All posts filed under: Strange Thoughts

This Blog is Taking a Summer Vacation

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For the last three and a half years I have been posting daily on this blog. It’s been incredibly rewarding, but a bit of a struggle to keep up with lately. I’m also finding that it’s keeping me from working on other projects that I’ve been meaning to start, and getting more serious about submitting my own writing to other publications. So I’m going to the rest of the summer to come up with with a schedule that works better, and some fresh ideas. I’ll be back September first. I’ll still be active on Instagram at @everydaystrangeblog, where I’ll be posting quotes, mood boards, and writing prompts.

Dear God, It Has Teeth

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I’ve been enjoying working from home for the last six months, and it’s been a fantastic change for me. The one thing I do miss about working in an office is all of the strange encounters I had with clients at my last job. Many of them served as inspiration for my flash fiction and poetry, like the one below, which I originally posted a few years ago. ********* Every story and poem I write is in some way inspired by a real life experience, none more so then a short story I wrote earlier this month. I work for a company that sublets office space, and part of my job is to drop off mail to each tenant in those suites. We have one new tenant that received a huge shipment of medical supplies when they moved in, boxes of all shapes and sizes. Including one, heavy man sized box. A few weeks after that shipment I stopped by the suite to drop of a small amount of mail. No one was around, and …

Can Fictional Symbols be Misused?

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While scrolling through Instagram recently, I spotted a post by an old coworker. She had recently gotten a new tattoo, covering her inner forearm. Looking closer, I realized it was a full size Dark Mark. The tattoo and cheerfully glib caption left me feeling conflicted. If your not familiar with the symbol, it’s a huge part of the Harry Potter series. Essentially, it appears in the sky when the followers of Voldemort (the villian) kill. Voldemort’s followers are called Death Eaters, and the Dark Mark is also burned into their arms when they join him. Voldemort’s quest is to “purify” the wizarding world by purging it of any wizards born to non-magical parents, who are referred to as “mudbloods.” This fixation on blood purity makes the Death Eaters comparable to Nazi’s and White Supremacists, and to me, makes the Dark Mark comparable to a swastika. When I read the books, I thought the allegory for white supremacy was pretty explicit. So why is my former coworker proudly showing off the tattoo of a fictional hate …

June Mood Board and Writing Prompts

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While working on my submissions for issue II of Freeverse Revolution’s quarterly poetry magazine, I wound up doing a deep dive into the world of Greek mythology. I spent some time reading about sirens, and since they didn’t wind up being the focus of my submissions, I thought they would be great material for writing prompts instead. I’ve always found sirens more interesting then mermaids, more edgy and dangerous. They aren’t just objectified in the mythology they inhibit, they are feared. June Writing Prompts Just over the horizonPeriwinkle wavesThe siren’s callCuriositySilhouette of the shoreFormidable shapesDashed upon the rocksSlipping under the waterEnduring mythology

Point and Click

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When I was in my senior year of college, I had a heavy course load, and was looking for something mindless and relaxing to do once I was done with classes and homework for the day.  I noticed a link to an online game that a friend had posted on Facebook, and gave it a look out of curiosity. Calling it a game really doesn’t do it justice, 99 Rooms is really more of an interactive piece of art. Developed from photography of abandoned spaces in East Berlin and released in 2004, it is an atmospheric point and click game that has players complete a task to advance through each room. It was the perfect distraction after a long hours of lectures and studying, simple to play, but eerie and immersive. In my search to find more games like it, I stumbled upon the game review website jayisgames.com. It was a huge resource for online games, with reviews, tips and walk throughs. By combing the site I found many other unusual games to play, and …

Poetry vs Prose

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During NaPoWriMo last month, one of the prompts given challenged poets to write a Sijo. Since I have never attempted one, I found an old two sentence story to rework so I could spend time focusing on the form. Now I’m able to look at the original flash fiction verses the new poem, and ponder which version works better. Original Flash Fiction: The church is quiet as I light the last candle in the row, closing my eyes and murmuring a desperate prayer. A cold whisper of a draft blows against my neck, and when I open my eyes, my candle is the only one lit. New Poem: I choose a candle to light in the quiet church, closing my eyes I murmur a desperate prayer, a cold draft whispers it’s response I open my eyes, my candle is the only one still lit I like the poem that resulted, but I think I prefer the original flash fiction. Either way, trying the same idea in different formats is a fun way to find what …

What’s Your Writing Addiction?

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One of my favorite prompts from NaPoWriMo this year encouraged participants to write a poem about the moon. Inspired by conversations on Twitter in which poets trying to accept the disproportionate amount of moon poetry they write, the prompt encouraged poets to accept their love of moon poetry as well. “Stop fighting the moon,” the prompt urges. “Lean in. Accept the moon. The moon just wants what’s best for you and your poems.” I can definitely say I have a bit of an addiction to writing about the moon, as evidenced by the list of 30 poems I wrote about the moon below. Do you find a particular subject or theme recurring in your writing? I’d love to know what it is! My Moon Poems: When the Moon is New A Crimson Moon Moon Ritual The Full Moon Will Rise Senryu 61 Moonrise At Night The Beat Grows Loud The Hounds of Diana Senryu 6 Solstice Ritual Haibun 4 Horror Haiku 59 The Color of Ghosts Autumn’s Cold Touch Jewel Tones Off the Coast of …

May Mood Board and Writing Prompts

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When I was college, May was that magical month in Massachusetts where sunny days start to outnumber rainy ones, and the weather is consistently warm enough to spread out blankets and lounge outside. Some overly ambitious students would drag entire couches outside to study on. When rainy days did come, they were warm and gentle, unlike the cold and raw rainy days in March and April. Living in North Carolina now, May is the month when flowers start to bloom in full. It also becomes necessary to keep an eye out for snakes, also emerging with the warmer weather. May Writing Prompts: Moon gardenIvyA rustle of feathersWarm rainSerpentsTell me the wayA longing gazeWild womenDancing at sunrise

April Mood Board and Writing Prompts

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Every April, poets from all over the world participate in National Poetry Writing Month, during which they attempt to write a poem a day. Known as NaPoWriMo, the challenge started on a writer’s blog which over the years has blossomed into an unofficial homepage for the event. Creator Maureen Thorson provides daily prompts and ideas for participating poets. I half participated in a pandemic fog last year, but this April I’m fully committing to the challenge, pausing my normal blog schedule so I can post a poem a day. April Writing Prompts ink smudgesa worn dictionarytyping furiouslyPhotographs tucked between pagesone more coupletyour favorite musetea stained pagescalligraphy and ribbonsstacks of notebooks