Prompts for Blast 1

Zulu
Your eyes are my weather report
Winter in another country
We unmade love
We have visited such a man
Was that so terrible?
This life, this life!
This is where I want to live
There is a boy I know
The time of our songs and young men's throats
The speed of light is quite quick
The Board of Directors
Slow-roasted leg of lamb, fresh mint, sugar, vinegar
Slings and arrows
Rewinding the tape
Paining with stuff like toothpaste
Once, when I was in Belfast
November
Love, just for the sake of it.
Like one or other silver bell
Keep rowing
It is so lavish
Inside the wire, her heart outside
I loved her, she was quietly shop-soiled
HOT!
He suffers the enormous agonies of love
Grab every third one
Every time I catch a balloon
Dogs!
Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!
As I drown I will consider colours
Apples! Apples!
Air-Pocket
A beautiful blue

Zane Grey

Thursday Prompts
(courtesy of Zane Grey, but wiggled)


A friendship that's offensive to your bishop
A peculiar quick movement
A wiving Mormon!
As if I were a rustler
Because I order it.
Coming out of the sage
Deny that or things will be grim
Dust drifted from under the cottonwoods
Fetch him, even if you have to rope him
Gentile
Halting in his slow walk
He has roused the enmity of the people
He stepped forward, partly concealing the man
Her house and seven thousand head.
I am not so much against that
I owe him my eternal gratitude
No welcome was in his greeting
A fine horse
Noise broke the afternoon quiet
Opposing the one, fighting the other
Quiet pastoral days
Rioting blood in his neck
Shaggy, dusty horses
She owned all the land and most of the cottages
Something deep and sinister
The blue flame of defiance
The churchmen were coming
The guarded walk of a man who took no chances
The lean, sun-browned riders
The lengthening light of afternoon
The light in his face
A good name in the cottonwoods
The long habits of obedience
The low swell of the prairie
The old stone house
The ragged clothes of an outcast
The sharp clip-clop of iron-clad hoofs
The water that was the village
The wild purple
There might ride a fearless man
There were seven, their leader called Tull
Thoughtful and almost sad
Thousands of cattle
A horseman silhouetted against the sky
Two black-butted guns
Unobserved until close at hand
We have reasoned with you.
Wearing black leather
With dreamy and troubled eyes
You hound me.

2300 Prompts

01 The route in emergencies
02 An eel I think
03 I would say that there are people that don't
04 A bit difficult to watch
05 Steam from their nostrils, but finally we stop
06 A Royal Ship
07 Two or three rooms, an entire family
08 Lift the spirit in difficult times
09 Continue, or start again, I don't mind
10 Let's debate it
11 The horses eager to drink
12 Conditions were pretty grim
13 It was not many feet from the door to the barn
14 Not no, at least not quite
15 There wasn't the pill then, and men didn't like condoms
16 A kind of dark ability
17 The language was strange
18 I hasten to add I wasn't there
19 A time of high employment, good wages
20 She closed it after him and slid across the bolt
21 Looking at the Night Sky
22 Humour yes, but suffering
23 How expensive will it be?
24 Things have moved on, I'd say

21;30 Flash Blast Session

01 It's a pretty sort of disease
02 Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
03 Blenkinsop & Brown, Solicitors of a kind
04 Which wine, or should it be champagne?
05 Twenty-One Today!
06 Give me funny
07 Gold and Silver
08 Nothing here moves, nothing changes
09 Crisp white sheets, cocoa
10 He took his fear in his hand and chucked it
11 Like Christmas ornaments
12 Happy
13 We could drive across the state and stare at waterfalls
14 Yes! Yes! Yes!
15 Let's barricade the doors and fuck like bunnies
16 How Mam tucked me in so tight, so tight, so delicious
17 Glitter
18 I won't be good to start but I do learn quickly
19 Something light like chicken
20 Until we're sore with it and need cream
21 Pillows fluffed, and aerosol
22 I like how your face is lit, a light inside
23 Candles lit, it seems to change the mood
24 I love your elbows and your knees


Compressed in the moment of death

Those not allowed to die

Arms at his side, he fell

20:15 Third Prompt Set

20:15 (16 Jan) Third set of Flash Blast Prompts



01 The moon speaks, he listens

02 Sea creatures crawling, still alive

03 He close the lid, a firm click

04 Khaki

05 Twice a day I went there; like a priest

06 And two other things

07 The sounds of the island coming to rest

08 I am the thread that holds his sword

09 All day I waited, shifting on my feet

10 A negro cleaning shoes

11 It was morning or was evening

12 Blinded by rain

13 She says she's meeting Diana

14 I doubt I will ever speak

15 Stones, green with slime and a memory

16 They say a poet drown near here

17 NURSE

18 Tides and moons, the weight of almanacs

19 Blacker

20 I count the stripes not caring for the stars

21 Heavy

22 A heartbeat in the pool, breath in water

23 A great expanse of muscle

24 Calvary

Monday Blast II

1 Other than that, a pleasant cruise

2 Twins: Alike but not alike

3 Reading the Daily Mail

4 Martin in Windsor

5 We would like to hear your experiences

6 Strictly on form

7 Yes of course they fuck you up

8 He spent a week in August, Bridlington

9 A bucket full of god-ends

10 A thousand and seven copies of "Health & Efficiency"

11 Flowered curtains faded and frayed

12 His ears stuffed with cotton-wool

13 I was late getting away

14 She stole an ice-cream van and ran.

15 Outside, a long thin building-plot

16 In the interest of those less fortunate

17 A tiny PING!

18 Perhaps he deserved more. He didn't deserve that

19 Men with fat leather belts

20 Nothing like that would ever happen here

21 He came out even

22 Four Aways, Nine homes, forget the Treble-Chance

23 His bed, his chair, the miserable bulb

24 This is how we measure lives, or how they shape

Monday Blast Prompt-Set I (17:45)

An arresting face, perfectly symmetrical
An empty rocker on a porch that creaks at night
And invite the queen
Blue sky to the south but elsewhere dark
Flesh Fish and Wine
Gone With the Wind
He takes the breadknife and smiles
I am sick of waiting to die!
I cannot describe his eyes
I drill a hole in the mountain and then
I should have stood up and said it was me
Late at night, secretly eating
I think of you again, I just can't help it
Marching songs and other such tricks
In less than an hour, when this is over
Like a Russian shot-putter
Long grey hair to his shoulder
Of twisted trees and pain
Philip can come too, anyone
She had her mother's delicacy but her father's acid wit
She was not beautiful but we thought she was
She was under no illusions about him
So he laid siege to her, for however long it took
Some people think I can fly
Sweet memories, occasionally real
The boy is on a bike, the hill is steep
The dog emaciated
The heroism of tiny mammals
The teacher repeats it
Two fingers
We'll spend it all in one extravaganza
What about your God now?
Write 100 times...
A man stood swaying outside a decrepit restaurant
A ripe peach
A room stinking of excrement
We decide to have a party
The children won't come down
The sweet flesh of a baby pig
Why hadn't you thought of this before?

1-2-3 GO!!

15 Minute Warning

First Flash of Monday Night's BC Flash-Blast in 15 Minutes

Come and join us in BC for an evening

It'll be a blast

(Boom-Boom)

Sunday Prompts II

A strange experience on an aeroplane
After, Tom and the boys at the gate
Are you interested in playing basketball?
Blood Donation session
Happy Write-Day!
He had become a socialist
He took the remark as an invitation
I caught her eye, and knew she was pregnant
I closed my eyes and held on
I felt so terribly, terribly guilty
I found myself praying to a God
I have been so afraid of dying
I try to make my peace
I was on my way to Denver
It was very physical, like all my body felt it
Just let the baby live, let it live
On Lower Farm
Perhaps a tyre would burst
Private & Confidential
Professional to the end
She did not seem awkward
She held in all but one tear
Sometimes, in return she would tell about herself
The Beauty Treatment
The Egyptian Lottery
The Lion King
The steward had been pretty
This might, or might not be the end
We would be his assistants

Sunday Prompts I

Waiting for the evening

NUTMEG

She rises from her dressing table

BLOSSOM

One eye a black line, one eye undone

VINEGAR

Afternoon crosses the street

ZANZIBAR

Gramophone

Round About a Pound a Week

The buzz of a fly

Perfuming sliding down a wall

Renaissance

A core of light, fading

Making Cabbage Soup

The sighs, the voices

Chaotic Angels

The Best Double-Glazing!!

Black Rain

This Week, for Three Days Only!

Please note that it may be necessary to -

Burning Down the House

In Parenthesis

On the Road

The Letters of Ted Hughes

Friday 13th Prompts

PROMPTS, FRIDAY 13TH JANUARY

Mam, hello, is it all right if me and Cathy?
Or seeing children die, pretend it's all a laugh
Second, distract the women
Some buyers do not know their books
The first time it went in
The goldfish is guilty by association
They are printing low-fat books
They have taken him for questioning
This night is different, smell!
This particular monkey is ironic
This train, that night, a man with a knife
When happy I will teach you how to sing
When sad I will make you cut your wrists
You can slit the throats of guards, that's fairly easy
You will stumble and fall skywards never landing
A girl on the telly with two pussies
A rubber ball, bouncing, step after step after step
And bees enraged attack and you refuse to hurt
Archangel, Cornelius, Gage
At the lock gates, fish so tight the water's silver
But know the cover and regurgitate the blurb
Finally, the dogs quiet down
First, pacify the dogs
God decides who floats
Have heard a lot of rumours, and some feels true
I am the bug that will eat you alive
I am the library virus
I am trying to fly and failing badly
I drank the North and ate the East but left the South for later
I have made a pair of trousers from a bin-bag
I hide under adverbs and linger in your shades
I was once a piston-engine, but now I am a jet
I will send the boys around
I will still know you when you think you've found the exit
I would like to shit like a three-toed sloth
I'm from the comprehensive down the road
If on a summer's day, this bloke
It was sweet and light and warm
It was the cat although the dog is implicated
Leave if you must, but some of us are staying
Let's go for a lighter tone. Laugh!
Like, say, closing our eyes and pushing in an arm

Thursday Prompts

18 Years old and well over six feet
A disagreeable experience
A great deal has happened one way or another
A great deal of ceremonial undressing
A true treasure
Barely tuppence
Bobby worked there in a small office
Bread is staple
But the precise circumstances are unknown
By writers, speakers, preachers
cross examinations and undercurrents
From different tribes
He said I didn't understand the blacks
I am having a nice time at the zoo
I cannot bear to send it to you
I dream of houses falling down
I loved Denis
I wish you lived closer
Peace, Space
Perhaps it will be as well here to repeat my statement
Seven children born and six survive
Suburban gardens and straight white paths
The enmity was ancient and entrenched
The experienced housewives fare better
The house was visited in July
The Inland Revenue
The remarkable thing about these budgets
There was a president and a king
They sometimes fail to pay the rent
Virtually dead, but not
Voodoo is just a part of it
Was it like that for you?
We are finally in Devon
What an insane thought!
When it comes to the pinch
When the man is at home
With a scraping of margarine and jam
I'm hoping Frank will take me on
I'm sending you every thing I've written
If he is a sober, steady man
It is cheap and they appear to like it
It was like any other Sunday in the capital
Last year was a sort of death march
Meat brought up for the men
Obviously, it differs between families

Wednesday Prompts

I have no great news, which is bad news
A swish of air
Anything is possible
Are you still looting?
No, considerably thinner.
as the fruit drops from the tree
before that happens
But for now, yes, there is wire
but it sounds like a sigh
Crack the whip, darling
Did you expect less of a reaction?
During the time I have been writing this letter
Every now and then
Everything is bare
Frighteningly berserk
He may have gone by the name Cinch or Finch
I have been counting the sighs
I have heard the soft sound
I listen for that falling
If it gets any bigger it will start eating men
And through the leaves
If this doesn't reach you in Caracas, they have moved Venezuela
In the back yard
It has still not been decided
It may not be a sigh
My wrists are sore!
of an apple hitting the earth
Pa is thinking of buying a Bugatti
Pretty conventional all told
Since I started to write to you there have been eighteen
The apples are mostly green and wormy
The apples have been falling to the ground
There is a gasp
There may be others, we don't know yet
though it does not reflect my mood
Though it has little to do with me
Translated from Latin and Greek
We do not spray the tree
We would prefer an open society
Writing a sentence

Boot Camp Open Flash Blast Tonight

Why not join us at BC tonight for a "Flash Blast" where prompts are posted at

17:45
19:00
20:15
21:30
22:45
00:00

Each session of 75 minutes we attempt to write a flash or story, or sometimes a poem

It's a great way of unblocking, of discovering stories
and DOZENS have gone on to win comps.

More Monday Prompts

We need to know that you are our sort of person

Yellow, and a dull green

A PPE at Oxford, nothing else

An odd impression of deliberate meanness

And a gold tooth

And once, on No-Name Beach, you remember?

And wanted pots and pans and ladles

Dwarf Bitches

Everyone says beyond is freedom

Fish and Stones

For 73 days, a sort of light

Going dancing in Regent's Park

He had a red umbrella

How the fish came out of the dark and over us?

I came back home yesterday, running from something

I failed in my bid to be a postman

I have considered living in Finland for the dark

I once met a man from Nigeria

I stroke my father's head

It is all, in an instant, mud

Or watching bad football in Crewe

The black pig of loneliness

They say tortoises are proud

This depresses me still

We know how streams come together but not what splits them

We once drove a kayak through waves

We swam with turtles, remember?

You are leaving the official zone without papers

You asked for paper and then matches

You ran in and out as if you were checking things

2025-012 More Prompts

Mouthwash

Tom is in a crowded place

The Mistress

Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet, Watch

The Man Who Learned to Love America

Thinking in Slow-Motion

When the pain just never stops

Blacker than that

A pretty good touch

Moisturising Cream

Probably not enough

Tonight at six, then

A dead mouse or something

What the earth looks like from here

The Dead

Which K to remove

Cat TV

Why paint peels, why wood warps

You can be too tired to get angry

Soho

There are dark rooms and dark halls and moments of light

It is her smoking hour

To turn the page and never re-read

Or read their dispatches

Jenkins said he could do it, Sir. He ran for Eton!

Muslin

Sweets that look like little pigs

Blackjacks

Wenches sashaying, boys on bridges

Boats

2012-024 More prompts!

Yet more prompts courtesy of
Gizmodo,
D H Lawrence and
Alex Keegan


Come on, impress me. Write something publishable usuing some, all or most of these



A pale octopus
According to project leader Professor Alex Rogers
And the British Antarctic Survey
Anemones, predatory sea stars with seven arms
Are thriving in the rich chemicals ejected by the vents:
At whatever hour he retires to the privy
Creeping on top of each other,
Entire colonies of Yeti crabs,
Found nowhere else on the planet
Has revealed a hot, dark, ‘lost world'
have discovered a "lost world"
Hydrothermal vents are home to animals
In such large numbers.
in the East Scotia Ridge.
In the Southern Ocean near Antarctica,
It all seems utterly senseless and pointless
It was part of his very being
John Silver who got high in the police force
Nearly 7,874 feet (2,400 meters) under the surface of the Ocean.
Other men meant nothing to her
Oxford University's Department of Zoology
Packed with unknown species.
Researchers used a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)
Scientists from the University of Oxford
So many never before seen species
Straight out of a Jules Verne's novel
Such as hydrogen sulphide.
That can reach up to 719 degrees Fahrenheit (382 degrees Celsius).
That Irishman who wrote about stars
The first survey of these particular vents
The hopelessness of the affair
The National Oceanography Centre,
The researchers were amazed to find
The whole point about your sexual problems
The world is supposed to be full of possibilities
There are plenty more fish in the sea
There were occasional small eruptions of hope
These alien-looking white creatures
They are also surprised they didn't find any tubeworms or mussels
They discovered an amazing new world
They get their energy from breaking down chemicals
This discovery is amazing,
Thriving with unknown species under Antarctica,
To explore the depths of the East Scotia Ridge
Tommy Helf who had stayed in the army
Typically detected around hydrothermal vents
University of Southampton
Were found, piling on top of the vents,
Where communities of previously unknown marine organisms thrive.
Whether be a mackerel or a herring
Which is full of hydrothermal vents

2012-023

A week later I drove north with my brothers

Too many eyes

You look better than a week ago

Cousins I had forgotten, Aunts, Uncles

We gave praise, mumbling

We are still running, still missing the train

There is nothing in the centre, nothing anywhere

I climbed through a window

I am frightened by ladders and locks

A hand in my pocket

She gave me directions

You had one last wish, a fair-ride

Tomorrow will be tough

It's never easy. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way

The room was lined with knives and other instruments

and pickled hands and feet and other men's wives

Greasy slope

The Cabin

We looked at each other, wondering about germs

A servant or a thief, this time

Not one ever missing, not one reported

I am the house you were born in

I am the blanket which covered you

Then you all left me and went traveling

2012-022 Prompts for Whenever

As sharp as a candle

We can listen to the sweet music of a good death

We cannot sustain it

His face gleaming as only a child's can

A 7-tin 6-Pack

Not who is best, but who can serve us best

I smell burgers

Alternatively you may send a cheque

Bring-g-g!

Let's stay in the background and just watch

The habit of memory propels us

BALL

We can never really know what it will be like

JESUS

The months, the years, the days, all wobbling

MUG

At the centre, where it spins less

PIN

Light flows throughout

A kind of cheese

I am full of love. So?

Whatever is said, it will not pacify

RED

I am fully supportive of the manager

Gabardine

And the dog flops down between us and sleeps

I will heal

After making love, I thought I heard footsteps

2012-021 Even More Tuesday Prompts

A pot of begonias

A shirt made of loathsome stuff

The sufferings of small boys

My ancestors in hovels and theirs in caves

A smoky fire, but warm enough

And adults mostly saints

And found too often in Welsh towns or perhaps Durham

As big as a mountain

Beyond the cottage garden

Coracles on the clear river

The cough and croup

Everlastingly green

From the open window

Good sweat like a badge

I caught a fleeting glimpse of someone back from a window

I listened to snatches of song

I paused on my way to market

I shrank and was six again, in flannel

It was an old, vaguely familiar song

It would go ill with us

Luxurious treatment.

Milk-churns by the million

More cows than I remembered

My mother's red hands

My shirt ruined and me not much better

Not where, but within the reach of my upbringing

Removing the irritants of domestic life

Renowned for warmth and endurance

Sacred beasts

She shook out a duster

Sometimes bringing forgetfulness

Tables of poultry, farm butters and rough bread

The ache and tone of melancholy

The causes of this are deep and dense and permanent

The town I was visiting

The unsealing of a past

This July morning

Those amiably blossomed wives

Thrashing rain

To look at it another way

To safeguard us from bronchitis

Tweeds and bright shawls

Untrained and effortless

Unworried women at the teat on three-legged stools

Winter Sundays come back at me

2012-020 More Tuesday Prompts

A brief, fruitless search

A front-porch conversation

A sort of oblong blur

After the relatives had gone

Atkinson, that critic from New York

But now I had this expert before me

Carrying their inane notions

Coloured light played on his face

For a walk through the neighbourhood

Glanced past me at the windows

Growing grimmer by the minute

He asked if we had any questions

He pursed his lips

Her mother would probably collapse with guilt

I eagerly asked what he meant

I have a duty to tell you

I saw them now as victims

I think we had better conclude now

It oppressed both of us

Later that evening

Marriages such as these never last

Mary and I escaped

Mary led me to the priest's office

Negroes walking

Putting me through all this

She apologised

She seemed grim and daunted

Some touch of the Church's admonitions

The ban on birth control

The Church required of them

The pretense we had to play out

The unremitting heat of the night

Their decorum, their subservience

This mysterious entity

We can take this up again the next time we meet

He did not know the Holy Ghost

His eyes flickered with resentment

We could end up as friends

We set upon marriage

A desiccation of spirit

A new surprise each day

We took instruction

2012-019 Prompts for Tuesday

Amid the usual distractions.
And as hard to break
With their stone stares
There was no future and no past.
As light longs for dark and dark for light.
Mysterious as sexuality
We had come out of two different climates
At first with curiosity,
At night, we were each, I think...
Their faint but confident world-containing smiles,
By our opposites
Drawn into far lengthier talks
Finding the presence of the other difficult
Gradually with the hope of being transformed
If we had been ably to move freely
In Cambodia,
In each stood an image
It was obviously a wrong fit,
Looking out over the sparkling city
many years later
Marilyn could hardly peek out of her hotel room door
of those evenings
on which we could walk at ease together.
or from an angle that drew us on,
Our connection seemed about to vanish,
seen full face but only obscurely
Since I was married
They could not correspond.
That could not yet be turned
The temples of Angkor Wat
The bond of shared silences,
The relief sculptures of crowned goddesses
There seemed a dark carpet of wordless being
To tear away from the dream.
We spent much of the time alone together,
Where the newness of life seemed alive round us
Without being photographed
Would bring back to me the silent tumult

2012-017 More Monday Prompts

First you gets a sunny day, then you gets a girl

All the fun of the fair

A pocket full of pennies

An apple, bread and cheeze

Mebs some bread and margarine sprinkle it with sugar

Your bestest friends and all the one for arlies or fer arrers

Flying cronks and brakeless bikes and jumping on the bus

Jist running round to Dickens Drive and back again like lightnin'

And smelling dad all oil and stuff coming up the woods

A day in Barry Island, and fish and chips

The Damn Busters, Cockleshell Heroes, They Who Dared

Georgie Williams' Bayonet

To touch Susan Gibbons

In a tent. Oh Carol!

Tommy Steele bangs all these saucepans.

Teddy Boys and razors, kids from Pill

That thing goes over the river

Mirrors and little yous forever

A boy without a Mam, rulers, slaps

Pennies for the Black Babies

Carols

In Nominay ate Fillyay Santi

EJOTY

But not football

Mr Daley

2012-017 Prompts for Monday (II)

He will arise and go up with the pulpit

His heart was filled with the glory of Sion

And he ran this way and that way

And that which he had done.

At the first sound of the Trumpet

Ellen died and her son bound her with sacks

Ellen Pugh was without a name in Sion.

For he too shall be buried in the field

Grieved that his well was not large

And he will warn the Big Man

He built a hedge on all sides of it

Then he became frightened

He buried her in the field.

He went to the owner of the field and bought the field

His manner was humble.

In his confusion he told everyone

Lias Carpenter heard his sayings

Moreover he raised a pulpit of wood

Near the place under which Ellen lies;

On the Sabbath his face was habited in a religious smile

So that none could trespass in it.

That which his mother had said to him

There was a man whose piety was an adage,

Evan viewed his possessions

So much more would I be with machinery

Joking you are indeed

Evan governed his anger

Having done all that he stood at the end of the fence

Great is the havoc from these crows

Here is a nice stone and costly

2012-016 Monday's Prompts (With a Secret Twist)

Monday's Prompts (with a secret twist)

Hundreds would come
All over wales.
An angel in spotlight,
And the money I'd earn from giving such exhibitions
I saw the moon
And watch me, thousands, even, including Kathleen Parry.
As if a fellow-diver,
Below it, a procession of grey clouds
I would give exhibitions
By going on a newspaper round this August
How she would applaud; how everyone would.
I could earn money
I couldn't somersault or fly,
I knew with the certainty of revelation:
I looked up at the sky
I would pass on to my mother.
Like the Figure-of-Eight at Porthcawl.
Loop-the-loop and fly-dive
Michael O'Brien in my class,
Modestly, I would listen to their eulogies,
Cardiff murderers
Moving fast in the opposite direction.
Racing one way and,
Someone up there,
That white, clown-faced boy who always came late,
Then I knew what I had to do,
Was about to swallow-dive.
To earn a golden sovereign
Why, if I could somersault
Suddenly, I felt strangely happy.
I ran faster over the half-dry pavements
Money in their socks

An Experience: January 1st 2012

When I am generating prompts I often open a poetry book and browse haphazardly
looking for a phrase or a line which "tweaks. I then generate a fresh phrase or line
from that (only about 5% of the time do I actually use the exact line.)

Today I picked up Emergency Kit" Poems for Strange Times, and my random-start page was P43
and the first poem (actually, now I've returned to check it's actuall part 3 of a longer poem) was "The Third Lesson".

The actual poem is "Johan Joachim Quantz's Five Lessons" by W. S. Graham.

I read, "Karl you are late."

and on my list of prompts wrote, "Jennifer you are late."

In L2 are the words "I am cold waiting." but I don't remember reading them.

I suspect I picked them up, but not consciously. I didn't read the poem and haven't read it before.

I did see, before I flicked the page, "Play me the dance you made for the barge master" and that
morphed to become "play me the song you played for the king"

I think I was already writing, i don't know for sure. That is the prompts, when I looked at them
were, basically, a story written in short lines, like a poem.

It was so obviously a story I had to sort the lines alphabetically and then
switch them around a little as so many had the same start-words. A rhetoric
had just imposed itself on me and a story "already out there" had leaped into life.

I THINK I may have seen a title "The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever"

I didn't use it, but there's a line, "in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate"
and the next line has "river. I feel sure I saw the word "rhododendrons" somewhere
but I can't find it now, and I THOUGHT most of the other phrases were copied or
re-invented/bastardised, but now, having written/found a story I can't find the prompts!

The story I've presented is 90% prompts and a few conjunctions.

And the whole thing was just THERE, waiting. The end was roaring at me.



Unfortunately, I have sorted, cut, pasted etc so don't have the prompt list in its original state




EUREKA!!!



I HAVE got the original prompts in the original order, as prompt-written.

I had the brainwave of copying the doctored list to safety and then backing up through word, cutting cuts, un-sorting sorts, un-pasting pastes.


I managed to back up as far as the original list of prompts and it really is, almost, a story right off the bat.

I think something, "Happened to me"


Now, question is, did I write a story somehow, half-consciously, prompted by a prompt or two? Was it already somehow in my head and I went looking for the phrases to fit?

Perhaps you would look at the list and NOT see it, nothing needed to be moved, as a story. I don't know.

I so DESPERATELY want to post that list now, but anyone interested, why not bang off a flash first and let's see if we all get to a similar place?

The prompt list is 172 Words. The story is 264 words.







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DON'T READ ON IF YOU ARE WRITING
A FLASH FROM THE PROMPT-LIST POSTED






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DON'T READ ON IF
YOU ARE WRITING
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Here are the original prompts


Jennifer, I am disappointed.
You are late.
You have made me cold.
Play me the song you played for the king
Unless you would rather work in the kitchens
Take off your coat, sit down.
There are countries with grass, and fish in their rivers.
We could go swimming and throw water
We could throw pebbles and make them skip
And cut paths and tunnels through the rhododendrons
I am not loved, so things like this are precious
Last night I saw you looking down from the wall
Last night I saw your eyes, like a sow's
I saw you consider the thoughts of a street-singer, a lyre-player
I saw you wonder about eating bread
You were thinking of undoing your hair
You were thinking of running down hills
You were thinking, that is bad enough
I tell you this because I am concerned for you
I do not speak from malice
I am not a monster
There is no reason to fear me, Jennifer.
Now look, you have made it rain.


and then the story




The Admonishment

Jennifer, I am disappointed. You are late. The fire is almost out and you have made me cold. Make up a new fire and then play me the song you played for the king.

Unless you would rather work in the kitchens?



Wait! Take off your coat, sit down. Let me tell you about the world. Jennifer.



There are countries with grass, and fish in their rivers, countries where we could go swimming and throw water, where we could throw pebbles and make them skip, where there are fertile hillsides pink and purple with flowers where slaves cut paths and tunnels through the rhododendrons, and people walk through not trying to get anywhere.



I am sorry to show you my disappointment, Jennifer, but I am not loved, so things like this are precious. You are late because you are tired, because you went late to your room, because last night you slept badly.



Last night I saw you looking down from the wall. Last night I saw your eyes, like a sow's. You looked, you thought. I saw you consider the thoughts of a street-singer, a lyre-player. I saw you wonder about eating bread.



You were thinking of undoing your hair. You were thinking of running down hills.

I know, in the end, you did not do these things, but you were thinking, that is bad enough.



Jennifer, I tell you this because I am concerned for you. I do not speak from malice.

I am not a monster. There is no reason to fear me, Jennifer.



Now look, you have made it rain.







264 Words

2012-015 Prompts, 08:24 Jan 1st

And cut paths and tunnels through the rhododendrons

I am not a monster

I saw you wonder about eating bread

You were thinking of running down hills

I am not loved, so things like this are precious

I do not speak from malice

Last night I saw you looking down from the wall

I saw you consider the thoughts of a street-singer, a lyre-player

You were thinking of undoing your hair

I tell you this because I am concerned for you
Jennifer, I am disappointed.

Last night I saw your eyes, like a sow's

There is no reason to fear me, Jennifer.

Now look, you have made it rain.

Play me the song you played for the king
Take off your coat, sit down.

There are countries with grass, and fish in their rivers.

Unless you would rather work in the kitchens

We could throw pebbles and make them skip

You are late.

You have made me cold.

We could go swimming and throw water

You were thinking, that is bad enough

So be it.