Wednesday Writing Prompts Strike Back (Thrice!)
















1. Take a classic tale from any period (from the Odyssey to Ivanhoe or anything Dickens to anything Spielberg or Romero) and turn it on its head by thoroughly integrating some new element into it (as in Pride and Predjudice and Zombies)

2. You’re on your way to a perfectly ordinary day at work, when suddenly a sign looms up before you that says “Road Closed” and you’re forced to take an unmarked detour down an unfamiliar road that seems unusually devoid of traffic. Is it an ordinary short cut, or is something more ominous going on? What awaits you around the next corner? Does the pavement suddenly and inexplicably end? Have you crossed into the proverbial twilight zone?

3. Write a piece where physical “imperfection(s)” in a body or an object add to its beauty as opposed to making it merely “less than perfect”, and therefore “less than beautiful.” Consider the patina of age or the ancient chipping of a Grecian urn, for example, or the beauty of a more “average” woman compared to the “perfection” of an over-the-top supermodel.

4. Create a story filled with unexpected, unsettling and unexpected twists that still seem logical and/or realistic while being incredibly jarring. (Maybe a man accidently takes as hostage the one person who could easily disarm him, or maybe a typical, cliche event [man slips on a banana peel] ends on a different note [man keeps his balance and uses momentum and slipperyness of peel to get to work on time.])

5. Close your eyes and focus on the sounds around you. Listen to them, shuffle them around in your memory and use them as key points with which to drive a story forward.

6.I once had a Spanish teacher whose mother thought that the reason why America is such a big player in the world today is because every time you leave the freeway, you see a sign that says “exit” (exito means “success!” in Spanish) and she assumed that, (as many Americans seem to) the only difference between Exit and Exito was that Spanish seems to add an “o” to the end of a lot of words. Write a story where a mistaken translation creates an erroneous assumption (or judgement) that has either comedic, dangerous, or otherwise interesting consequences.

7. Take a song you’re quite fond of, listen to it, then incorporate elements, concepts or themes from it into a story. If it’s an instrumental piece, think about how it makes you feel, what it reminds you of, and then create a story that uses those images and impressions.

8.Take a hike. Literally. Keep an eye out for a particular place (like a clearing, a meadow, a thicket, a glade) that inspires you. Once you find one, sit down and imagine a scene that might have taken place there. It could be a romantic one, an argument, a murder or anything else. Next: Put pen to paper and write!

9. Everyone has their taboos and things that frighten or disgust them, and it is playing off these concepts that makes the most terrifying horror. Think about what frightens you, then create a story which incorporates and confronts these elements. If you’re claustrophobic, write about an unlucky someone trapped in the narrow darkness of a cave, alone, unable to escape the stifling pressure of the deep earth no matter how hard he or she tries, etc.

10. If there is one constant in the universe, it is change. Think of a profound change or transformation that occurred in your own life, then use it as the central theme for a piece more fiction and fantastic than fact.

In Pursuit of Omega Fiction

I love slipstream. (AKA Genre-bending) For me, it’s the epitome of imaginative fiction. The idea of ignoring genre boundaries and creating something that cannot be classified in a single genre (like Fantasy or Horror) is incredibly exciting, and I think that it’s not so much the wave of the future as it is a step toward the most profound, enlightening, and beautiful sort of literature the human mind may ever conceive of. I call this as yet unrealized pinnacle of written fiction Omega Fiction, or Fourth-Dimensional Fiction.

To me, two dimensional fiction is fiction that is literally flat. “John flew the aeroplane from Mars to the Moon” is two dimensional, no matter how much poetic metaphor or how many explosions you pen into it. Add a literary meaning to it, hidden messages, a profound intelligence that grows out of the words and takes root in the mind of the reader, and you have three dimensional fiction. Fourth-dimensional fiction takes the whole thing a step further by transcending boundaries, stretching the story to places it never would have gone as a two dimensional or a three dimensional story by making it slipstream through every genre simultaneously, without becoming bogged down or clogged by conflicting chunks that don’t integrate the way they should. That is Omega Fiction. Is it possible to create a Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Western / Romance that is both light-hearted and dark, intelligent and flashy, smooth and poetic, but rough and transgressive in all the right places? I think so, and I’ve set proving that it is as one of my many goals as a writer.

Expect more updates as I make my way steadily toward this goal.

First Fifty Episodes


In order to clear up some clutter on the pane to the right and make things a little easier to get to, I've decided to move the links for the first fifty episodes of The Cygnus War into this post. Check it out, and enjoy!

Episode #1
Episode #2
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Episode #42
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Episode #45
Episode #46
Episode #47
Episode #48
Episode #49
Episode #50

This Is How I Relax:

I design games, game mods and RPG supplements.

Complete RPG Systems:

General Resources:

Adventure Seeds:

Character Classes:

Other Resources:


Happy 50th!


TTC: The Cygnus war hits 50 Episodes today!

It's been a long run, but we're here at last. If you haven't yet experienced the edge of your seat sky-borne action of The Cygnus War, check the links to the right and jump right in!

Literary Cyberpunk

Literary Cyberpunk. To some, the idea probably sounds almost oxymoronic– the idea that Cyberpunk, this bastard child of Science Fiction and Film Noir that hangs at the bottom of a long cord of darker futures and intentionally drags itself through the grit and dirt of society in order to better project a speculative future into the realm of fiction could be more than a fecund curiosity. To some, it is little more than another broken branch of escapist and artless prose aimed at the sick and deranged, a shiny and worthless pebble to distract those of us not smart enough or enlightened enough to confine our literary tastes to the aged and the normal. They look down upon readers of what is distastefully referred to as “genre fiction” and raise on pillars books and authors who meekly tread down the well-worn paths of everyday life and recast them in the trappings of literary, non-genre fiction in order to give them a sort of meaning and life in the same way that a corpse is given meaning and life if it is painted by an artist as a man in a suit, sitting on a park bench with a briefcase and a newspaper. They worship the dead and the unimaginative retellings of memories that could have come from any man on the street and pin medals on authors almost the instant they draw their last breaths. Literature, as a singular non-genre category into which the books favored by the bourgeois fall, is sick and bland, is a slow, suffocating death stamped out in print.

It does, however, have one redeeming quality– the messages, the concepts, and the life meanings it imparts in the reading. Literature is the bare bones of reality and life, of concept and meaning, an ominous skeleton presented naked before a crowd, with just enough skin to show that it once was alive. What the world needs is literature, but literature heavy in imagination. The corpse must be given more than skin or clothes or a briefcase and a newspaper. It must be replaced with a starship or a purple sky, with a man in an diving bell astride a rocket-powered apple, or a man from an alternate future out to change the wrong past. Thoroughly beaten periods in history must be replaced or recast into the grand and sweeping vistas of the future. Instead of calling Space Westerns “Bat Durstons” with a sour and hateful flick of the tongue, we should be looking into the frontiers of the past and consider not only what they teach us about ourselves, but what they can teach us about where we may end up in the future. Space is out there, the future is out there, new upheavals, new revolutions, new periods of social reform and unrest are waiting to be found in the depths of an uncast future. Can something as transgressive as Cyberpunk be literary? Can it be woven and crafted in such a way that there is something of value to be gained from reading it? Yes, and such writing should be more widely recognized and available to readers. Even if you consider what writers like Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick or George Alec Effinger have already accomplished toward this end, there is something out there still to be done, still to be discovered. True, enriching and meaningful literature should not be bland. It should be imaginative! It should invade the mind with imagery and meaning, with secret messages riding in on the backs of jetbikes or lost in the bumperstickers of passing hoversedans. It should quicken in the mind and make us question our own lives, make us work toward utopian futures and long to set foot beyond this cradle we call Earth.

What the world needs now are literary and linguistic activists. People who stand up and realize that there are still places and ways to create higher orders of intellectual art that challenge and inspire, that inform and entertain. Are you with me? This is the frontier. This is where the root of a thousand preconceived notions lays exposed and ready to be severed, ready to be cut so that the literary world and the world of imagination can truly soar, and soar together, without the anchors of a stuffy, bourgeois past that even in passing leaves the taste of dust and emptiness to linger on the mind.

Space... The Final Frontier


I took advantage of Spring Break to teach myself how to do planets, stars, and space in general in Gimpshop (basically photoshop). Here's the best so far-- more to come later!

Experimentation in Fiction

Let’s face it, fiction that reads like an essay from the Oxford of the industrial revolution is boring.

We write and speak in such a beautiful language, a language that lends itself so readily to poetic metaphor, to phrases and strings of bound together words that can produce images with such life that we truly feel how green a verdant and glowing glade is– but even this example is basic and paltry. It certainly touches on the beauty of the language, but still leaves the greater body of the possibilities of English bound and gagged, tied to a rock to be picked apart day by day like some linguistic Prometheus. The true beauty comes with thinking beyond (beyond the beyond and the beyond that lies beyond it) to what is on the other side of that which seems flat, endless and impermeable.

The other day my little sister asked me the simple question: “What is beyond the sky?” My answer: “Space and everything in it, the planets and the stars, everything in the universe we think of when we watch Star Trek or Stargate. “But,” She asked– and this is the real kicker ~~>

“But, big brother, what’s beyond space?”

“A Mc Donalds and a parking lot” Kate Braverman says in her surrealist work entitled Near Death Experiences. “Then the final mall. And a sort of outdoor warehouse where a raw wind blows giant stacks of non-fire-resistant pajamas. The ones taken off the American market and sold in the Third World. Then the piles of blankets subject to spontaneous combustion. And the boxes of baby formula without the right vitamins. And the medicines with the known side effects, the ones that twist bones and incite cancer”

What is beyond space? What is beyond reality? Behind the words, the meanings, the way spots of ink fit together on the page to stain the mind with images. Why divide poetry and prose when the best prose is poetry? When you can tell a story in a sentence that blossoms with images, concepts, possibilities and sacred, individual meanings. “He woke to find the Dinosaur was still there.” Casares writes, and that is a story. “One night, I dreamed I was a butterfly.” Writes another author, forcing us to realize the meanings therein. Why a butterfly? Why not a dog, an elephant, a rat? Why not “Three afternoons in a row, I dreamed I was a cheese,” and even if that, what new meanings are trapped in this new and different sentence? We live our entire lives among the feathered wings of a beautiful, angelic (Engel-ish) language, a language that has as many possibilities on page as it does in speech, more now, more every day as meanings and use expand, as people experiment with new and different ways to put exact concepts, definitive feelings full of richness completely and totally in the mind of the reader.

Sacramento Open Shop


Episode Packs for TTC: The Cygnus War




If the Flash links above don't work for you, these links should.
Tarsis Arc
Rescue Arc


Both of these feature art by my awesome and talented Bro-teus Dylan Odom! Check him out online:
http://lwcldylan.blogspot.com/
http://lwcldylan.deviantart.com/
http://www.dylandigital.150m.com/

Wednesday Writing Prompts (Part II)













The Return of Wednesday Writing Prompts (Now in 3D!)(But not really!)

1. Look through the newspaper for a particularly interesting line like “It was a day like any other for Joe Everyman...” Think about it, bend it around in your mind and explore the possible places a line like this could go... then write one of them.

2. Write down the basic elements of a whodunnit– the name of a guilty person (i.e. Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, etc.) the object they’ve committed the murder with (i.e. a candlestick, etc.) and the place where it was done. (i.e. in the conservatory.) Make each element as random as possible (i.e. Bob Dole with an overfed goat in the soyuz module) and then write a story that ties it all together. Feel free to make it more fun than believable.

3.Interesting things happen when different cultures come into contact for the first time. Envision two distinctly different cultures, then write a story where they meet!

4. Type two random and seemingly unrelated words into a google image search (like uncle fuzz) and look through the images that come up. Find one that strikes you, then write a story around it.

5. Politicians are masters at spinning ambiguous sentences. Look through the speeches of one or two that have had something to hide or get excited about lately and pick apart their words. Find a particularly vague sentence, or one teeming with doublespeak, and use it as the backbone of a story.

6. Take a famous line from a famous piece of literature and run it through several different languages on a translator online (like Altavista’s Babelfish) with Korean or Chinese as the last one, then translate it back to English. Look at it, consider the new meanings hidden within it, and then build a story around it.

7. Walk through an unfamiliar aisle of the grocery store or visit an ethnic grocery (Indian, Chinese, Mexican, etc.) and look for a product (or several products) that strike your fancy. Use that image as the key motivator or focus for a story. Maybe people are passing it back and forth while they talk. Experiment, try new things!

8. Write a story where a character is faced with a decision that is very difficult for him or her to make. This is no ordinary decision– it’s hard to make, and it needs to be made soon. The stakes should be high (or maybe just seem high to the character) and you can even go so far as action as you want. Whatever happens, focus on the tension of the decision.

9.People act differently on camera. Write a story from the perspective of someone watching a film where another person reveals a shocking or frightening secret. Try to capture the mood of being afraid or angry or reluctant to put the secret into words, make the character in the video real, believable.

10.Relationships are full of games, especially when we’re young or the connections we’ve forged are superficial. Write a story where relationship games are being played between the two people who make up an otherwise loving couple. Put in action, make it real, scream and smash some things. Make it exciting, and let the ending determine on its own where it will go.


More awesome links to inspire you:

Why Cops Fear Cameras: http://carlosmiller.com/2009/03/25/why-police-officers-fear-cameras/

Asian Guy Sends A Response To Rosie O'Donnell: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/449369/asian_guy_sends_a_response_to_rosie_odonnell/

Boeing Business Jets: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/bbj/index.html

Sex and the Cygnus War













“Well, it’s not like you’re a lesbian or anything.”

“Even if I was, it shouldn’t matter.” Izandra sat upright, scooping up the drink again. “Fact is, I still like men,” she smiled lovingly at Tessa, “I just like you better.”


When I first sat down to write The Tessa Chronicles: The Cygnus War, sex was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t set out to write anything that would liberate anybody of their more conservative notions or raise a banner for people of the LGBTQ community to rally around, nor did I intend TTC to become any kind of platform for new political or social issues to be raised and put out there for the world to see– but, then again, that’s one of things that good science fiction is ultimately supposed to do, isn’t it? Nah, in the beginning, I was just a young man who had an urge to write a story about airplanes, specifically semi-atmospheric airplanes (which means airplanes that are cool enough to go into space under their own power.)

But ultimately, something changed, and it changed very quickly.

In the world of The Cygnus War (circa 2304) sex is just another part of life for most people. The idea of committing oneself to a single partner in marriage is seen as traditionalist and sort of humorously respected from a distance by the majority of society (like the lifestyles of the Amish are by the modern day American) and the notion of homosexuality, of a barrier between “straight” and “gay” is virtually non-existent. People love who they love, and they don’t label it as straight, gay or bisexual. They don’t discriminate based on gender or sexual preference when it comes to finding someone to love, and they don’t usually stick hard and fast to any one “preference” anymore than most of us would stick hard and fast to eating at any one particular restaurant. Even the idea of a particular set sexual preference is archaic to these people. Why would you love only men if you could love women too? Why limit yourself?

This doesn’t reflect my personal views when it comes to my own personal preference, nor is it meant to further any kind of agenda I’m trying to open the eyes of the world to (beyond my universal agenda of always promoting acceptance of everybody, as long as whatever they’re doing isn’t hurting anyone else) it simply reflects what I see could be a possible evolution (or degradation, if that’s your viewpoint) of the way humanity could end up viewing sexuality in the future. Because that’s what TTC: The Cygnus War is ultimately about, isn’t it? The future.

The Separation of Corporation and State













Seriously, why didn't someone think of this sooner?

The separation of church and state is one of the biggest differences between the democratic countries of the west and nations where barbarism and cruelty are A-OK if they're done in the name of God. We've been smart enough not to let religion rule us, (for the most part) but in the process, we've let another body much more devious, much more insidious than blind faith rise up in our midst until it has grown so huge and so powerful that it threatens to destroy us all.

That body is corporate.

Now, I'm not the first person to advocate that we get strict controls on what corporations can and cannot do and on what (and who) they can influence, nor am I the first person to step out and say "Yes! We need a separation of corporate and state fully enforceable by law like the separation of church and state" but I am one of the thousands of people who are stepping out right now and letting corporate know that America is mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore. (Howard Beale FTW.)

The separation of corporate and state. Get out there, call people, email people, spread the word, talk to those in power, and make the idea a reality. There are more of us then there are of them, and numbers is all it takes to make a difference.

One Million Strong Movement on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfM9LI-oSbI

One Million Strong Movement on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43811311612

Polling widget for your blogs: http://www.opednews.com/populum/pollembed.php?pid=98

More on One Million Strong http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/watch-separation-of-corporation-and-state-the-birth-of-the-28th-amendment-movement/

Table Mountain





















When I was young, my best friend lived almost at the base of Table Mountain. We would hike out across the neighboring cow pastures, avoiding the herds and the rancher who roamed those fields in a jeep and seemed to always know when we hopped the fence and started toward the mountain. We had to do a lot of running, hiding, sticking to ditches and going for the cover of trees whenever we could just to keep out of site, and it was a lot of fun because we were addicted to the idea of the military and guerilla warfare, so we’d flash each other hand signals, deck ourselves out in camo fatigues and paint our faces like we were in the middle of some foreign jungle. Eventually, we’d get to the incline that foots the mountain, and then we’d climb the rocky face of Table Mountain by hand, with no ropes or equipment (We were young, sure footed and there were handholds every few feet) until we got to the top. Reaching the top of Table Mountain was pure bliss.

Up there, the sky seems to stretch on forever. You feel like you’re on a flat and mysterious island hovering thousands of feet over the rural countryside below. You can cut across the rocky ground to the other side of the mountain and see Malones Lake, which was so distant by car that it seemed almost mysterious to us as children, like another country beyond the borders of our own. There was a fig tree up there covered with torn bits of faded cloth tied to the branches, and a grave stone surrounded by pennies that seemed too sacred to touch, even as we laughed at the fact that the gravestone had been expertly carved with a picture of a pair of buttcheeks and a marijuana leaf. We would wander around up there for hours, always exploring, always finding something new. There was a place that clear, sweet water would gush out of the rock and pour itself down the side of the mountain in a narrow, cascading waterfall that we eventually followed to its impact point, only to discover that behind the waterfall was a small alcove of stone. I still have the unusual-looking, staff-like walking stick I found back there, impossibly ancient in appearance, weathered by time and water, with a crystal affixed somehow into the center of
what was probably originally a knot, as the staff seems to bow out into a rounded head at the top. Even today, Table Mountain instills me with a sense of joy and mystery, as if it belonged to another reality altogether, a place of exploration and bliss that would never fully reveal its secrets to anyone, a place which would always have some new treasure to impart every time you walked past the pastures and woods that served as gateways to this altogether different world.

Pink Carbide: Carbon Aria


The third and final installment in the first Pink Carbide trilogy is now available!

(From the back cover):

Follow the adventures of Cylea as she returns to Los Angeles in search of who she is, chases the clues of a senile researcher to the heart of Antarctica, and returns again to the halls of the Ageless only to learn how powerful faith, conviction, and human greed really are. It's an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that mixes all the mystique and power of Science Fiction with all the hard-hitting strength of action to produce a thriller like no other. Be there when all hell breaks loose, watch as love grows and blossoms, and witness the way fate ties together every clue and lead when Cylea finally finds out who and what she truly is in the thrilling conclusion to the first Pink Carbide trilogy: Carbon Aria

Reviews:

"E.S. Wynn has done it again... a masterpiece, without question."
-The Eikland Review

"I came away pleased once again... get your hands on one of those books and you'll be in for a real treat."
-Johnathon Langsam

"Exactly the shot in the arm that we need right now."
-Cyberbooks HQ

Where can I get it?

www.Amazon.com
www.Barnesandnoble.com
www.Borders.com
www.Lulu.com

...and many others! ( i.e. www.Target.com, etc.) It's also available internationally!

If you haven't picked up the first (Pink Carbide) or second book (Aluminum Opus) yet, they're also available through these same online retailers. I also carry signed copies, but quantities are limited, so order today!

Go Iowa!

Iowa just became the third state in the US to allow gay marriage! Go Iowa! Way to strike a blow for Freedom! There might be hope for America yet!


From Reuters UK:

Iowa becomes third US state to allow gay marriage

By Kay Henderson

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - The Iowa Supreme Court cleared the way for gay marriage in the state on Friday by declaring a law that limits marriage to a man and a woman unconstitutional.

The ruling makes Iowa the third U.S. state after Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the first in the Midwest, to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.

Gay marriage was briefly legal in California, but voters repealed it in a November 2008 referendum, though efforts are under way to revive the issue.

The Iowa case, Varnum v. Brien, involved six same-sex couples who sued the Polk County Recorder of Deeds Timothy Brien in 2005 for refusing to grant them marriage licenses.

A county judge sided with the couples and the state supreme court affirmed that decision and declared the 1998 Iowa Defense of Marriage Act -- which restricted marriage to one man and one woman -- unconstitutional.

The key principle at the heart of the case was the doctrine of equal protection under the law, which the court said "is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike."

The court compared the right of same-sex couples to marry with historical precedents that struck down slavery and segregation and recognized women's rights.

Susan Sommer, senior counsel with Lambda Legal in New York, which sued in the Iowa case, said a number of states, including New York, Vermont and New Hampshire, have "very active efforts" underway to pass gay marriage provisions.

"Iowa is a terrific state with a great historical leadership in advancing the equal protection rights of minorities and we are seeing Iowa live up to what it holds dear," Sommer said.

Gay marriages in the state could begin withi
n weeks.

Original story here: http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopNews/idUKTRE5323XB20090403

Why is it so difficult to get noticed online?

I mean, I know I write good stuff. I’m ahead of the curve, I’m dedicated, I’m interesting, I’m on Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, you name it, but no joy. I feel like I’m doing the equivalent of jumping up and down, waving my arms around and screaming, but I’m one voice on one rock in the middle of a massive ocean of humanity that moves in huge, ten-million man strong waves, surging toward everything but what I’m doing or what I’m interested in.

I know I’m not the only person out there who’s having this experience, and I know that I’m not the worthless excuse for a human being that the occasional person out there tries to convince me that I am (heck, read the other entries of my blog– you’ll see. It’s all me here) but right now I feel like even if I suddenly plastered every page I could get my hands on with pictures of my backside, the only person who would notice would be some guy back at Google who wouldn’t really care, but would be obligated to respond by casually (in a very sterile, detached manner) clicking some magic button that would disable my adsense account and send me the form letter equivalent of a coup-de-grace, effectively obliterating the meager fistful of ad revenue I’ve garnered (but of course have no access to– got to wait until it hits the $100 mark!) for attracting almost 100,000 people to my collective pages over the last couple of years.

I know writing isn’t about money, but it shouldn’t be about starving or taking a second job while you bust your butt trying to find that one magic topic that the world will fall upon in its fickle way either. With as many people as there are out there on the internet, is it really so much to ask to be heard?

21 Tips for living a successful life

1. Stop watching T.V.

2. Read books that take opposing points of view and then draw your own conclusions based on the information provided. Never just assume that any one side is right.

3. Think before you buy. Ask yourself “Do I really need this?” I’m not advocating a minimalist approach– you might need beer or videogames to help you relieve stress, and that’s healthy, but if it’s something you don’t really need, skip it and save the money.

4. Ignore what other people say. Have the ovaries (or the balls) to do what you want regardless of how “normal” or “stupid” people say it is. If you know in your heart that it will work, keep at it, stay strong, and give your naysayers the bird.

5. Recognize fear mongering when you see it. Don’t let fear dictate your actions (or your spending.)

6. Do something creative everyday.

7. Think outside the box as often as you can. Always look for what’s beyond the next frontier.

8. Call people on their issues, but only if they’re hurting themselves or others. Being a jerk just for the sake of it is something everyone should try to avoid.

9. Be friendly. Shake everyone’s hand, and don’t wait to be introduced. Get out there and network, get to know people and forge connections. There really are usually less than six degrees of separation between you and someone who might just be able to save your life (or your butt) when things get tough down the road.

10. Don’t base your self value on how much money you make or what kind of possessions you have. True self worth is measured in how happy you are in the life you’re living. Discover what you really want out of life, then go out and get it. As long as you stay on that path, you are a success.

11. Put happiness first. If you’re unhappy, change.

12. Faith is meant to elevate and guide us, not control or limit us. No matter what you believe (even if you believe in nothing at all) never let it get in the way of doing what’s right.

13. Learn because you want to, not because you have to.

14. Exercise regularly, even if it just means taking a short walk once or twice a day. Even a little bit of exercise can make a world of difference in how happy and how productive you are!

15. Do what is right because it is right, not because others say it's right.

16. Don’t just live each day like it was your last, do everything fully and completely– push yourself for that extra mile and truly live. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

17. Listen to and try to accept everyone’s opinions and perspectives, even if you don’t agree with them. Stay open minded and take the time to research opinions and positions you don’t agree with, even if only to learn what the weak points in their arguments are.

18. Realize and embrace your limits, but try to push them, even if only just a little further.

19. Recognize failures and learn from them. Not everything that goes wrong is a failure, and we don’t always see the places where we’ve made mistakes, but learning to spot them and correct them in our future work is definitely a key to success.

20. Find someone who you see as being successful (according to your own definition) and study them. Don’t measure yourself by their standards, but look for things that they may be doing which could benefit you.

21. Never, ever, under any circumstances, give up on your pursuit of happiness.

Wednesday Writing Prompts


Here’s a list of ten new and fun writing prompts to help you come up with your next creative project, whether it be prose, poetry, or any other type of artistic expression you can think of! Be creative, get out there and experiment, and don’t be afraid to try new things!


1. Focus on a memory of a game you played as a kid. It could be chess, it could be paintball, or it could be Cowboys and Indians– anything where you really got into the game. Start by writing about the experience, and then make it real. You are the king, the soldier, or the intrepid native!

2. Think of a friend or a relative and then focus on something that always reminds you of them (their perfume, their sense of style, something they love to do) and then write a story centering around it.

3. Think of a memorable quote from a book, show or movie, remove it from its context, streamline/improve it, and then write a story around it using a completely different plot, completely different characters, and in a completely different world!

4. Pick up an object near you and look at it. Study it. Try to find some aspect of it that future generations might improve on it. Now imagine it’s your job to market this new and improved object

5. Choose a mythological tradition (Norse, Judeo-Christian, Greek, Roman, etc.) and look it up on Wikipedia, then follow links until you track down a specific god, goddess, angel or spirit that sounds particularly interesting. Write a story that includes this entity and incorporates elements of the mythology surrounding them in a way that preserves some of the ambiance and flavor that attracted you to him/her/it in the first place.

6. Pick three words that you like: a color, a place, and a name. Write a story using these three words in creative ways. (I.e. you can combine them, use them for section headings, use them as character names, etc. The possibilities are limitless!)

7. Go for a walk, and while you’re out, look for something interesting (it could be a car, a pamphlet, an unusual rock, a chicken, etc.) Think about it for a little while, follow that thought pattern and see where it takes you, then write about it.

8. Take a paper and pad somewhere where you can people watch (a park, a coffee shop, a restaurant) and write down quick notes about the people you see. Then– make up stories about them. What kind of life do they lead? What’s important to them? What do they come home to at night?

9. Think about a symbol. It can be a peace sign, a star, a flag, or anything else you’ve seen in the past. Consider what it means to you, and put those thoughts into words. Next, write a story using those words.

10. If you have a pet, (a cat, a dog, a snake, a chicken, etc.) study them. Look at their features, their eyes, and then write about them. Next, take it a step further and write a story where the main character is a person that has all (or some) of those features!


Also, if you’re looking for more inspiration, check out these fun and interesting links:

Religious imagery in fiction:
http://bardhaven.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/religious-fiction/

Pictures of Tokyo cityscape:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/03/bladerunner-tokyo-in-large-format.html

Fibers that produce power with the normal movement of blood through your body:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090326-nano-power.html

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