Monsters and Mythical Beings Have To-Do Lists Too—Mundane Tasks for Magical Creatures

Yesterday, I ran an impromptu poetry workshop with people who couldn’t really say no. The exercise was a list of five monsters and mythical creatures and a list of five daily tasks.

Here are some possible prompts taken from those lists:

• Medusa washing her “hair”

• Cyclops getting an eye exam

• Minotaur stuck in traffic

• Grendel eating a midnight snack

• Siren talking to a telemarketer

• A Fury filling out tax forms

• Centaur buying apples at a farmer’s market

• Office poltergeist shredding receipts

• Big Foot taking pet to the groomers

• Demons sharing work gossip

Here is your sample poem (written by my supervisor):

Go Rube Goldberg Yourself—Machine Yourself a Revenge, a New Life, or just a Damn Poem

A Rube Goldberg machine (named after the cartoonist) is the creation of a complex (usually messy and often destructive) chain-of-events to perform the simplest task.

Just look up Rube Goldberg on YouTube and enjoy the obsessively ordered chaos. And of course here is Ok Go’s Rube Goldberg video (thanks, Steve, for the new obsession).

The first prompt is inspired by David Guzman’s “Instructions for Building My Rube Goldberg Machine” in McSweeney’s. Write a poem in which you create a Rube Goldberg machine of revenge, knocking down naysayers like dominoes and launching belittlers into the blue beyond.

For the rest of the essay, click this link.

For the next prompt, again write a Rube Goldberg machine for creating a new life. Perhaps write a poem or story in which you rewire your neural pathways into a glowing smiley face, construct a system of mental pulleys to unload leftover regrets and needless doubts, or build a feedback loop of positive reinforcements in your morning routine. Or maybe you want to describe creating an alter to a dark god out of Legos that takes up a city block and steal your enemies’ shoes (thanks, Twitter, for the best curse I’ve ever heard).

And finally create a poem as if it were a Rube Goldberg machine. Perhaps it is. What is your ending? How do you set up the first line and the subsequent stanzas to get us there?

Ok Go Ghostline Yourself a Poem—Prompts

Blame the Ugly Mug, particularly Steve Ramirez, for my newest obsession: Ok Go. Yes, yes, I am behind the times, out of step, calendar deficient, day unplanner, and time deficient.

For the next prompt, I want you to use the the following line from Ok Go’s song “Upside Down & Inside Out” as a ghostline: “Yeah when you met the new you, did someone die inside?”

Think about all of those former selves or even the phases you went through during your teen years and various periods of your life. Did you have to kill a former to become the current version of yourself? If so, did you feel pity for that self as you murdered it? Was it a violent destruction? A mercy killing?

Or do all of those former selves follow you like a shadow, longer with each passing year as if you are moving through the late afternoon of your own consciousness? Does the weight of all that self history sink you lower to the ground? Is it hard to keep your head up when it is so full of echoes?

Or use one of the other lines from the song as a ghostline:

• “Gravity’s just a habit that you’re pretty sure you can break”

• “So when you met the new you / Were you scared, were you cold, were you kind?”

• “Don’t know where your eyes are but they’re not doing what you said”

For the next prompt, write a conversation among your former and present selves and maybe add a future self too. Will it be an argument, an interrogation or accusation, an explanation, an apology, or advice? What do you wish your former self could tell you? What do you wish you remembered? What advice would you give a past self? Would the knowledge erase your current self as if un-birthing your present consciousness ? Would you share that advice anyway? Or would that death be your intended purpose?

Here is Ok Go’s video for “Upside Down & Inside Out.” Write a poem about being in zero gravity. Try to narrate the video as a sonnet or pantoum. Or write from the perspective of one of the piñatas. Write. Discover what happens.

Reverse a Life, a Death, a Tragedy—Prompts Inspired by Sean Shearer

I know I spend too much of my life retracing steps and looking into the rearview mirror. If I wore cologne, it would be named regret and smell of a struck match, rubbing alcohol and old, water-stained bills.

But the poem “Rewinding an Overdose On a Projector” is achingly beautiful in its attempt to reverse disaster. Thanks to Victoria Chang for sharing it.

For the first prompt, reverse a catastrophe or a mistake. Perhaps describe the bride and groom each sliding the wedding bands off fingers, the bride walking backwards up the aisle, and ushers emptying the church one by one.

For the second prompt, writing a poem using the following verbs from Shearer’s poem: “floats,” “twitch,” “wakes,” “seals,” “pushes,” “fluffs,” “shrinks,” “grows,” “grows,” “rains,” “spill,” and “remains.”

For the next prompt, notice how the lines reverse not only the time sequence, but also the agency: “The wet cotton lifts” and “The water pours into a plastic bottle.” Experiment with changing the receiver and the doer of an action in a poem. What effects does the change create?

For the fourth prompt, use the line “The heart wakes like a handcar pumping faster and faster on its greased tracks” as a ghostline. Remember to use that line to jump off from and then erase it from your poem. Still give credit to the poet though.

What changes if the viewer is looking down rather than up? Write a poem or short story in which directions are reversed, and the reader is kept in suspense until the end or is never certain.

For the last prompt, notice the delicacy of the mold. Describe the un-blooming of this mold and resurrect the fallen tree upon which the mold sprouts. Which is more sacred: the life of the consumed or the consumer? Try to cast the metaphysical in scientific terms. See what the dichotomy creates.

Mad Lib a Meme and Odd Conversations: The What-Were-You-Thinking Prompts

Lately all of my poems have been serious (depressing), and the novel is just a no-go right now, so let’s be silly.

For the first prompt, take the old meme shown below and change the nouns and verbs. This is your chance to be as ridiculous as you have always wanted to.

For the second prompt, choose any poem and mad lib it. Use the antonyms for nouns, adjectives and verbs. See what happens. If you use another poet’s work, make sure you have truly created something of your own if you plan to submit it for publication. This is probably best used for an excercise to jumpstart a workshop or personal writing session.

For the next prompt, personify and write a conversation between the burnt branch and the twig. Are they two selves of the same individual, a parent and child, or master and protege? What happens next in your story?

Or write a poem and use the burnt tree and the new twig to represent the past and the future, outcomes and expectation, 2008 vs 2019, or perhaps again two selves of the same person.

Magic Realism Bot for the End Times—Stolen Prompts about Stealing, Libraries and the End of Time

For the first prompt, write a poem about the end of time using the format of a mathematical word problem. Bonus points if you provide the solution. Or offer a suggestion on who could.

For the next prompt, write a story about the queen’s attempted theft of the amethyst carnation using the pacing and storyline of Ocean’s 8.

For the next prompt, write a poem or short story about this world of libraries. Be sure to explain how the Dewey Decimal System has been applied to the nature and the animal kingdom. Are the oceans kinder under such a classification? How does the platypus fit in a stacked world?

And, finally, write a poem or story from the psychiatrist’s perspective. What would you tell this star (now that the best pun has been taken)?

NaNoWriMo Has Been a NadaNoWriNo

This month has not been productive. Obviously not here but certainly not on the novel. Leaking pipes and dripping ceilings aside, the lack of progress is all self-(un)directed. So if you are working on the challenge, how is it going? Let me know!

For this month, I will focus on fiction prompts (although it’s always a bonus if a poem comes out too). For this prompt, I am borrowing Alan Cheuse’s writing exercise from Naming the World. Cheuse recommends pastiche—or imitating other writers—to help newer writers improve their techniques. He assigns students a famous story such as Checkhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog” and has the student write from the viewpoint of Anna’s husband or another character.

Alan Cheuse

Bonus prompt: Write from the perspective of this lion. WTH did you do to make him look at you like that.

Work Terrors—What Follows You Home into Your Dreams That No Raise Can Put Down!

So the other day I went to the dentist and asked her what kind of workplace nightmares she has—you know, the normal conversations you have with someone you have drooled on for 30 minutes (and apologized for, repeatedly).

“Blood. Lots of Blood,” she replied.

Then she described the true horror: “You know when you are eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds. My nightmares involve spitting out teeth. More and more teeth.”

Yep, her workplace dreams sure beat my forgot-to-wear-pants-hope-the-students-don’t-notice nightmares. Or the recent one in which I brought only a pillow and a notebook to a knife fight. Even in my dreams I am unprepared…

So for your prompt, write a poem or short story about the last nightmare you had. Fill in the gaps where necessary. Color in the blanks. Make them red and dripping, or surreal and disturbing as that cooing baby sun from the Teletubbies.

For added difficulty, create a turn in the story; for the poem, make it a sonnet with the shift coming either at the 9th line (Petrarchan) or at the 13th (Shakespearean).

Good luck!

Bonus prompt: This is your head; now tell us your memories from inside the jar.

NaNoWri Is Coming For You!!! Muhahahahaha

Sorry for the hiatus, my iPad was out of commission and then my discipline was… I will post another Halloween-themed prompt tomorrow, but I wanted to discuss NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month challenge) because it starts this Friday.

The NaNoWriMo challenge is writing 50,000 words of a novel in one month. Recently, the challenge has been expanded to include collections of poems, short stories, memoirs and other genres. Technically, the project is supposed to be a new novel or all new stories/poems/writing, but of course just getting people to write is the point. I have tried twice and once completed the challenge a few years ago. I decided to do it again this year because I need to shift from poetry to fiction for a while.

One of the things I really enjoyed about NaNoWriMo was the community support. The NaNoWriMo site offers tips, tools, online writing buddies, and group writing events. For more information about the challenge and to sign up, go to organization’s website nanowrimo.org

Join me in the all-night slogs and, I hope, the eventual celebration.. Let me know if you plan to register at the NaNoWriMo site, so that we can be buddies.

Tonight! Tonight! Tonight!

Let the Dark Ink anthology reading tattoo your soul!

Barren Magazine—Prompts and Submission information

Barren Magazine’s Issue 13 is open for submissions of poetry, flash fiction, creative nonfiction and photography. The prompts are suggested themes but not restricted to them. For more information on guidelines, click here.

Good luck!

Growing Teeth on the Inside—Vagina Dentata and Other Prompts for the Strong Stomached

For the first prompt, use the picture of the ovarian teratoma to write a poem or short story from the perspective of a tissue that has grown teeth and sentience inside another’s body. Does your narrator feel safe and content within the other, or does the narrator want to chew its way out of its prison? How much does the narrator understand of its world and its own limitations?

For more information on this dermoid cysts and teratomas and its possible relation to the myth of vagina dentata, click here.

For the second prompt, write a variation of a vagina dentata poem. Think of the movie Teeth but with less assault and more bite (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun). For inspiration, here is a poem by the amazing Arminé Iknadossian.

Btw, this poem was published in Moon Tide Press’s Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror. Come out to Goldenest Diner (13030 Goldenwest, Westminster) on October 17th at 7 p.m. to hear more poems from this anthology. Don’t forget to wear your dark side on the outside to compete in the costume contest!

For the final prompt—muhhahahahahaha—make a list of five iconic objects/image of a famous horror or suspense movie and write from that object’s or image’s perspective. What does Freddy’s blade-embedded glove help him keep track of? To-do lists, to-kill lists, multiplication tables? What does the elevator want to carry in its belly in The Shining? Does the elevator see itself as a protector or a villain?

Weekly 150-Word Flash Fiction Competition—Prompt and Contest

Even though this is not horror-themed, I wanted to post this competition for all you flash fiction writers. Here is the link to the publication and submission form.

Chanting Turkeys, Final Countdowns, and a Basement Vortex—Prompts for October

For October all of my prompts will be weird and creepy. Also, I am trying to write more horror poems to jumpstart next month’s NaNoWriMo challenge (National Novel Writing Month).

For the first prompt, write what the turkeys are chanting as they circle a dead cat in the road. Is it a dirge, an elegy, an ode, or maybe a limerick? Perhaps it is the nine-line, countdown poem, the nonet?

For a video of the circling turkeys, click here.

For the next prompt, write a poem on the theme of a countdown to the apocalypse, armageddon, the Rapture, a Nickelback revival, or similar event of wholesale terror and bloodshed using the form nonet—a nine-line poem in which the first line has nine syllables, the second has eight, and so on until the last line with only one syllable. For more information and a sample poem, check out Robert Lee Brewer’s explanation on the Writer’s Digest site.

For the last prompt, write a short story or poem based on the photo below. What came through the vortex and why? What happened next?

Good luck!

I aspire to be Magic Realism Bot—Prompts

Twitter can be a joy—full of pet pics, shade-throwing dictionaries, Chuck Wendig, Sappho Bot and of course Magic Realism Bot. I simply cannot outdo Magic Realism Bot, so I will acknowledge my defeat and steal its prompts….

If the witch’s cauldron doesn’t jumpstart any ideas, let’s play around a bit. If life is a bowl of cherries of alternate timelines, you have chosen to eat the one containing the pit of hell with undercooked eggs and Nickelback on an endless loop. Describe.

O you escape that pit only to be faced with the same bowl of cherries: the next one contains the Garden of Eden with carnivorous daisies and deceitful tulips, but the dragonflies…they are tiny fire-breathing terrors and you have invaded their tettitory. What is plan of escape and your weapon of choice?

Next prompt: Who literally killed poetry, and what were the motive and the weapon? Be alliterative detective.

OMG, I cannot even blame the wine. I didn’t have any…

Sooo sorry.

October 17th—Dark Ink Anthology Reading and Costume Contest: Be There and Be Scared!

Join me for the reading and Halloween costume contest on October 17th at the Goldenwest Diner in Westminster where I and others will be reading poems from Moon Tide Press’s horror-inspired anthology.

Frankenstein’s monster, Zombies, TWO vagina dentata poems, monsters GalORE—how could you possibly escape this fright night! Bring your mummy or a date!

Prompts Inspired by Inger Christensen

Last month was the annual Sealey Challenge, a challenge began by the amazing poet Nicole Sealey to read a poetry chapbook or full collection every day for the month of August. I did not, alas, complete the challenge and am behind on both my reading and writing…and cleaning…and laundry, etc., etc..

As part of the challenge, (another) amazing poet Dana Levin posted poems from Inger Christenson’s ALPHABET (translated to English by Susanna Nied). I was first introduced to Christensen’s poetry in the Poetry Lab workshop run by Danielle Mitchell. ALPHABET is one of my all-time favorites.

For the first prompt, ask yourself what if the dreams you had in the night stained your skin the next morning. Describe the colors, the patterns, and images. What faces would tattoo your chest and hands? Would you attempt to cover them up or do as Christensen writes, “dreamers go around openly now / with dreams out on their skin”?

One of the most fascinating aspects of ALPHABET is that it is arranged by the Fibonacci sequence. For the next prompt, write a poem that’s first line is …… (Full diclosure, I got this prompt idea from Poetry Lab)

For the third prompt, write a short poem that juxtaposes the natural, the beautiful, the toxic and the man-made. How do certain objects, or even ideas, blend these different categories? What remains distinct? For inspiration, read the excerpt below:

And, as always, credit the poet for your inspiration and best of luck!

A Dearth of Optimism—Prompts Inspired by Marie Howe

So the last couple of weeks have not been productive ones, but I hope to return to regular postings and even make up for the previous lack (and to expect to do so…in spite of today’s blog title).

These next prompts are inspired by Marie Howe and by my own preference for rather depressing poems. This poem caught me in the throat—how I prefer the landing and subsequent damage and suffering to the fall itself.

For the next prompt, make Hell a kind of sanctuary for yourself. What initial comfort do you find there? The company? The lack of it? Does even the flat comfort of despair burn away?

Or write about Hell as truly a place of torment, but after the surprise has faded. Put in all the boiling lakes, demon pitchforks and punishments, but include a sense of boredom, perhaps even a kind of comfort in the routine disembowelment. After the 10,000th lash, does the sting fade? Does regret?

For the next prompt, use the line “I thought it was the worst, thought nothing worse could come” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line after you have finished writing the poem and credit Howe for her inspiration.

For the last prompt, take the poem and choose the antonym for each noun and, if possible, as many of the verbs too. What happens in the poem? This is an exercise only. Make sure you are not paraphrasing the original too closely if you plan to submit it for publication.

Prompts Inspired by Heather Derr-Smith

I am reading Tongue Screw by Heather Derr-Smith and awed by the sharp-edged power of her images. I first discovered her poetry on Twitter and deeply admire her work. She has two other collections The Bride Minaret, 2008, and Thrust, 2017.

For the first prompt, use the last line from her poem “Wilson’s Promenade, Sarajevo, and Leonard Cohen” as a ghost line: “Our hearts all galloping resurrection hooves.” Here is the link for the full poem. I particularly love the image “a blur of Lazarus bandages unraveling[.]”

For the second prompt, redraw the map of the world onto a body, a living one or a carcass as the poet does onto the “sutures of a dead wolf’s skull” in the poem “Tracking” pasted below.

What changes when we shift the continent of Europe onto a field mouse, Antarctica onto a fallen leaf, the Southern Hemisphere on a child’s upraised palm. What shrinks into insignificance? What is magnified? If you wish to think more of perspective and how inaccurate the Mercator map is, look at the site thetruesize.com.

For a third prompt, ask yourself what would you find of yourself within the infinite. An endless vortex of regret, similar to Jupiter’s eye? A somersaulting childlike wonder? The tide’s endless grasping and pushing?

This Wednesday, September 4th, at the Ugly Mug—Poetry Reading and Fundraiser for RAICES!

Poets HanaLena Fennel and Ra Avis will offer their powerful voices and unique insights to support the critical work of RAICES this Wednesday for the Two Idiots Peddling Poetry reading series at the Ugly Mug. Proceeds from the purchase of their poetry books as well as poetry collections donated by Moon Tide Press and artwork by local artists will be donated to RAICES.

The reading starts at 8:00. Open mic signup begins at 7:45. The Ugly Mug is located at 261 N. Glassell St in Orange. Parking is available on nearby side streets and parking lots. The $3 cover charge reimburses the venue for the reading.

Below is the press release for the poetry feature and open mic event. Click here for event and author links.

HanaLena Fennel (left) and Ra Avis (right)