Here’s today’s prompt if you want to have a go at it. It looks like a fun one to me. Maybe I’ll write “11:45PM”. The first line will read “I learned how to make a phone call”.

For today’s prompt, write a time of day poem.  In fact, make the title of your poem the time of day.  For instance, “5:54 a.m.,” 2:23 p.m.,” “Midnight,” etc.  Then, write your poem.  Of course, different things happen at different times of day.  So have fun with it.

The volunteer’s daughter:

6 PM he is paged to dispatch at the station
Midnight to a smoke investigation
2AM it’s a medical emergency
someone’s child is choking
3AM I’m awakened
by my father’s arms around me -
I know another child has died.

Here’s what he wrote:

Today’s prompt is to write a poem in which you imagine the world without you. Since my favorite movie (It’s a Wonderful Life) plays with this idea, I’m surprised I’ve never used this prompt before. The world could be a much worse place without you, could be pretty much the same, or I guess, it could even be better. Anyway, it’s interesting to contemplate our individual contributions to this planet in ways small and large.

I was playing with ideas for a poem earlier today but came up empty handed so far. Do I want to imagine that I was never born, or just went up in a poof of smoke yesterday…maybe something in-between? I’m thinking I’ll try imagining the world without the me that I have become. Hmmmm…

If I get lucky, I’ll have something to post before I go to bed. What do you come up with using this prompt?

So welcome to my treehouse. You’re welcome to come in and hang out and be yourself here. You’re ideas don’t have to be completely formed to be worth mentioning. A poem can be one hot line you want to build something around. A story idea can be just that, an idea. Here grammar is not king and you don’t have to know what the ending is before you begin.

I didn’t sleep through k-12 but I struggled. It would be years after public school that I would get my first pair of low vision reading glasses. I had a learning disability and was told I had ADD. So here I am at 46, a poor speller, with a Fundamentals of Grammar book in one hand and my laptop in the other. I don’t know how to write fiction. I don’t know how to tell a good story. But I’m going to find out if I can learn.

I have been saying I’m writing a non-fiction book for nearly 3 years and have about 12 first chapters and reams of uncategorized ramblings. As much as I would like to write that book I think I want it to write itself. I’ve lost my way and my enthusiasm for it. I am pretty sure it would be an okay book. Maybe even good one. When I sit down to work on it, however, it feels like learning a language I don’t want to speak. At least it does right now.

I need to lube my joints. I miss making something from nothing or something from something else. In my visual arts I build stories out of objects. I want to see if I can learn to build stories out of words. So I’m going to try.

First lesson: Write. I’m working my way through the book Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver. Today I learned that you’ve gotta make your characters suffer. A lot. And then see how they deal with all the trouble you keep tossing in their way. Seems so mean. Do I conger an amalgam of a few people that have rubbed me the wrong way and sic the dogs on them? That might actually be kind of fun. Then there’s the idea that if I design this Franken-fuck do I want to spend all my writing time with them? I get ahead of myself.

I’m doing the exercise on page 38 (of my addition of the book) where Cleaver has given a few scene ideas to see what I can do with it. The scene I’ve chosen to try is:

“Trapped on a ski lift, on an airplane, or in a taxi with someone who starts talking or acting strange. The want is to be left alone, to be at peace to e safe. The obstacle is this weird person who is acting strange and maybe is dangerous. “

Earlier in this chapter the author explains that the character has to have a want and an obstacle. (hope I’m explaining this right). A big want, not just a want like “I’m thinking I want some chocolate milk.” More like “if I don’t get the hell out of this cab this wack-job with the bang-the-ho music jacked-up is going to do something really freaky that if I live to tell about it will damage me for..ever” want. The obstacle is the wack-job of a drive who has a want just as big as the characters. That’s all I know so far. I’m going to try and write a scene. My character is trapped in the taxi. Wish them luck because if I do this right, it’s going to get ugly.

This was my first domain and I named it as I asked the question “why not see if I have anything meaningful to say, lots of people write and share their ideas, why can’t I?….WhyNotRachel was born. I had just closed down my studio and was tapering down my work as a professional visual artist to test drive a dream of expressing myself through words both written and spoken.

I was a late speaker, so much so that my folks consulted experts about my silence. But I begin writing even before I knew my A B C’s. I would mimic my mother’s writing and take my scribbles to her and ask what I had written. She would pull me onto her lap and read me the amazing story I had just penned. I was a child genius!

I always have loved words, and now I talk, sometimes too much. I have, however, lost the confidence I had as that preverbal scribbler. My spelling is awful, my grammar and punctuation stunted. I write a lot but most of the words remain in notebooks, drafts and saved word documents.

This is not a revaluation or declaration post. I can’t say how much of my words will actually see the light. I just know that I want to make a place for it to happen. Like an empty room, I can put some furniture in if I find some pieces I really like.

I do know that I would enjoy having this be a place for sharing. If I have a vision at all, it is to be able to have short story and poets be able to post their work and be able to get honest, thought filled critiques on their work. The other idea I have that I just think would be a blast is to create collaborative poems using twitter tweets. #TwtPoem. See the page on this site about this idea, coming soon.

It will be dusty in here for a while as a move old stuff off the site and give this place a face lift. Empty the room.

Rae Z Cornell @ExquisiteTweetz

So what do I mean by today’s thought? Let me give you an example to start this conversation out.

I remember hearing a statistic on NPR that 85% of people who are legally blind or blind are unemployed. I thought, of course, no one wants to hire a blindie, I knew it wasn’t MY fault that I was such a lose, I mean…

Then I thought about it more (from a less self deprecating perspective). I got a little ticked actually. I knew plenty of smart people who have sight impairments, me included. WHY then were we having such a hard time finding employment? Where we having a hard time finding employment? We must be.

It has got to be because of accessibility issues right? Like finding transportation to and from the workplace, that must be it. Or no one wants to sit in the cubical next to some talking computer all day, it must be discrimination. Or maybe it’s that blind people are perceived as not being as bright as their sighted applicants, as Gov. Paterson of NY feared an SNL skit reinforces.

Well crap, I may as well get my cup of pencils and go find some corner to stand on.

OR MAYBE the number is so high, 85%, because most people become sight impaired or blind later in life as older adults, as RETIRED ADULTS, adults who are not working any longer. Maybe?

Most the people who are sight impaired or blind that I know, of working age, are in fact, umm…working. Not just as piano tuners either. Not race car driver (yet) but all kinds of career choices based on interests not on sight.

Consider the information you hear on TV, even public radio carefully. More importantly, consider the information you are feeding yourself with equal or greater scrutiny. Your own information may be askew as well. Pay extra special attention to those “facts” that say things like “I can’t, I won’t, I don’t and I’ll never…” They may actually not be telling the whole story of who you really are.

Yesterday she wrote a blog entry that I think is an important expansion to the thoughts I shared in my last post. She picked up where my expertise leaves off. So to both introduce you to Patty (if you don’t know her already) and also share her thoughts about spouses of disabled war vets, I’m reprinting her post. Here it is:

“…If you’re married to someone learning to go after his or her dreams with a body that can’t do some of the things it could do before, it’s going to throw some new obstacles in the path to your dreams, too. People are going to treat your spouse differently now. And it’s going to affect you. Your spouse must handle many things differently now. It’s going to affect how he or she handles your relationship, too.

Expect love. It won’t — it can’t — come in the same packages as before, but it will be there. Find other ways to get the other forms of help and support you need to follow your dreams.

Assume love. Don’t jump to conclusions about the meaning of a harsh or discouraging word or a change in daily rituals. You’ve both got a lot of adjusting to do, and you’re going to overadjust a few times before you get it right.

Look for third alternatives. Honor the dreams. Respect the efforts. Don’t ever think your first idea or two is all you get to choose from. Build the new rituals, the new furniture layouts, the new traditions, the new chore-sharing arrangements that build the new life and move toward the lifelong dreams that make you both whole no matter what.”

Click HERE to visit Patty’s blog

Click HERE to visit her Website