Category Archives: Prompts

February Word Challenge, Day 6

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Prompts Leave a reply

(If you’re wondering what this is about, read this.)

My five random words for today’s exercise are order, tile, ladder, sail, shampoo.

Chosen word for free association: sail
jib, spinnaker, solar sail, IKAROS, alpha centauri, Breakthrough Starshot

Exercise:
Twenty years from Proxima Centauri, a swarm of tiny, sail-driven spacecraft break orbit around a used up Earth, riding beams of light, scouting new homes for reckless, feckless humans. EllE, the AI responsible for keeping the laser pulses trained on the sails, recalibrates the aim dozens of times per second, unable to grasp the irony and futility of her actions as missiles rise from their silos around the globe.

February Word Challenge, Day 5

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Prompts Leave a reply

(If you’re wondering what this is about, read this.)

My five random words for today’s exercise are composer, coronation, prank, brooch, fax.

Chosen word for free association: fax
alternative, archaic

Exercise:
Watchdogs have figured out how the new Trump administration is circumventing White House cell phone security rules. Conway says they are using “alternative fax.”

(I’m tweeting that one separately, I think.)

February Word Challenge, Day 4

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Prompts Leave a reply

My five random words for today’s exercise are frog, shirt, egg, candle, tank.

Chosen word for free association: tank 
The Tank, Rangely, sound

Exercise:
Reverb. Sound, circling and climbing. Sussurations swirl in a space made for slaking the thirst of steam-powered iron dragons from last century, now repurposed to send messages in song.

(This post is a reference to The Tank, near Rangely, Colorado.)

February Word Challenge, Day 3

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Prompts Leave a reply

My five random words for today’s exercise are holly, young man, arch (again?), poverty, and fever.

Chosen word for free association: arch  (since it seems to be insistent)
lintel, keystone, rival, enemy, angel

Exercise:
All of the arches in Rylaain were magically imbued with the souls of people. But over time, even souls fade, and centuries on, only one arch remained among the rubble of its peers to tell the tale of their civilization: the Temple Arch. There’s something to be said for the permanence of an angel’s soul.

February Word Challenge, Day 2

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Prompts Leave a reply

My five random words for today’s exercise are pin, mosquito, arch, film, and porch.

Chosen word for free association: film
movie, thin layer, protective, false, obscuring, veneer

Exercise:
Of his former self, only a thin surface layer still remained. The transformation had taken years, and now the only recognizable thing tying him to the past was an invisible veneer of guilt, clinging to the surface of his skin like living armor.