I have been bad. Not putting up a new prompt, not even finishing my own assignment for last week. Why do I think of it as an assignment? I treat writing like an onerous task that I dread but the truth is the process is fun. I like to write but I don’t know what to do with it once I’m done so I avoid the act. As far as I know writing a poem or a short story will not give you a hangover, give you a std, or get you pregnant. Pleasure without consequence except it might suck and often does. I am a cliché generating machine, a fountain of tropes and worn out similes. So I don’t write at all because lack of practice does in fact make perfect- perfect nothing. Practice, on the other hand, might only make passable.
So I’m not going to try. But I’m also not going to avoid. Avoidance takes effort too. Before I have time to think about it I’m going to give myself two minutes to write like Shakespeare and three minutes to write whatever comes after Shakespeare. Not cut and paste Shakespeare but copy the words one letter at a time.
Wednesday Writing Prompt (on Saturday)
If you want to play too you can use the lines from Macbeth below, or any other short snippet of something you admire. Copy it by hand or with the keyboard but write the words yourself and then keep going for a few more minutes with your own combination of words. And then stop. Take a drink of water, have a look around. Still alive? Good. The writing didn’t kill me either. Now, what the heck, get back to it and write just a little bit more.
I’ve posted my ramblings (and Shakespeare’s) in the comments below.
And in keeping with my mood of late here’s a cocktail. A little sunny, a little bitter, a little bubbly.
Satsuma Bitter Cocktail
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 ounces Campari or Luxardo Bitter Liqueur
- 3 ounces fresh squeezed satsuma or tangerine juice
- 1/2 ounce seltzer or ginger ale
Instructions
- shake juice and bitters together with ice until cold and frothy.
- strain into a martini glass
- top with seltzer or ginger ale
Notes
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
–MacBeth Act 5 Scene 5
She should have died hereafter; there would have been time for such a word. TOmorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then it is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
And into nothing it will return. A fat man playing ukelele– the music small like the ocean and large like the sun, floating like a sphere. I am irritated by everything because I am irritated by myself. I cannot hear the music only the shuffle and moan of other people.
Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
I have been trying to fill up the darkness with food, push out tears with wine but nothing leaves. All of it is stuck inside, the sadness and the wine, the cookies, and the shadows. All of it jumbled inside my organs and the other bits of me that make me more than a candle, more than a cup, more than the sky and just as blue. But not really blue. I am not really blue. I am just layer upon layer of nothing giving the illusion of blue.