Writing Prompt #20

Well, it's been a super long chunk of weeks. I'm talking triple the homework load kind of long, the type of long that lets you dream of getting 5 hours of sleep a night. I got through it, thankfully, and now there is less than a month until my graduation ceremony, which also means less than a month for all of my pending homework assignments to be turned in. I'm really looking forward to a month of not sleeping.
On the brighter side, now that that mess of homework is done with I had time to create another writing prompt.

Pumpkin M&M Cookies

It's the season of pumpkins, and since Halloween is over all the Halloween candy went on sale. We picked up some discount M&Ms and I thought it was high time to make some cookies. Then I had the bright idea to put pumpkin in it.

-¾ cup butter

-1 cup brown sugar (dark), packed

-1 egg

-1 tsp vanilla

-½ cup pumpkin

-A heaping tablespoon of corn starch (for less-cakey cookies, omit this)

-¾ tsp baking soda

-1 tsp salt

-2 cup flour

-A dash of pumpkin spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves) How much you put into this is up to you, but try to keep the amount of cinnamon double the ratio of the other spices. (ex. ½ tsp cloves= 1 tsp cinnamon)

-As many m &m’s as you view to be non-Satanic (or about 1 ½ cups to  a package of them)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar.

Add the egg, vanilla, and pumpkin.

Mix in your dry ingredients.

Add the M&Ms.

Drop onto cookie sheets and bake for 15-20 minutes in the oven.

Note: it took about 20 minutes to bake, but to be safe I would start at 10 minutes and work up from there. I still haven't figured out if my oven is messed up or not.

Writing Prompt #19

This next one was one of the first library snippets I wrote down. When I read it I got the sense of disappointment from what they were saying. But at the same time I saw the potential for joy, for delight that it was a boy. So I suppose it's up to the individual writer how this line is to be taken.

Writing Prompts #13-18

I've been in a writing prompt mood today. Rather than blow up the blog feed with post after post, I've decided to put the rest of today's writing prompts in one post.

Here we have the story of Billy. He's had an operation, yet to be determined, and now he's down for a nap. Why did he need an operation? Where's he going after he recovers?

Science fiction, has at times, changed the way humanity views the world and the future. In some cases the science fiction tells a tale of progress and a better way of living, but in other cases science fiction tells us about the darker sides of humanity. Where do these uncontrollable items fall? Salvation or destruction? Or is it yet to be revealed?

The Princess Bride is a tale of true love, and it has echoed through generations. My mother introduced the movie to me. I plan to introduce it to my children. The story is timeless (even if the special effects are not.) There's something about love that makes people want to read the story, as evidenced by Twilight's popularity (but don't ask me to give a rave review of that particular story) and Disney's tendency to turn horrific tales of murder and frustrated dreams into beloved romances (The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, The Snow Queen, etc.) We even like to watch stories of lost love, like One Day. So what kind of love is this prompt about?

Ah, the concept of memory. It's such a convenient tool for a storyteller to slip backstory into the current tale. What's this memory about?

In this prompt, try writing in the second person. Was it challenging, or did it strangely feel like the natural thing to do? There have been stories that have made use of the second person, like Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and not the third person impersonal that some people mistake second person to be. If you need help, perhaps imagine that you're watching someone go about their day, the day of their grandfather's funeral. What do they look like? What do they do? How do they feel?

I'm not sure how much introduction this prompt needs. To me it seems to be a narrator who's addressing the reader directly, like a friend. But perhaps this is too ambiguous?

Writing Prompt #12

I found this line a while ago and have been obsessed with it ever since. There's so many things that this could be referring to, and no matter what it is that's being used, we don't know how to use it. The implications of the ignorance are up to the writer, but I think there's no doubt that this line implies implications.

Writing Prompt #11

Villains. Dirty heroes. A love that never happens because a character's morals are too gray. These tragedies of humanity are elements that draw me into stories, and this is today's writing prompt. If you write about a villain, make him self-aware (by him, I mean it in the neuter form. Pick what gender you wish). Make him know he's a villain, that he's causing harm, and make him do it anyway. Make him have reasons to go against his principles. Give him a choice to be bad. If you choose to write about a hero, why is he bloodthirsty? Is he one of those types that should be a villain, but he got what he wanted in the end? Here's a chance to develop a 'deeper' character.

Pumpkin Puree

This was quite the adventure, and it's only half over! Halloween was just last weekend, and in the spirit of this holiday my spouse and I bought a pumpkin. We didn't end up carving it. So, post-Halloween I have a Jack O'Lantern size pumpkin with no reason to carve it (aside from my own enjoyment.) Naturally the solution to my problem was to turn this pumpkin into a delightful mush for use in pies, cookies, pancakes, ice cream, breads, and anything else I could think of. And so my adventure began.

Method 1:

Step 1: Remove the stem. As you can see, this was a very large pumpkin.

Step 2: Carve out the insides. I apologize for not having a picture. I'd actually done this step a few days ago with the intention of carving the pumpkin. That never happened. Instead, I stuck the pumpkin in the fridge, which was to cause unforeseen complications with this process later.

Step 3: Slice the pumpkin into pieces. I still had a bit of inside-gutting to do.

It was after this step that I discovered that this type of pumpkin is made up entirely of stringy pieces, which may change the texture of my finished product.

Step 4: Into the oven! The oven should be preheated to 350 degrees. The directions I was following said this step should take about 45 minutes, but since I'd put the (open and gutted) pumpkin in the fridge for a few days, it had dried out. About an hour and a half into the baking process my spouse, the engineer, suggested I put water on the pumpkin slices. They mushified within ten minutes.

Step 5: Scrape away the flesh.

Step 6: Process the mush however you wish, whether it's a beater, food processor, blender, or other fancy kitchen device. If your pumpkin is kind of dry, it's suggested to mix in a bit of water to get it to your desired texture. Too moist? Put it in a strainer or cheesecloth to drain away some excess fluid. By the end of this step you should have your pumpkin puree.

Step 7: Cook or store as you please. Since we ended up with so much pumpkin, we decided to put the extra scrapings into Ziploc bags and stored it in the freezer. This is pre-mushified pumpkin pulp.

Method 2:

Since the pumpkin was so big, I ended up only processing half of it in my first try. This gave me the opportunity to soak the extra pieces in water in hopes of rehydrating them, and a new process unfolded.

Follow steps 1 to 3 as shown above. 

Step 4: Place the pieces of pumpkin in a Ziploc bag (or bowl, if you prefer), fill it with water, and store overnight in the fridge.

Step 5: Put into a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes, or as long as is needed for the flesh to be soft enough. I ended up having to pour water on it, as before, but this time it only took an extra twenty minutes to cook.

This is what mine looked like when I took it out.

Steps 6 through 7 are the same as above.

Writing Prompt #10

Oh Wednesday. I think I'd enjoy it more if I got enough sleep last night, but there was incident involving a roasting pumpkin and I had to wait around for that to be dealt with before I could go to bed. So at midnight I plop down to sleep, and at about five in the morning something metal was crashing into our roof. At about seven thirty someone hopped up there to fix it, and by that time my body was done getting woken up and I was obliged to start the day. So, on the subject of incidents and happenstances, here's the next prompt:

An Apology

In redesigning my blog, my previous post about banana bread was deleted. I apologize to anyone who wanted to make this delicious treat and couldn't find the recipe. I have some bananas in the freezer ready for the baking, so I promise the post will be up again soon, with pictures. (By soon, I mean by the end of the week. I've got a few homework assignments that are bit higher on the priority lists.)

Writing Prompt #9

Today's prompt hunt was an exciting one. The temperatures dropped down here in Arizona and for the first time this semester I got to wear a jacket and scarf. Since the library was heated, I had no need to wear a jacket and had dropped it on the floor when wandering the bookshelves. The books I stood by weren't very inspirational, so I decided it was time to move on. Rather than pick up the jacket, I decided to kick it ahead of me and search the books near where it landed. (No jackets were harmed in this endeavor). This jacket found me some good lines. So, on the subject of useful objects, today's prompt involves focusing on an object.

Writing Prompt #8

It seems every other day I have a major assignment due, which means I'm in for a long haul of not sleeping. That's where the best ideas come from, right? I hope I can get through this without going insane. But everything coming due means that graduation is just around the corner, and I think that's the part of this I need to focus on.
For this writing prompt, I was so struck by the things I found in this book that I wrote down the title to read it after the craziness of graduation is over. So your ideas about this lovely sentence may be tainted by the source material.

Writing Prompt #7

This prompt is due to a very lazy Sunday. I must have laid around two hours now trying to find things to fill the time. I feel ideas stirring so perhaps it's only a matter of time before the words start coming in.

Writing Prompt #6

We just got done with a scary movie night and I'm trying to take my mind off of scary things. Maybe my heart is racing because of the caffeine? Either way, my mind is going a mile a minute and I had to churn something out. But then, I couldn't find my flash drive that has every writing project I've started since I was eleven (not ready to trust cloud storage yet. Call me crazy.) I assume I just left it at work again, but until then I have to fly blind and write a random scene, instead of continuing where I left off. But in the spirit of scary movies and the tail-end of Halloween weekend, here's my next prompt:

Writing Prompt #5

I'm a little excited about this prompt. When I opened the book for this one (I think it was a novelized movie script) and saw this line, I knew I had to write it down. There's so many directions you could go with this, no matter what genre you write. Perhaps it's because this prompt is only one word.

Writing Prompt #4

This next batch of prompts comes from the top floor of the University of Arizona library. After my internship I wander through the shelves, selecting random books and writing the sentences that stand out to me. It makes for great thinking material.

Writing Prompt #3

I guess now that I'm on the third prompt that they aren't quite "prompts." If it were a prompt it would tell you what to write, but these don't do that. I still like to think of them as prompts, though, because when I read them I think of what I would say next and how this chosen line would become a story. What characters would say these things? For me, the fact that it gets me thinking about things I could write makes it a prompt.

Writing Prompt #2

The second of my three snippets from that book of poetry:

Writing Prompt #1

This is the first of my writing prompts, courtesy of the UA Poetry Center. I think what struck me is that a line like this existed in a book with that title (hence why I included the title).

Life in the Now

Quick rant: My wedding is only 60 days away! There are a lot of things to be thankful for in this time of engagement, but a lot of stressful things to plan too. Like, a lot. And at the end of the day I think to myself, "I never want to see another centerpiece design again!" But when everything's said and done, I'll still be married to that guy I love, so I suppose throwing a fancy party for everyone else will be worth it.

But there's definitely a reason elopement is so glamorized.

Anyways, on to my intended post. On the day before Valentine's Day I entered a national poetry contest on a whim, expecting to be politely let down because someone else's poetry is "better" than mine. And I was. But I didn't expect to receive an email that said "your poetry was selected for a citation in recognition of its quality". I thought to myself "That's so cool! ...What in the world is a citation in recognition of quality?" So I did a little research. It turns out that there were 3 judges, and each judge had to select their top six poetry collections and rank them from 1-10. I can't say how the judges rated mine, but the fact that I was selected means that somebody liked it enough to rank it in their top six. When all was said and done, did I end up in the top six? No. I did, however, end up in the top ten. So, my random whimsical adventure landed me a place among the top ten collegiate poets in the nation.

I learned from this experience that I know how to work the English language and make people like it. I can write. (Not that I ever couldn't, but now I have proof from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies that I most definitely can work the laptop keys.) And when a person like me gets to the point where it's been nationally recognized that said person can write, it's time to move forward.

And so for the big announcement: I'll be entering a short story contest. For some, this seems like no big deal, but I've had this contest on the back of my mind for two years now and haven't had any material that I felt was good enough for it. Now I do. I have an awesome story idea, I have proof that my writing skills are superb, and now I just have to get through the drafting process and send it off. This long-time dream can suddenly be a reality.

Some of you still might be thinking that it's no big deal. It's just a contest. True. It is. But one of the judges for this particular contest is Orson Scott Card. You know, the guy that wrote Ender's Game? He's kind of a big deal, which makes this contest kind of a big deal. Last year's winners got to meet the cast of the Ender's Game movie. So in the world of writing, this is a big deal. It's quite the scary prospect, but it's high time I take a risk.