the challenge
One insight I captured yesterday just didn’t want to let go. It intrigued me. It sparked my imagination — not with something concrete, but more with a feeling or an atmosphere.
Luckily, the Storify Prism channels this notion and turn it into a creative Insight. When playing with it, we should take a visual Insight we captured and use it as a trigger — a Seed — for a short story.
I can’t say the following Insight qualifies as short story. But this is where my imagination took me when I stared at the blue lock against the white tiled wall.
my insight
The small white square tiles were designed to look sterile. Somehow they screamed the opposite. Maybe it was their poor condition — some were broken, some were just anything but clean. Maybe it was that some were just brutally reshaped into rectangles. Maybe. Or perhaps it was the large old lock that nobody has bothered to use for years.
It was locked, but it wasn’t locking anything. There was no reason to. If there once was, there was nobody around to remember it. Or anything else or that matter.
It was quiet as if something is going to happen, but everything that could have happened already had. The future held no events in it — just consequences. There were no decision points and theoretical time-lines splitting from them. The next second would be identical to the previous one.
There isn’t any other option.
There won’t ever be.
reflection
I am not a fiction writer. I am not aspiring to be one. I don’t know if the 150 words above qualify as anything but a sequence of sentences with a vague, incomplete idea behind them. But none of these matters.
An important aspect of being creative and developing your creativity is experimenting and playing with things you are not used to. I don’t want to use the phrase “stepping out of your comfort zone”. I am not aiming to feel uncomfortable. What I am aiming for is exploring a new area, or a new medium, or a new line of thought just like a child does — with a playful mindset.
So I wrote a dubious piece of text which no one in their right mind would call “a story”. So what? I had fun thinking about it. I had fun imagining. I felt I am using parts of my brain I rarely use, or that I am creating new connections and associations in my brain. This is exactly what enables the brain of a child to develop. The specific result of this experimentation is not really important. The experience is.
mental notes
- Experiment with activities or media you are not used to.
- Experiment like a child. Forget the result — it’s the experience that matters.
now it is your turn… be creative!