The Core of Our Beings

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🔗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.
🖼️I made these banners from my photos and free for commercial use fonts. Feel free to use them in your posts.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Skeletons

Skeletons, like blood, are supposed to stay inside our bodies, so when we see them, they are a sign of death and can be frightening. The skeleton is the core of our body: It’s deepest depth.

You might find some inspiration in the Bone Hall of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Now that we’ve warmed up and gotten into a daily writing rhythm while exploring our senses and scary sensory details, let’s go a little deeper by connecting these sensory details to our personal fears.

Here’s a quick exercise I introduced during April’s NaPoWriMo and AtoZ Challenge this year to identify our deepest fears:

  1. List fifteen things you’re afraid of
  2. Prioritize your list and choose the top five
  3. Start with the number one fear on your list, set a timer for five minutes and answer these questions:
    Where does this fear come from?
    What specific incident is it connected to?
    How does it affect your life?
  4. Now, set your timer for another five minutes and write to the fear directly. Thank it for how it has protected you in the past, but let it know that it is no longer helpful.
  5. Read what you wrote, and ask yourself if this is really your greatest fear, or can you now identify your real fear, something that was lingering underneath.
  6. Repeat the exercise for your newly identified deepest fear, or if you haven’t identified a deeper fear, continue down your list to your next fear.

OctPoWriMo

In poetry, the skeleton of your poem can be its poetic form or shape on the page. It can be the through line of the poem: a mood, a color, a theme, or extended metaphor. It can also be an emotional arc and/or a narrative structure.

Example Poem: “Sleeping with One Eye Open” by Mark Strand from Voetica.

Sleeping With One Eye Open

Unmoved by what the wind does,
The windows
Are not rattled, nor do the various
Areas
Of the house make their usual racket–
Creak at
The joints, trusses, and studs.
Instead,
They are still.
And the maples,
Able
At times to raise havoc,
Evoke
Not a sound from their branches
Clutches.
It’s my night to be rattled,
Saddled
With spooks. Even the half-moon
(Half-man,
Half dark), on the horizon,
Lies on
Its side casting a fishy light
Which alights
On my Floor, lavishly lording
Its morbid
Look over me. Oh I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good, and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird. The shivers
Wash over
Me, shaking my bones, my loose ends
Loosen,
And I lie sleeping with one eye open,
Hoping
That nothing, nothing will happen.
~Mark Strand

How does the structure of this poem help to convey the meaning?

Prompt: Write a poem about a skeleton of any kind. Use sensory details from at least three senses, and a personal experience of one of the fears from your list. Use your line breaks to give your poem an interesting skeleton.

Possible form: Mesostic. The Mesostic was created by John Cage. You may choose to use the Mesostic Poem Generator to generate many different Mesostics until you find your favorite.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Seven 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.

Always Wanting What We Don’t Have

Writober 2025: Day Six Psychic Powers>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

Abstract image featuring vibrant blue and orange patterns resembling flowing water or light reflections.
Psychic Powers by Maria L. Berg 2025

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Psychic Powers

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 6 of Writober Who Controls Our Minds?

OctPoWriMo

If I had a Psychic Power

If once I had the power, it could not be changed
I wouldn’t want to see things that could not be changed.

I wouldn’t want to read minds like movies on screens
Secrets in lies cover beliefs that can’t be changed.

I wouldn’t push my thoughts into others’ minds to
force good behavior because after nothing’s changed.

Never choose to recall it all (though I may have
in my youth): I would go mad when your memories changed.

I’ll choose telekinesis, moving with my mind
stopping crashes, deflecting bullets: paths can change.

I would move matter: heal the lesions, end the pain
with the power of the mind the body has changed.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

At Face Value

This has become one of my favorite ways to interact: meeting new people, making fast friends, then convincing them that it will be thrilling to have our cards read. They’re all a little afraid at first: to be tricked; to not be tricked; to learn something about their future; good or bad. So I volunteer to go first. No one in my group ever goes after me.

I have never met a true psychic, but with the turn of the first card, I can tell if they believe in what they’re doing or they’re faking.

The first card is always the death card. Right there in the center. This gets all sorts of reactions from whoever I brought with me. Then the Devil, crossing over it, as if in opposition. Gasps from behind me. By now the person across from me is usually flushed or pale. They stammer and make excuses, make up all sorts of possible interpretations like death is the change from facing our demons, spinning it to some sort of positive. Next comes The Lovers, and here’s where it’s hard not to laugh. Most of my companions laugh nervously if they haven’t already left the tent. After the Lovers is the Tower burning, the reader’s hand is shaking by now. There’s no eye contact anymore. I have so much fun listening to them trying to spin that one. If only they took things more literally, but instead they go to symbolic extremes. When the Judgement card comes up, even the most confident con-artists suck in their breath. 

So I was exhilarated when I sat down tonight. But the young blond with curls around her face like she had stepped out of the thirties, and business fashion to match, stood in front of a wheel of collected cards of different styles, her head in the center like a bullseye, and stared at me. She didn’t move, arms crossed over her chest, peering down at me as if she could see right through me. My companions silenced and lost their jovial mood. Finally one of them said, “Are you going to do the reading, or what?”

She looked up and blinked several times. “Of course. Welcome.” 

She sat across from me and handed me the cards. I was confused at first, but then she said, “Shuffle.” 

When I was done, she cut the cards, and just above a whisper she said, “I remember you.” 

She placed Death in the center as if it was the card she always put there. “You used to sip tea with my grandmother. She had a special dark root blend.”

She turned over the Devil card and placed it across Death. “And you would laugh and laugh with my mother. She had a dark and sharp sense of humor.”

One of my new companions said, “What’s going on?” Another said, “I don’t know. This is too weird for me,” and like that, my new friends were gone, blending back into the crowd that thought the fair was only rides and games.

She smiled as she placed the Lovers Card. “You skipped along the cliffs with my sister who was always tempting fate.”

She turned over the Tower. “So I must admit. I’m not surprised to see you.”

When she got to Judgement, she didn’t look worried at all. 

I guess I had been tempting fate, playing with fire, rolling the dice, but it had been so long since anyone had seen me, seen the real me, I thought it was fun to taunt the humans. 

“So you want me to call up the Devil and get this party started?” she said. 

“No. I’ll do it. I kind of let things go too long after our little spat.” 

Halloween Photography Challenge

I really enjoyed today’s photoshoot. I cut a paper filter of a radiating circle shape, then cut that shape into wavy strips and layered some back in. I attempted to capture the flow and resistance of psychic energies.

An abstract image featuring vibrant blue and brown ripples, creating a wavy, textured surface that evokes a sense of fluidity and movement.
Through the Barriers by Maria L. Berg 2025

Who Controls Our Minds?

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🔗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.
🖼️I made these banners from my photos and free for commercial use fonts. Feel free to use them in your posts.

🎃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:

Hot Blood & No Reflection

Writober 2025: Day Five Blood>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

A black and white representing a mirror with nothing reflected, capturing a metallic texture and creating an eerie atmosphere.
Vampire in the Mirror by Maria L. Berg 2025

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Blood

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 5 of Writober It’s in Our Blood.

OctPoWriMo

Life Blood

In a sudden and simple slice
our delicate skin splits
every open nerve screams alive
as fresh blood drips, drips, drips

flowing through our thinnest tendrils
squeezed tight under pressure
all of us are born so fragile
barely held together

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Behind Closed Doors

There wasn’t a lot for a kid to do in this old hotel. If Dad had his way, I would never leave our room, but these days he’s either staring at people yelling on the tv or he’s sleeping, so he doesn’t know that I sneak out and roam the upper floors. People stay behind closed doors up there.

The first time I peeked was an accident. Those keyholes are at my eye-level. Some light shining through grabbed my attention and I looked. The room was empty, but I could see the bed, the desk, clothes piled on a chair. It was so different from our room. I found that fascinating. It was like a secret little world revealed to me, like those magic sugar eggs with little bunny worlds inside. Since then, I’ve tried to look in every room.

I’m usually back in our room trying to get Dad to eat something before most people get home, so it’s rare for me to see anyone through the keyhole, so today, when I saw her on top of him on the bed, my first thought was to run, but I froze. Maybe I was scared, or maybe it was because she was so pretty—I had never seen a blond Asian lady before—or maybe she made me think of mom and how much I missed her. Whatever it was, I stayed and watched her.

She leaned over him. I heard a sucking noise and smelled something salty and metallic. I figured they were kissing, but when she sat up, deep red liquid dripped from her lips and chin. She licked her lips. I gasped. She looked over and smiled. Did she see me? She couldn’t have, but it felt like her gaze pierced straight into my heart. My pulse beat hard. I felt it in my neck and my wrists. It felt like my blood was trying to get out and go to her. I heard the man on the bed moan and I ran back to my room.

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s photos, I was thinking about how Vampires are kind of the opposite of Bloody Mary because they don’t show up in mirrors. Yesterday, I tried to capture the fear of seeing a monster in the mirror. Today, I tried to capture the fear of not seeing anything reflected in the mirror, or some kind of anti-reflection.

An abstract image featuring dark patterns with contrasting blue shapes, creating a textured effect reminiscent of reflections and surfaces.
No Longer Reflective by Maria L. Berg 2025

It’s In Our Blood

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🔗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.
🖼️I made these banners from my photos and free for commercial use fonts. Feel free to use them in your posts.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Blood

We need blood moving around inside our bodies to live, so it’s scary to see blood. When we see blood, that means it has escaped its system, and a living creature is nearer to death. Because blood is so necessary for life, it has connotations as a substance that contains our spirit or life-force. This connection between blood and mortality led to beliefs that drinking blood could lead to immortality.

Did you know the first vampire was inspired by a poet? This year I found out that the first published story about a vampire, called “The Vampyre” (1819) by John Polidori, was inspired by the poet Lord Byron. Not only was the story based on a story Lord Byron told as part of a challenge at a party, his charismatic, romantic, and morally-complex personality inspired the character Lord Ruthven the seductive vampire in the story.

You may find some inspiration at the online Blood exhibit at Science Museum.

OctPoWriMo

How do we get under the skin with our poetry? Using word choice to create a mood? Creating a rhythm that makes the heart race? Making shocking statements that make the blood boil? How can you make today’s poem pulse?

Example Poem: “The True Lover” by A. E. Houseman from Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre(Aal)

The True Lover

The lad came to the door at night,
     When lovers crown their vows,
And whistled soft and out of sight
     In shadow of the boughs.

‘I shall not vex you with my face
     Henceforth, my love, for aye;
So take me in your arms a space
     Before the east is grey.

‘When I from hence away am past
     I shall not find a bride,
And you shall be the first and last
      I ever lay beside.’

She heard and went and knew not why;
     Her heart to his she laid;
Light was the air beneath the sky 
     But dark under the shade.

‘Oh do you breathe, lad, that your breast
     Seems not to rise and fall,
And here upon my bosom prest
     There beats no heart at all?’

‘Oh loud, my girl, it once would knock,
     You should have felt it then;
But since for you I stopped the clock
     It never goes again.’

‘Oh lad, what is it, lad that drips
     Wet from your neck on mine?
What is it falling on my lips,
     My lad, that tastes of brine?’

Oh like enough ’tis blood, my dear,
     For when the knife has slit
The throat across from ear to ear
     ‘Twill bleed because of it.’

Under the stars the air was light
     But dark below the boughs,
The still air of the speechless night,
     When lovers crown their vows.

~A. E. Housman

Prompt: Write a poem using blood as a symbol for life, a romantic encounter, and/or death.

Possible Poetic form: Four line stanzas (quatrains) with the rhyme scheme ABAB.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Five 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

Here’s an interesting take on the vampire myth- a vampire ghost:

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:

Some Mirrors

Writober 2025: Day Four Mirrors>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

A dark, abstract image featuring a distorted, menacing face with sharp teeth, highlighted in red and white, resembling a ghostly reflection.
Emergence by Maria L. Berg 2025

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Mirrors

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 4 of Writober Projections of What We Fear in Ourselves.

OctPoWriMo

Why Can’t You Be More Like

Bathroom Mirror, we need to talk
I mean, what can I say?
You’re useful
do a job
but lately
you’ve been dull
lackluster and foggy
steamed up after showers
right when I need you the most
especially when time is short
So really, have you been useful?
And you’re always so judgy:
always pointing out flaws
and imperfections.
Why can’t you be more friendly?
You could try to be nice
once in a while.

Why can’t you
be more like the mirrors
in the upstairs closet?
They’re fun. They barely
reflect me at all behind
all the shapes and colors
of light they bounce
from reflection to reflection.
I could spend all day with them
dancing and taking pictures.
Why don’t you play well with others?
It’s time to stretch yourself
Show me something new
Put on a fresh face
and reflect on what you’ve done.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Final Procedure

When Mrs. Shelstein’s plastic surgeon refused to do any more procedures, she swore she would find someone who would. This turned out to be harder than she thought. Finally, someone mentioned a Doctor Franks on the forever young Discord, and he was looking for new patients for his revolutionary new procedure. She couldn’t believe her luck. 

Doctor Franks’s offices were a little different than the other clinic-style surgeries she had been to. She would have described it as science-laboratory chic, if anyone had ever asked her. She was put off by the smell—chemical flower air fresheners trying to hide decaying flesh—but she quickly forgot about it after the doctor sat her down in front of his swirling disc and said, “You are feeling very relaxed.”

When she woke up, a voice echoed in her mind, “You are your ideal young beauty.” She opened her eyes and saw many reflections of herself seated in a chair surrounded by mirrors. He had done it! Doctor Franks had finally accomplished what no other surgeon had, and with no bandages. She went to touch her face, but her hands were thickly wrapped. “What’s this?”

One of the mirrors opened like a door and Dr. Franks walked in, closing it behind him. “That’s so you won’t do any damage while you heal. It’s your hands touching your face that is the real danger, so instead of wrapping your face, making it so you wouldn’t see your new youth and beauty, I chose to wrap your hands. I can see that you are satisfied with our results?”

Mrs. Shelstein admired her reflection in every mirror. “Oh yes, doctor. You are an artist.”

Doctor Franks opened the mirror-door, and motioned for her to get up. “I’m so glad you think so. There is someone I want you to meet. Be careful standing up. Take your time. Good. Good. He’s right through here.”

The widow Shelstein, confident in her beauty, left the mirrors head held high, and still had to raise her chin to look up at the man before her. His dark, deep-set eyes looked as if they held galaxies of stars, and his chest and muscular arms could hold her and never let her go. She heard that echoing voice in her head again, sounding as if it came from an ancient part of herself, it said, “He’s the man of your dreams. The one you’ve always wanted. You’ll be so happy together.”

“Mrs. Shelstein, I want you to meet Theo. He also received my treatment, and I think you will be perfect for each other. Forever.”

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s photos, I watched the Monstrum Bloody Mary video and made a cut filter trying to capture Bloody Mary in a mirror. While taking my photos, I realized that she might just be the front woman for a whole hoard of monsters waiting in her world for the passage to open when she’s summoned. I used this cool partial color filter in my camera set to red.

A dark and eerie abstract image featuring distorted shapes resembling monstrous faces with glowing red accents.
Mary’s Not Alone by Maria L. Berg 2025

Projections of What We Fear In Ourselves

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🔗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.
🖼️I made these banners from my photos and free for commercial use fonts. Feel free to use them in your posts.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Mirrors

“. . . merely curving a mirror’s surface can plunge a man into an imagined world” ~Umberto Eco Foucault’s Pendulum(Aal)

Mirrors distort images in different ways. This distortion creates a conflict between seeing and believing which causes discomfort. The reflection in a mirror is also reversed, so though you know you are moving your right hand, if you switched places with the you in the mirror, you would be moving your left hand. This becomes even more apparent if we write a word on a piece of paper and hold it up to a mirror.

Mirror-writing, writing letters and words in the reverse direction is common in children between three and seven. “Children grow out of mirror writing, but in some adults it makes an unexpected return. . . .The prototypical adult mirror-writer is a right-hander who loses right-arm motor function following left-hemisphere stroke, being forced to write with the left hand.” ~Robert D. McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala from “Mirror-writing”

But Leonardo da Vinci appeared to write in mirror-writing on purpose. You may be inspired by trying some mirror writing like Leonardo da Vinci with The Museum of Science’s mirror writing activity.

OctPoWriMo

Mirrors symbolize reversals, reflection, and distortions. What is your relationship with mirrors? Can you think of a time that a mirror frightened you? If you slipped through your looking glass, what would your mirrorworld look like?

Example Poem: “To the Mirror” by Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Tony Barnstone) from Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman(Aal)

To the Mirror

Why is it you persist, incessant mirror?
Why duplicate me, to the smallest gesture
of my hand? Why suddenly reflect there
in the shadows? You, uncanny brother,
you are the other me that ancient Greek
spoke of. You’ve watched forever. From a glaze
of old and watery crystal do you gaze
at me? It’s useless to be blind. You seek
me and it’s worse that I can’t see, can’t tell;
that really is your horror, magic thing
who multiplies the cipher of our being
then sucks our blessings into your strange well.
And when I’m dead, you’ll duplicate another,
another, then another and another. . .

~Jorge Luis Borges

Why does the mirror horrify the speaker in this poem?

Prompt: Write your poem as a message to your mirror. What will you ask it? What do you need to tell it? What are the deepest fears that it brings up for you?

Possible form: A Palindrome poem, or mirror poem. This is a poem split along a vertical center where the words on the left are mirrored on the right.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Four 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.

In storytelling, mirroring is a technique of comparing and contrasting your character at the end of the story with your character at the beginning to show how the events of the story have resulted in change.

You may want to take a look at this article, “3 Ways You Can Use Mirroring to Craft a Resolution that Truly Resonates” from Story Embers.

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.

Some music to get us moving:

It Sticks With Me

Writober 2025: Day Three Texture>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

Black and white abstract photograph showing overlapping circular shapes with textures and shadows resembling ghostly silhouettes.
Shadow Play by Maria L. Berg 2025

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Texture

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 3 of Writober Scares Can Get Sticky.

OctPoWriMo

The Shadow Side

Like surprise pitch
on the tree you’re hugging
sticking your fingers together
when you let go.
Like a shiny silver knife
with a strong wood handle
that has dulled
and won’t cut the mustard.
Like the perfect rock
with just the right size and shape
that crumbles to dust
in your hands.
Like a thick knit sweater
that looks so soft
but pokes and scratches
your neck raw.
Like the perfect velvet couch
in the corner at a party
that swallows you, legs flailing
and won’t let you out.
Like the romantic path through the arbor
covered in vibrant fallen leaves
that give way
to a shoe full of mud.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Her Shadow

Ever since Calliope took human form, her shadow had been acting out. Sometimes it would get really long and thin. Other times it was short and fat, just sitting there around her feet. It would lounge on walls and get all rough like bricks. Then on rainy days get all soppy and splash in puddles. It kept copying everything she did, and she was sure it was making faces behind her back. Calliope had forgiven all that: it had been a big adjustment for both of them. But this? Revealing her inner horned form for anyone to see? That was too much. It might be time to cut that shadow loose.

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s images, I picked some dill that had dropped its seeds and dried. I put a few pieces on iridescent plastic and used it as a filter. I also played with the shadows of the wires between the lights.

Shadow Painting by Maria L. Berg 2025

Scares Can Get Sticky

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🔗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.
🖼️I made these banners from my photos and free for commercial use fonts. Feel free to use them in your posts.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Texture

What does fear feel like? It can be ooey, gooey, oozing and dripping, or prickly and sharp, slicing and stabbing. It can be extremely hot, exploding and bursting into flames, or it can be extremely cold, shivers down our spines and goosebumps on our moist skin.

Often textures combine with smells, like putrid mushy rot, or earthy swampy decay; the sharp metallic iron of dripping blood, or the sweet snap of crisp ant armor. There’s an exciting world of texture words to explore, but texture in writing can also mean layering different techniques.

Try describing three or more different sensory perceptions, then a physical reaction, and a contradictory thought. Or you could use sensory imagery from at least three different senses, follow it with a flash of triggered memory, then a conflicting physical sensation, or several conflicting sensations at once.

You may want to look for some textural inspiration at The Museum of Frights from Google Arts & Culture.

OctPoWriMo

Think of all the different textures around you. How many different textures are you touching right now? How do these textures affect your mood, your physical well-being, your thoughts? Did you choose these textures yourself?

What textures do you avoid? What textures scare you? What makes them frightening?

Example Poem: “Web” by Mary Oliver from American Primitive(Aal)

Web

So this is fear.
The dark spider scuttles away
over the underboards.
I watch the blood bead on my skin
and think rapidly:
the last dollar,
the last piece of bread,
lightning sizzling under the door.
Whether it hurts or not
I imagine it does.
I remember a bat caught years ago
in the attic, how he tired
among the swung brooms,
not knowing we would let him go.
I get up to walk, to see if I can.
So this is fear.
The trapdoor
unnails itself; in the dusk
the curtains move
as though the wind had bones.

~Mary Oliver

How does this poem bring textures to mind?

Prompt: What textures frighten you? Choose one or more that brings a clear memory to mind. What rapid thoughts rush in while you’re exploring this tactile memory? Include the textures, rapid thoughts, physical sensations, and the memory in your poem.

Possible form: A Calligram – The calligram is a form of concrete poetry published by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1918. The calligram creates shapes with words. The shapes are as important to the poem as the words. Unlike typed concrete poetry, the calligram uses changes in size and shape of the lettering, and leaves white space in the image.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Three 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.

You may want to take a look at Adding Texture to Your Story by Kara Jorgensen.

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.

Here’s some music to get us moving:

What’s Making That Sound?

Writober 2025: Day Two Sounds>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

Abstract black and white image with digital glitches along the edges featuring blurred lines and patterns, suggesting movement or sound.
Hiding Behind the Light by Maria L. Berg 2025

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Sounds

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 2 of Writober The Scares Are In the Sounds.

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt for Meeting The Bar (MTB) at dVerse Poets Pub is to use a perspective we don’t usually use, and or multiple perspectives. I really like this prompt and thought I would combine it with today’s OctPoWriMo prompt.

Without Power the Night Gets In

After the click and dying whine
of the fire alarm
her own breathing and pulsing
heart filled the sudden
silence of her dark room.
ffft-huh, ffft-huh
ba-dum, ba-dum, bump, bump, bump
the roar of blood and air
But then a whisper not her own
turned her spine to splinters
and she held her breath to hear
what the night might say.
rustle, rustle, crunch, snap
It was right outside her window
tap, scratch, tap
scritch, scrape, scrape
Eee. Skree.
It wanted in. Impatient. Insistent.
She pulled her soft blankets over her lips
Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave, she begged
but her silent prayer was met with
clap, clap. bang, bang
the cupboard doors closing in the hall
tink, plunk, tink
it crawled along the piano keys in the lounge
paff, paff, paff, paff
up the stairs
thud, thud, thud, thud
It plodded along overhead.
Now would be the time to run
to hide, to call for help
but she hollowed in the howling
and as a stone shell listened
for the expected shattering
that never came.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Revelers

I woke up dew-covered and disoriented. Grass tickled and poked my neck and elbows. The sky above me was full of stars, but they were fading, threatened by approaching morning. I must have dozed off while star-gazing.

I heard a whoop then a low hum, sat up and looked over to the thick line of evergreens. Fff-huhh. Fff-huhhh. A whisper at first and then louder like the whole forest was breathing. The hum rose and fell in waves punctuated by whoops and yelps, howls and chirps, getting louder. 

What was coming toward me? I imagined partying teens, or a group of druids. Was it a full moon? Maybe that was the light behind the trees. An equinox? I had no idea what day it was.

The revelers broke from the trees lit as if from an inner light. They wore elaborate crazy costumes. The moaner in front wore a simplistic version of the sad drama mask, a long robe, and held a primitive baton like a marching band leader but with horns and claws stuck to it. He pranced along the path on thin-ankled hooves. Behind him, yelps and whoops came from small, thin big-eyed lizardmen. Or maybe sea monsters because the giant of the group, coming up in the rear was lined with tentacles along each side of a skeletal body, holding a huge dragonesque head with the teeth of an angler fish. 

They smelled strongly of salt, sand and decay like seaweed drying on a beach. Unless I had taken a very wrong turn, we were nowhere near a beach. A tentacle motioned for me to join them, and I thought, That’s friendly. Why not?

I stood and tried to wipe my hands on my pants, but they were just as sticky and damp. I started dancing to their strange song and marching along. Soon I was in the center of the group and they squished in around me. My feet didn’t feel like they touched the ground. I felt the sounds vibrating from inside each of them and their dancing buoyed me like waves. The tentacle wrapped over my shoulder, squeezing my upper arm felt rough, slimy, and squishy. Not like a costume at all. Green light glowed from within their eyes and out their open mouths. 

Where were we going? My mind raced for some clue to explain what might happen next. Was my fate sealed or would I have a chance for escape? Sunlight hit my eyes. I blinked and sneezed. Birdsong announced the morning. I swirled. My hand went through a tentacle and they were gone.

Halloween Photography Challenge

I had so much fun with today’s photoshoot. Ghosts are ephemeral: flighty glimpses and sounds in the night. When I’ve made shapes of ghosts in the past, they turn out like cartoons of children wearing sheets. The only time I’ve captured something I thought was ghostlike, I used pinhole filters (poked small holes in black paper and placed it over my lens). So this morning I started there. I created two pinhole filters: one with small holes and one with larger holes. I actually created a third because I wanted to try something I had never tried before: I poked holes in a piece of iridescent plastic, but that didn’t do much of anything.

I set my digital camera to Rich Black and White and used movement, either I moved while taking the picture, or I zoomed the lens in or out while taking the picture. Then I did the same using the HDR Painting mode. I put on today’s “music to get us moving” and started dancing while I took the pictures.

My photos didn’t capture ghosts in the traditional spirit from the other side sense: I captured the ghost in the machine!!

An abstract image featuring a blend of vibrant blue colors with scattered colorful dots and blurred patterns, creating an ethereal and dreamlike effect, with digital glitches at a diagonal along the left and right edges.
Ghost in the Machine by Maria L. Berg 2025
Abstract image featuring vibrant swirling lights in shades of blue, pink, green, and orange, creating a sense of movement and energy.
Ghost in the Machine 2 by Maria L. Berg 2025

For those of you who are new to my photography, these are unaltered photographs (resized in Microsoft Paint, that’s all), These are digital photographs of string lights in a closet that I call my mirrorworld taken with a Sony alpha 58 DSLR. I call the techniques of creative abstract photography I create and develop Light-forming Photography.