Well, if you read last month’s post, you know my personal project should be done by now. It would be done, except for a miscommunication. I have tried twice to submit the paperwork, only to be delayed by technicalities. Still, I think I have everything in line this time. It will be finished this coming week, and I can dedicate my efforts from that to writing.

Currently, my main writing task is to finish sorting my small files. I’d rather work on my drafts, but I had some ideas to improve them, and I can’t remember what they are. I know I wrote them down – and put them somewhere in the pile with all my other notes. Imagine me face-palming.

I found a writing prompt on the internet. As I remember it, it says something like, “Every person has one night in their life when they dream they spend a year in the most extensive library imaginable. You have had this dream every night of your life. Tomorrow is your tenth birthday.” I tend to ignore the sentence about age.

For some reason, my mind keeps returning to it. I have four or five different directions it could go so far. Or maybe it is one direction, but in multiple contexts. You see, I like the idea that the nightly dreamer falls asleep with their dog in their arms one night, and the dog goes with them to the library for that year. (And yes, the dog wakes up with all the progress in its training they made.) That is how the person learns they could take someone with them, if they can bring themself to risk their secret getting out.

As interesting and fun as this idea is, it is nowhere near a whole story. That is why I tend to think of it as four different ones. It could follow children and be set in what is, except for this year-in-a-library dream, exactly like our current world, or take place at an urban fantasy/supernatural boarding school for teens, or be about adults in a modern world with moderately segregated magic and mundane communities. Where is the line of plagiarism in a single person’s fictional portfolio?

Do you know some good writing prompts?