Out on the highway...

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10 March 2016 @ 12:11 pm

First things first: I still have no working ideas of anything to write for Idol this week, so I'm still looking for suggestions from the f-list. The prompts are:

Life is art
Missing the Trees for the Forest
Every silver lining has a cloud
All that is gold does not glitter
Love and loss

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Topic: my workday commute regularly includes freeway time, and the one thing I enjoy about that is the randomness of bizarre things being carried on big rig flatbeds. Today, it was a pair of large metal constructs that looked like some kind of industrial plumbing junction. One still had the dirt on it from being buried. So, I pondered how those might work if they WERE plumbing. Odd-shaped things hidden by tarp are common (what's under there?). One day, pieces of children's amusement park rides were in transit (awesome!), and years ago... what honestly appeared to be gigantic turbine blades being transported one blade at a time. You can't really tell how large the power-generating windmills are from the highway, so maybe those really were individual blades?

Other news: bookwise, I have started The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, and TV-wise I think I'm nearing the end of Season 5 of The Walking Dead. Rick, I am SO disappointed in you this season. Seriously, with the coveting and the rage and the scheming? Ugh. :(

Tags: help me obi-wan-kenobi, me, random, tv, wtf was that?

8 comments | Say what you feel

8 comments —

( 8 comments — Say what you feel )

uselesstinrelic on March 10th, 2016 10:47 pm (UTC)

Have never seen that show! As for ideas, what helps me out to search the prompt, but do it as an image search and see if any images inspire me.
(I did comment that in a green room though so hopefully you didn't already see that cause that's about it for my good tips. That and to just start writing anything relatedto them, a couple sentences each, and see if you can piece together ideas? Though you all have more experience than me at coming up with ideas!

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halfshellvenus on March 10th, 2016 11:46 pm (UTC)

The image search is a neat idea-- I'll give that a try.

Usually, I write out some ideas for how the prompt could be interpreted, and then I try to write one of them and see how it goes. I'm more of a "discovery" writer, so that process tells me whether an idea seems like it could go somewhere.

But these prompts... of the things that come to mind, I'm not finding the inspiration to write any of them!

I hope you're having better luck. :)

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uselesstinrelic on March 11th, 2016 01:02 am (UTC)

I think I did okay and I posted it last night. When I image searched 'all that is gold does not glitter' I kept getting typography and text graphics of the full poem. So I decided to read the poem as if I didn't know the story it came from and imagine a new story for it. At first I was going to try a bit of a fantasy story and made up the back story and started fleshing out the scene and characters and then just decided to stop and cut it way down and make it just like, one paragraph. The sort of thing that hints at a whole story happening but doesn't actually tell it.

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malinaldarose on March 10th, 2016 11:39 pm (UTC)

I read an article online (which I cannot now find) stating that the individual blades of some wind turbines are taller than Buffalo City Hall which is 32 stories. That doesn't seem possible.

Also, either the last time or the time before that I drove from NYS to Michigan, I passed a flatbed carrying pallets of red fire hydrants. That was pretty bizarre.

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halfshellvenus on March 10th, 2016 11:48 pm (UTC)

Wow.

These would have been, at a guess, perhaps 30-50 feet long? So, well within that limit.

I would have liked to see the hydrant display. It would look like a little convention! I'm not above writing stories about things like that. :)

The people who re-interpret things like faucets and electrical outlets as faces, through clever photography? Right up my alley. :)

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desertport on March 15th, 2016 04:14 am (UTC)

How about a story about a forest suddenly missing all its trees? Where did they go? Did someone take them? Did they leave on their own, and if so, WHY?

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halfshellvenus on March 15th, 2016 04:39 am (UTC)

You know, someone actually wrote that for the prompt! The forest lost trees... then changed... then the change rippled outward and even altered people's identities. It was neat!

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desertport on March 15th, 2016 04:49 am (UTC)

You're kidding me! How weird and awesome!

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