FlashFiction.Net

Unlike the hard-earned lasting epiphanies in stories, in life most (at least for me) are tiny and fleeting. They often come to me at the daily rest stops, sometimes in the shower, often at the tops of staircases. As an exercise, I decided to write some of these thoughts down for a day.

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Neither of the paths in Frost's "The Road Not Taken" is the less travelled one ("And both that morning equally lay.").

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The giving of a nickname to someone (if it isn't mean, of course) is such a cool thing, especially if it sticks; it's like a process of renaming.

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Chronic pain must be intolerable. "Tolerance" is a cool word with lots of interesting meanings.

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A thesis statement—a single, concise statement of purpose—might be nice to have in places other than essays.

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If you pair a reward, say a dog treat, with something the dog doesn't like, saying getting brushed, the idea is that the goodness of the treat will become part of the unliked thing. But why doesn't the badness of the activity, the getting brushed, get linked to the good thing, the treat, making treats less likeable? Maybe I don't quite grasp learning theory.

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With a flick of his wand. Letterman (from PBS's Electric Company) can turn rAmble into rUmble, but without that magic, I'm left wondering how these rambling thoughts might get me ready to rumble into story world. Looking them over, I like that idea of a nickname, of encountering someone later in life who gave you one. Isn't that what happens in The Glass Menagerie with Blue Roses? Well, no idea is exactly new, is it? Maybe the title could be "Her Name was Madison" and the story begins with "But he called her...."

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Well, my possibly bad idea aside, Friday's Prompt requires you to write thoughts down before they disappear into the ether. Then go do that voodoo that you do so well—and transform that "drivel" into "driven." Or something way more clever than that.