Month / June 2016

by J.L. Smith

June PoWriMo

Prompt for the day:
In the most unusual places, I got nostalgic for the 80s. It was in church, of all places, that the pastor mentioned 80s hair bands. Our pastor has a great love for Jim Carey, Modern Family and other facets of pop culture, that he works into each sermon. Today’s sermon included a story about another pastor’s son, his dark poetry and the 80s power ballad: quiet mediation and angst within a 3 minute rotation. I will let your mind fester on that a bit.

I consider myself a late 80s/90s child, and it got me thinking about the trends of that era. Some of the things that came to mind: Voltron (out again!), Barbie, She-ra and Jem. Yes, I was thinking mainly about toys.

Prompt: think of the era in which your grew into maturity. What were the trends, what did you love from the era? Write 5 minutes (or more) about these thoughts.

by J.L. Smith

June PoWriMo Prompt#18

This is a technique introduced to me at a workshop at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference that I found interesting and effective. It is negative inversion. In this technique, you take an existing poem (yours or someone else’s) and flip (or reverse negatively) the nouns and verbs in each of the lines.

Take this example, from one of my poems.
Her whisper guided him along the banks
of the river where the rocks..

Flip the nouns and verbs negatively:
Her scream pushed him away, away from his embrace
across the room and beyond his walls,

or something similar. This is just a crude example. This is a technique of play and word manipulation. Try it out. You may get nonsense or it may take you somewhere you may never go on your own. Try it.

by J.L. Smith

June PoWriMo Prompt #17

Because it didn’t post yesterday…

Prompt for the day: Take out a map. It could be a national map or a world map. It really doesn’t matter. Find a place on it where you have never visited, whether it be a city, lake or river. Write about someone returning to this destination after a long time away. What does it look like. Write about the journey.

by J.L. Smith

June PoWriMo Day 16

Raw excerpt for today:
The Collection Plate
Yeah, we weren’t supposed to pay attention to what was placed in the collection plate, but you know you did. While your eyes were supposed to be on the minister, clad in beige trousers and the same black jacket every Sunday, your eyes lingered where they should not have, and you didn’t care.

by J.L. Smith

June PoWriMo Prompt #16

Thinking of food today. Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to partake in the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Homer, Alaska. Thorough the many exercises and workshops I participated in, I thought of a story I had about babka. It is a bread typically served around Easter in many Eastern European countries. In my story, I was making the bread for the first time while I was pregnant with my daughter. Never would I imagine how much and how often you had to punch bread dough down before you could bake it. This act of repetitive punching and dough became a metaphor for a piece that I will write and finish later on.

Prompt for today: think about food. It could be a seasonal food, like babka, or any common dish. Think about preparing it. What would you prepare, and what parallels can be make from the preparation, or even eating, of this food or dish. Write about it.