Complex Numbers

You're My Inspiration

Hey, it's this "inspiration" thing again.

Also, yesterday's Mini-Contest winner announced below.

PROMPT July 7th

What do you do when you are out of inspiration or ideas?

I look at prompts, of course.

Well, that's for blog entries and most of my fiction and poems. When I'm not in a blog challenge month, I have web links I can post here and comment on. Keeps me busy.

I have written a few stories and poems that weren't prompted, but the bulk of my work comes from "The Writer's Cramp"  [13+] or other contests with their prompts.

Occasionally, very rarely, someone else will write something that makes me want to create a thing. I mention this because it just happened recently: "Procrastination"  [E]

That particular one was ironic because I jumped right into writing it, instead of my usual thing which is to wait until later, after which I forget about it. In other words, I didn't procrastinate writing a limerick titled "Procrastination."

You know what the toughest thing for me is? Newsletter editorials. There are no prompts, only the topic of the newsletter - for me, Fantasy or Comedy. Don't get me wrong -- once I settle on a subject, the words usually flow well enough. But I've been editing both newsletters 13 times a year for about 13 years, now, and sometimes I agonize over what to write about right up until the deadline. Okay, sometimes past the deadline; see the above poem.

And yet, having done it for 13 years, I'm sure I've duplicated earlier ideas more than a few times. That's usually okay; with more experience comes different perspectives on the subject.

What's also hard for me is coming up with prompts in the first place. I mean, if it weren't, I'd write more, right? Instead, about once a week, I have to come up with something for other people to write about. Generally it's about whatever's on my mind right at the moment; the problem with that, these days, is that my mind generally cycles between "pandemic" and "beer." The former is overdone, and the latter excludes people who prefer to keep their writing below 13+. I'd rather be inclusive with the Cramp.

So yeah, inspiration comes to me rarely and fleetingly, so I try to catch it when it zips by. But, as any professional writer (e.g. Not Me) might tell you, it's not about inspiration or ideas; it's about doing the work. And that's where I fail.

Mini-Contest results!

Some great answers yesterday, where I asked for examples of when presenting both sides to a controversy can be a Bad Thing. Since I mentioned my newsletter editorials above, I had some vague memory of writing about this sort of thing in a Comedy editorial -- and behold, I managed to find it: "Both Sides" 

I felt that the closest thing to what I was talking about was the comment provided by Charlie ~:

I mean, a good example of "false both-sidedness" is vaccines. We have scientific evidence that vaccines work with little to no harmful effects, especially when taking into consideration all the good they do. When you present one side as someone saying, "Vaccines are pointless! When is the last time you met someone with [insert disease that has been mostly eradicated due to vaccines]" it's like, yeah, that's the ENTIRE point of vaccines and it's proof that they work.

Those situations annoy the hell out of me because the one side isn't actually presenting anything reasonable or sensible. Their side is, "I feel like I'm special and shouldn't have to protect my children or the rest of society from illness."

Admittedly, it didn't hurt that this was one of the specific topics I had in mind when concocting my "flat-earth" hypothetical example. But as usual -- I appreciated all of the comments, and you'll all get another chance in a few days. But this week's Merit Badge goes to Charlie ~