After too long away from creative work due to personal reasons, I needed something to reinvigorate my brain. Thankfully, a loved one noticed what I needed and put together a 14 day writing challenge to get me back into my sweet spot.

I plan to post about them here as I go, and hopefully share some of what I wrote with you. Maybe you’ll find some of these challenges worthwhile. If you do (or if you don’t), let me know and we can compare notes.

I just finished day two, and am having fun so far.

Day 1: Turn on your TV. Write down the first line that you hear and write a story based on it.

Not having cable, I put a random Twitch channel on my PC and the first line that I heard was “60 seconds remaining”. I quite like the story I wrote (the last minute of a man aboard a self-destructing space ship) so I won’t be posting it on this site as of yet. Another draft or two and some editing and I’ll try submitting it for publication.

Day 2: Find the 7th book from your bookshelf. Open it up to page 7. Look at the 7th sentence on the page. Begin a poem that begins with that sentence and limit the length to 7 lines.

The seventh book on my shelf is 999: 29 Original Tales of Horror and Suspense. The seventh sentence on the seventh page is

To be polite, Chirkov said he would consider the acquisition: evidently a great bargain.

Not the best first line to a poem, for sure. I used it verbatim originally but below I used some creative license to lop off the first few words. The rest of the poem is unchanged from what I originally wrote.

He would consider the acquisition:
evidentally a great bargain.
But he knew the superstition
That a deal made in gypsy jargon
Has hidden in it a silent condition:
A new plot in the family garden
And an untimely visit to the mortician

Well, poetry is not my strong-suit, but it was fun to try to write something that worked.

More challenges to come over the next few days!