And Now for the Mews…

It’s Take Your Cat to Work Day!

Okay, I totally made that up.

But that’s what writers do.

PROMPT: What kind of national “Day” would you like to see? Trust me, there’s a story in there.

And if you happen to be taking today’s special feline celebration seriously –

Good Luck!

Dumb De-Dumb Dumb Dumb

“Half a Brain”

As we continue our Brain Awareness celebration, be sure to do something REALLY DUMB this month…

“… good enough for our transatlantic friends … but UNWORTHY OF THE ATTENTION  of practical or scientific men.”

~British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison’s light bulb, 1878.

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is AN IMPOSSIBILITY.”

~Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

“Remote shopping (as in online shopping), while entirely feasible, WILL FLOP – because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.”

~TIME, 1966.

“I approached several lawyers who thought my idea was so crazy that they later admitted that they thought I had been sent by Candid Camera. And the hosiery manufacturers all thought the idea was STUPID or didn't make sense.”

~Sara Blakely, creator of Spanx, 2012

And this one from the book world…

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen heard from 123 publishers that their Chicken Soup for the Soul book had a STUPID title, had no sex or violence, and no one would read it.

Gives those “I’M WITH STUPID” T-shirts a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

PROMPT: Brainstorm 10 STUPID plot ideas or IDIOTIC art projects. Then really stretch your dumb muscle and come up with 10 more. You might be surprised to find that you start hitting pay dirt around #17.

I Could While Away the Hours…

Yes, my friends, Brain Awareness Month has rolled around again.

If you can read this, you have one.

But only one.

BE AWARE

Use it wisely.

PROMPT: Whatever you decide to write about today, write it out by hand. In 2010 researchers at Indiana University found that handwritten passages improved idea composition and expression more than the old hunt and peck. I’m thinking (with my thinker thingy, mind you) that those are two skills every good writer should have.

Divine Intervention

As I mentioned yesterday, I read Martha Brockenbrough’s Devine Intervention over the weekend. It’s a delightful book featuring an unusual guardian angel as one of the main characters.

And that got me thinking about those invisible helpers.

When I was in high school, one of my friends loved to tell the tale of how her dad had been saved as a toddler. Apparently, he had somehow managed to pitch himself out of a second story window, but was fortuitously caught by a stranger’s HUGE umbrella… on a cloudless day in Pittsburgh. My friend and her family remained unconvinced that the rescuer was a person of the human kind.

And then there was the time I was taking a long drive east on Interstate 90 in Wisconsin. It was late afternoon, and I was a sleep-deprived graduate student. Trust me, that is not a good combination. I was seriously fighting the doze – chugging the  coffee, cranking the music, shaking my head every 7 minutes or so – but nothing was helping. If only I could just close my….

That’s when I saw it. Just up ahead, in all caps at least three feet high, scrawled across the overpass – “I LOVE BARB DAVIS, DUDE!!”

My mouth gaped as I rolled along beneath it, then I completely busted a gut.

And for the rest of that 4-hour drive, I was absolutely, completely, altogether AWAKE.

Of course, the whole thing could have been a doze-induced dream, or some strange and statistically unlikely coincidence, but there is one thing I am absolutely sure of…

If I do have a guardian angel, that is EXACTLY the way he speaks.

Carry on, Dudes!

Have a  heavenly day!

PROMPT: Have you ever had a strange “woo woo” rescue moment? Remember, it’s all material. Also, exactly what kind of angel keeps watch over you? Give Alanis Morissette’s Guardian  a listen for a little inspiration. Rock out and write on!