Author Stephen King
I feel that, when I write a flash fiction post on my blog, I briefly sneak through a tiny tear in the fabric of the universe into a small world filled with characters I have created my mind. Sometimes, given the state of reality, I wish I could stay there longer.
Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt.
The object of Paula Light’s Thursday Inspiration prompt is to inspire us “to write something creative, perhaps a poem or a piece of flash fiction.” And most of the time, that works for me. Unfortunately, today is not one of those times.
Paula’s theme today is “written.” That should be easy for bloggers like me because that’s what blogging is all about — creating stories and poems and posts using the written word. But something popped into my head when I read today’s theme and there’s nothing I can do to push it out.
So I’m just going to go with it. So let it be written, so let it be done.
For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill asks us about a word we have to look up. She says, “We all have words we can never spell. Use one of yours in your post and let that word drive your stream of consciousness wherever it goes.”
I used to be an excellent speller in my younger days. But then, as I got older, my brain started to shrink and has now apparently exceeded its maximum word capacity, requiring it to run some diagnostics and to perform a raw data purge. As a result, words that I used to absolutely know how to spell without doubt or hesitation, are sending me 404 Error – Word Not Found messages, forcing me to go to either Google or to dictionary.com figure out how to correctly spell the damn word.
The most recent example of this inability to spell a word that I’ve correctly spelled countless times was the word “aficionado.” I was actually writing an email to my brother-in-law when I typed that word — or at least what I thought was the correct way to spell that word — and that pesky squiggly red line appeared under the word I had typed, a sure sign that my email app was telling me I wasn’t spelling it correctly.
I had typed “officianado.” Then I removed the second “f” and the resulting spelling, “oficianado,” still had that squiggly red line under it. Dammit.
I went to Google and did a search on “oficianado” and this is what I saw:
Of-fucking-course! It’s “aficionado” with an “a” and not an “o” at the beginning. And it’s “cionado” and not “cianado.”
I knew that! Or I used to know that, anyway.
Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts. This week Frank wants to know about the authors and books we like. He asks:
Do you have a favorite author? If so, who and why? If not, why not?
This is tough because it depends upon genre and my reading taste spans a lot of different genres. I like authors who transport me to a different place and/or a different time. Authors like James Clavell or James Michener. For sci-fi Isaac Asimov. Horror: Stephen King. Spy novels: Robert Ludlum. Fantasies: JRR Tolkien. Humor: Dave Barry. Shall I go on?
What was the first book you remember enjoying reading?
What three books best sum up your taste in literature?
Issac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. James Clavell’s Shōgun.
Dr. Tanya is seeking more Blogging Insights from our community of bloggers. She said that she read lots of posts and watched many videos on blogging, most of which advised that selecting a niche is essential for a blog to be a success. A niche means a particular subject or genre. People become expert at writing in a particular form and subject. Today’s question is about stretching your wings and flying beyond your comfort zone.
Do you ever ‘stretch’ (i.e.,expand your horizons) by writing outside your comfort zone? If not, why not?
I really don’t have a specific niche for my blog. My “comfort zone” is essentially whatever occurs to me. Sometimes I write about politics. Sometimes about religion. Sometimes about society and what’s going in my country and the world.
My comfort zone also includes responding to other bloggers’ prompts, be they song prompts, word prompts, or photo prompts, and I use these prompts for writing flash fiction posts. I even generate a few prompts of my own as fodder for other bloggers to use to stimulate their imaginations and creativity.
But Dr. Tanya’s question isn’t about what is inside my comfort zone, it’s about whether or not I stretch myself and wander outside of it. My answer is not often. My comfort zone is prose, yet I have, on a few unfortunate occasions, attempted to write poems — mostly very bad poems. So bad, in fact, that anyone who knows anything about poetry would be hard pressed to even label my feeble, misguided, and failed attempts to venture into writing poems to be poetry.
Does that answer the question?
If not, I have a suggestion
That is for your own protection
So please pay close attention
And organize an intervention
With the very good intention
Of bringing about a cessation
To this unwanted expression
And I will offer my confession
I disabuse myself of an impression
That I have in my possession
The ability and skill to write a poem
