Part Man Part Fish

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: Mer-creatures

Among the sea monsters swallowing ships are the mer-people, half person, half fish who in some tales lure sailors to their deaths and in other tales rescue them. Some believe these are tales made up by the drowning delusional from hypothermia, rescued by dolphins.

For someone who loves to swim, having your legs turn into a tail fin and growing gills to be able to breathe underwater is a fun fantasy. Much like the werewolf, the mermaid is about transformation. Where the werewolf is about our relationship to the moon’s cycles and our fears of our own animal nature, the mermaid is about our relationship with water (and the moon does control the tides, so maybe moon cycles, too).

We have a complicated relationship with water: our bodies are mostly water, we need to drink water for survival, and yet if we get stuck in water, we drown. The majority of our planet (71%) is water, and yet it can kill us. A very complicated relationship indeed.

As writers, complicated relationships are exactly what we want to create and explore. We have complicated relationships with ourselves and with others like our relationship with the water inside us and around us.

Ways to show these complicated relationships in our writing are to:

• Write thoughts that conflict with actions
• Describe body language that conflicts with what someone is saying
• Show someone obsessively drawn to something that is detrimental to their health or well-being
• Write two characters on opposite sides of an issue who are attracted to each other
• Write someone who denies their own thoughts and feelings to work with or fit in with a group of people

OctPoWriMo

The saying “actions speak louder than words” says a lot about human nature. We often act against our better judgement, act in ways that contradict our instincts and beliefs. Why do we do that? This is one of those mysteries in life that poetry explores.

Example Poem: Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection_(Aal)

BLESSING THE BOATS

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

~Lucille Clifton

How does this poem evoke anxieties about water? Is this poem about sailing, or something else?

Prompt: Write a blessing poem.

Possible form: Loop poetry

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Twenty 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: