given many choices when it comes to whether or not we want to implement them. They just happen and we have to adapt, change, and learn. When a technology is forced upon us, is it a convenience or an annoyance?

However, there are positive and negative aspects to most new technologies. As writers, it’s amazing to have the world of research at our fingertips. And so many options of word processing, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. Sites like Rhymezone make finding fun options for exact and slant rhymes easy. And we have constant learning opportunities through online classes, ebooks, and streaming documentaries.

When I was working on a sci-fi novel, I took a series of courses in the Futures Thinking concentration through Institute for the Future on Coursera.org. The courses provide exercises for using signals in the present to imagine futures that we would like to live in instead of the imagined hellscapes we see in most sci-fi futures.

You may find inspiration at the MIT Museum Robot Exhibit

OctPoWriMo

One thing that robots and computers are good at is recognizing patterns and repetitive actions. Metered poetry is also based on repetition and variation. The Sonnet, one of the most enduring forms for centuries, was one of the first forms to become predominantly written.

It became popular because it is an argument between the poet and herself. The first part of the poem presents an idea, then the poem has a turn (the volta, usually started with the word but or yet) and then the rest of the poem refutes the beginning. In the Shakespearean sonnet or English sonnet the poem is then summed up in a final rhyming couplet.

Any poem can be read as an argument between the poet and himself, exploring an idea from all angles; arguing that the unanswerable can be answered through poetic exploration.

Example Poem: “Time does not bring relief; you have lied” by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Poetry Foundation.

Time does not bring relief; you have lied

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Are these rhymes unique or clever? How has the poet turned these common phrases so they aren’t cliché?

Prompt: Write a poem arguing that a common saying is a lie, or that the way a new technology has been sold to the public was a lie.

Possible form: Sonnet (Shakespearean or Petrarchan)

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Ten 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.

Music to get us moving: