1,000 Writing Prompts.

One of the Blues Brothers'
Halloween 2010

Since November 2010, I have been pretty diligent about doing "morning pages", three handwritten pages each morning about nothing in particular. But I am trying to get my writing discipline back, so I next started making evening "writing appointments." These appointments are fine, but I'm not getting any work done on the current novel, and I need to get something going. So I bought the Kindle edition of Bryan Cohen's 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories, and More. So the plan is to start today with prompt 1 and use the book each night, in numerical order, to work on writing on demand on whatever the prompt says.

And so far, it isn't working for me. But soldier on I will....

1. Explain your most memorable Halloween, from the candy you received, the costume you wore, the environment of your neighborhood (if you trick or treated) and why it has dwarfed all your other Halloween experiences.


Wow. It's March, and Spring is here and the last thing I really want to think about is Fall and Halloween. The thing about my family was, costumes were not purchased. They were not "made" either, not in the traditional way where mother pulls out the Singer Sewing machine and whips up a Princess dress that would intimidate Cinderella's Fairy Godmother. Sure, mom put some thought into planning it, and like a good Manic Depressive, would have all the planning and acquiring of materials during an up-time. So there were plans, fabrics, etc. Unfortunately, by the time it was the actual week of Halloween, mom was in a valley emotionally and didn't have the energy to actually make the costume. Costumes were not made, therefore, they were assembled from things we already had. Her long skirt and white peasant blouse? Poof, I am a gypsy. Leftover white dress from Confirmation ceremony? Presto, a sixties Bride in a mini skirt, complete with veil.

I don't remember Halloween, until First Grade. I walked to school ever day with Raymond Darbenzio. We went to school in the morning, then everyone went home for lunch and changed into costumes and walked back to school for afternoon Halloween parties. (I am sure there were some kids that had to bring the costume to school and change there after eating cafeteria lunch, but they were not in my neighborhood). I had some kind of princess costume, typical first grader. The best part is that walking home from school, we trick or treated. The rules were that we couldn't go into anyone's home, because only pedeophiles would invite strange children in. And we were not allowed to eat any candy until we got home and our parents "checked for razor blades and poison." Which now that I am a mother, I know that it means, "mom pulled out the good stuff."

I'm not sure that Halloween "dwarfed" other experiences. When you have 46 Halloweens, after a while they do run together.  And making the holiday fun for my kids was way more fun than anything I could remember doing growing up. Which I guess is part of growing up.