“Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.”― Toni Morrison, Sula She had always wanted to be an artist. The only problem? She wasn't good at anything. She tried painting and drawing, writing, singing, acting, everything she could think of, but it was no use. She had no talent. Then she discovered knife throwing. Not …
Tag: Writing Exercise
Strange Power
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”― John Milton, Paradise Lost Peter was born with a strange power. He could bend reality to his will. Anything that existed, he could take it out of existence with a thought, and anything he could imagine, he could …
Banished to the Sea
“When I was a child I truly loved:Unthinking love as calm and deepAs the North Sea. But I have lived,And now I do not sleep.”― John Gardner, Grendel A thousand years ago, or maybe two, Levi was banished to the sea for stealing away the man of his heart. The man was meant to be a prince, …
Morbid Curiosity
“Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can't fake a thought.”― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things TW: violence, murder, intrusive thoughts Jacob always thought he had a morbid sense of humor, but when his thoughts become out-of-control murder fantasies, he …
Time Out of Order
“...the very old men [...] believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck …
Destroying Books
“Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. "― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart Shelly never liked books. Reading made her head hurt, so she made a habit of destroying books in secret. Not just any …
Telling Fortunes
“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!”― Henry James, The Turn of the Screw The witch had been telling prophecies for years, it was her main …
Prompt: The Islands
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”― H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu The Earth is made up of many islands. None of them bigger than what you know as "Texas." And on all of these islands, …
Prompt: Missing Things
“Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.”― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting Charlie had been a sick child. She never really got to go out and play as much as she wanted, and her parents fretted over everything she did. Now, as an …
Prompt: Moving to Mars
“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world."― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle In a few hundred years humanity will have no choice but to die or relocate. Choosing the …
LAMP 