“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”― Stanisław Lem, Solaris She had been a part of the program for about a year now. When she first joined, they said …
Tag: Writing Exercise
Prompt: Creation Story
“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud...”― Yann Martel, Life of Pi Creation stories explain why and …
Prompt: Stealing Memories
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”― Lois Lowry, The Giver Nathaniel could not only read minds, but read someone's past. Their whole history, all of their memories would swarm him like a pack of angry hornets. He couldn't control it either, it …
Prompt: Candle Magic
“My mother/ lights the first shaky candle, and sets it in my hands./ She turns to leave, and I am on my own./ I spend my whole life searching for candles./ Their flames burn bright, a million colors, shades of blues and yellows and fiery reds,/ and it is as though I am within the …
Prompt: Dying Stars
“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”― Neil Gaiman, Stardust Inside every star, at its very core, is an egg like object. In that egg lives the physical embodiment of the star. In some stars, there are humans, in …
Prompt: Winter is Here
“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 of the most recent decade of years.”― William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily It was the first winter of the apocalypse. Although global warming had ravished the Earth, the winters, …
Prompt: Facing Fears
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Sandra had always been fearless. As a child she would pick up snakes and chase her classmates around with them. As a teen, she would do any dare you asked of her. Jump off that cliff? Done. Knock on creepy old man Garrett's door? Not a …
Prompt: Oppression
“They are afraid, Tayo. They feel something happening, they can see something happening around them, and it scares them. Indians or Mexicans or whites—most people are afraid of change. They think that if their children have the same color of skin, the same color of eyes, that nothing is changing.” She laughed softly. “They are …
Prompt: Good and Bored
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness …
Prompt: The Flower Ceremony
“Never take the first plant you find, as it might be the last—and you want that first one to speak well of you to the others of her kind.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants On their 18th birthday, kids became adults. They each ceremonious wandered into …
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