prompt for the end of June

Prompt:

try and incorporate all these prompt words in a 15 minute writing exercise, and you can cut them out later if you want to.

Try and vary sentence length.

Here are some thoughts: use these as you see fit, or don't use these "too...." phrases at all.

too embarrassing
too intimidating
too anxiety producing
too irritating
too smarmy

(these are all concepts or phrases to throw in or borrow or whatever)

PROMPT WORDS:

Cajun tomatoes
"astounding" (in quotes)
"yep" (in quotes)
cranky
snoring
flatten
well-heeled
freshen
napkin
smiley
polka lessons

Prompt words: advanced

here are your words. this is your assignment. it looks impossible from here.


knees
ice-cream
focus
thumb
mumble
fuckin'
gangsterish
neck
schnapps
watery-blond
shenanigans
leg room
buddy
guilty
flips

Prompt words: advanced

here are your words. this is your assignment. it looks impossible from here.


knees
ice-cream
focus
thumb
mumble
turkey-neck
fuckin'
schnapps
watery-blond
short-armed
buddy
guilty
flips

Prompt: try and use all of these words

Try and use all these words, then you can cut them out. Surgically.


installation
non-joiner
mole
loafers
pastel
zesty
"fuck yeah"
coffee
blood
feet
deep
Ski-Doo
X-ray

a competition

Two people compete for something. It can be anything, a dog's attention/love, a woman's attention/love... a game of Monopoly. There is something, some contest, and one clear winner.

Prompt Words:

pseudo
lipped
clogs
parted
glossy
lurk
boxers
worn
faze
pink
flap

Orgasms (originally published in DOGZPLOT)

MEG POKRASS
ORGASMS


Dr. Klein enjoyed an enormous sandwich during the beginning of the session - chewing slowly, then licking his lips for what seemed a very long time. This was the day Vivienne decided to talk about her concerns relating to adopting a dog, though her husband was allergic to animals, and hated disruption (he became irritable when she brought home a cactus with hair).

It was happening more and more frequently. His sandwiches always had raw onion. She couldn’t change her 1:00 appointment time. It was all he “had.”

“So,” Klein said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you - do you have orgasms?”

She felt her face redden, (she was actually planning to talk about buying a dog).

“Do you cum?” he asked, chewing. Masticating. In her mind, she spelled come both ways, thinking while spelling.

She hated the grunting, chomping sounds he made during silences. She missed being young, sprinklers in the summer, Slip 'N Slides. The sink that always leaked in the bathroom.

“Trying to remember?”

“Right,” she said.

“Good. You cum often, I hope?”

Many people wanted to work with Dr. Klein since he had achieved minor celebrity with his popular self-help book, “Becoming Your Own Muse,” and appeared on the Today Show.

He was the therapist who suggested she get a dog. But now he wouldn't talk about dogs at all. Every session, he brought up some part of her sex life - how she felt about her husband’s sexual performance, what her history was before her husband...

Vivienne noticed that Dr. Klein’s eyes would linger on her shirt when she was free-associating. This—mingling with the smell of onions, and his breath from four feet away, was making her shy, repressed, ill.

“I don’t come very often,” she spurted, spitting a drop, saying it.

He smiled kindly, almost priestly.

“What I really wanted to talk about is how much I want a goddamn dog,” she said, breathing through her mouth, shutting off her nose completely.

“And that I’m pregnant.” Her voice came from a lower place in her chest she'd never heard before, almost guttural.

He looked at her, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. He took his pad and pencil out from the hidden folding drawer inside the arm of his leather chair. The pencil was attached to the pad with a string – a set that came together, maybe a special order for therapists.

The onion smell was back even though the sandwich was gone -- now just a tiny invisible glop in the doctor’s colon. Vivienne looked at the rug for stray ringlets that may have fallen near her feet. Nausea came so quickly.

She pictured the dog as she heaved, protective and warm -- could hear his throaty bark. v

Why Are You Telling Me This?

Write a situation in which someone is telling your main character something they don't want to know, don't want to hear about. The focus of the story will be the aftermath, trying to get the thing the person told them to feel less oppressive.

some prompt words:

nighttime
fist
shiny
frame
married
crucial
pocket

2 poems up at the new YB journal

How fun this is, to be included in the new YB. Other writers include Rob Woodard, Luca Penne, Sean Lovelace, Patrick Hill, and Molly Gaudry. Editor Rose Hunter.

Help! The Rules Have Changed!

Write about a situation in which all of a sudden "the rules" have changed. An example would be an adult child arriving home for the Christmas holidays to find that his parents have become... Buddhists (this is a very dumb example, but hey).

Er.. another example would be, your character was forbidden to flirt w/ a certain (perhaps married) person and now that same person has become single and available. The character's way of behaving becomes the key element in this exercise... having to face with the unknown in once familiar territory.

Guilt and God and all that fun stuff

Hopefully you are not as screwed up as I am (I've always suffered from an annoying unconscious guilt complex), though even if you are not screwed up at all (heehee) you might find this writing exercise useful.

Write about a situation that compels the narrator to feel guilty... and this may be a very subtle situation, it may not even involve the narrator. Feel free to work with the idea of God or a god (higher power?) or the lack of belief in God, a god, or higher power whatsoever... you get the idea... get all existential if you feel up to it - or non-existential. Explore Nonetheism. Or, poke fun at existentialism/ The idea is, just put it out there, it's Friday. Give that big guy a run for his money (he can handle it).

here are some prompt words if you want them:

thud
elephant
furry
disgusting
tic
awkward
glasses
plump
tough-ass

so excited to have my story in Monkeybicycle!!!!!

story up at 3:AM

my story up at Thieves Jargon