All posts filed under: Strange Thoughts
I Am Perfectly Calm
“I am perfectly calm,” is what I keep repeating to myself in the face of my own personal burnout and increasingly distressing headlines. The past few months have been a little tough writing wise. I’d love to blame my writer’s block solely on the end of year pressure from my job, but it’s more then that. Pandemic fatigue has really set in for me. However, I started this blog to cope with a difficult job, and I’m determined to keep it going to cope with difficult times. Hopefully getting back to post a few times a week, sleeping more, and ignoring the news will get me back into writing regularly and breaking the writer’s block.
November Writing Prompt: Seeking the Big Bad Wolf
Writing Prompts: ScarletHooded CloakInto the woodsBare treesCrunching leavesMoonlit pathFollowedTrickedAxeThe heroine prevails
October Mood Board: The Forest Witch
It’s October, so naturally I’m thinking about witches. But not just any kind. I’m thinking about those solitary sorcereress’s, the witches in the woods that protagonists in movies and books typically seek out by venturing into a dark and mysterious forest. Usually these protagonists are looking for either information, a magical item, healing, or protection from a curse. The witch will give them what they need, but there is usually a cost, which the protagonist may or may not realize at first. October Writing Prompts Deep in the woodsOutdoor offeringsPainted runesDusty jarsA creaky cottage Secrets in the treesWild eyesMagic in the moonlight
September Mood Board and Writing Prompts
I always feel a weird nostalgia at the beginning of September for that back to school feeling.
This Blog is Taking a Summer Vacation
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
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 …
5 Ways to Celebrate the Summer Solstice — Everyday Strange
Reposting last year’s list of ways to enjoy the upcoming summer solstice. With the availability of vacinces, hopefully you can add celebrating with friends and family to the list! This Saturday marks the longest day of the year and the official start of summer. 5 Ways to Celebrate the Summer Solstice — Everyday Strange
Can Fictional Symbols be Misused?
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
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
Everyday Strange 