this week's most devilish prompt:

have you ever seen the website: http://www.entrancestohell.com/entrances.php ?
it's a bit of silly fun, but i can scan through the images and amidst the chuckles, the "meh" moments, the occasional truly spooky "gah", i'll get some interesting ideas. some are even story-worthy, perhaps.

i found this amazing photo at my favorite image-perusal site, www.pixdaus.com :

http://pixdaus.com/single.php?id=65333

“Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed."
--Bhagavad Gita

seeing the benefit of failure

i found this compelling and beautiful lecture by elizabeth gilbert at www.ted.org:
http://ted.org/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

she talks about the flaw in associating creativity with suffering, and the talk progresses to rethinking how we see creativity altogether--as more of a borrowed genius than an intrinsic belonging to ourselves. give her a listen.

thinking about her theory of genius, i started to feel better about my six-week crisis of confidence with my own writing. i begin to see the benefit in not believing my own hype, in approaching writing as a learned skill to be practiced, and not sparks of inspiration to be tossed onto the page like word salad. i've avoided analyzing my writing closely, superstitious about looking too closely and discovering there's nothing between the threads on the page--that close examination would cause my attempts to evaporate in the heat.

but maybe forcing myself to look is the best answer. elizabeth gilbert talks about the fear associated with creativity, and she acknowledges she feels it, too. this shared humility is inspiring, and that locked pit in my stomach is hopefully opening a bit, letting me remember storytelling for the joy and connection with others. i'm hopeful i'll learn how to write again through this adjusted perspective, and maybe this time develop skills based on confidence of message and technique, instead of relying on magic and instinct. maybe i'll figure out how to blend them together to create something truly special.

my prompt is tardy. it always is.

official monday prompt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FszzXG6e45E

sandra cisneros reads her short story "eleven." sweet and funny and real and poignant and full of heart--i love this story! inspires me to try for this same wisdom in my writing . . . i hardly achieve it, but she keeps me trying. *sniff*

yes, i know it's not monday.

here's a freaky writing prompt.

okay, i admit i have a fascination for weird medical conditions. check this out:

Chimerism
A child's genes are inherited from his or her parents, so
when a 52-year-old woman from Boston had a completely different set of genes
than two of her three children, the medical community was at a loss for an
explanation. It took two years for doctors to conclude that she was a "human
chimera," someone with two or more distinct sets of genes. For example, DNA
extracted from the skin of a human chimera may be different from DNA in the
blood. Chimerism -- named after a Greek monster called the chimera with the head
of a lion, body of a goat and tail of a snake -- occurs during pregnancy when
two embryos that would have resulted in fraternal twins fuse early on in the
pregnancy, resulting in one baby with two separate sets of DNA. While some
chimeras have two different eye colors, most lead normal lives and never realize
their condition.

groooovy. almost like two souls trapped inside one person.

and i was doing so well, too.

as much as i've been fighting it, i have to admit that starting a new job is a real brain suck. my brain's empty, my energy's drained, and unfortunately, my creative urges are frustrated and squashed at the same time. they're still there, but rather than the iron fists bashing at the inside of my skull, they're more like a palsied tapping of decrepit fists on the back of my head. i know they're there, but man, i just can't take them seriously.

i can feel the transition shifting, though, back toward where i was. the iron fists. i just need to hang in there a little while longer, until my new job doesn't require quite so desperate an amount of my focus. i was getting nervous, wondering if i would ever regain my writing momentum, and today is the first time in weeks i've felt sure i'd return wholehearted. so, yay!

i'm even feeling more dedicated to making progress on the novels. who knows? maybe this is a turning point i'll look back on one day as "The Moment." It could happen.

So, how do you stay in the game when life is throwing cantaloupes in your lap?