Living in Halluzanation

The town felt quiet for mid-October, temperature average for the northeast.  Offshore breezes kept the bugs away.  The village of Halluzanation had sometimes-cruel elements which could close everything down for a couple of days.  Once you arrived, you just couldn't leave. 

Leaving doors unlocked became a common practice.  There hadn't been a break in since Father G's little boy took Gordon Nelson's truck for a joy ride into the sea.



Consider creating a persona for yourself. What lifestyle will you choose in Halluzanation? Will you own one of the businesses on the main street?   How will you begin your day?   Take a walk and tune into sounds, scents and textures of the village. Sniff with curiosity. What happens when the fog rolls in?

Creative Write:  Create a one page portrait of your persona.  Describe one day in your life in Halluzanation.  During the week return to write about interactions in the village.

Use these to spark your writing:

l.  Choose a theme for your village.  Does it represent opportunity, freedom, success, restriction or ?
2.  Write about an encounter with a tourist and a local.
3.  Use changing seasons to affect the village's character.
4.  What event or disaster could affect the village's character
(flood,earthquake, tidal wave, fire etc.)
5.  Is the village thriving or fading?  How does this affect y our persona?
6.  What happens "out of the picture" on all sides of the drawing?  Bring this into your narrative.

Create-a-Character

Take a break from your usual writing today!




Choose a character from literature or mythology. Create a different twist of fate. Or, bring him or her to the present day.

Ask a few "what ifs."

What if Zeus became CEO of Disney Productions?

What if Cupid ran an online divorce service?

What would Pandora do with her curiosity as a reporter for the "National Inquirer"?

What if Ulysses had taken his wife along with him?


Play!  Do a few freewrites to see where your character will take you.

What's RIGHT!

Today in yoga class, our instructor had us hold poses longer. In the middle of an intense "hold" he suggested we focus on what we were doing right.

It seems rare these days that anyone asks us to do focus on right. The media blitzes us with broken aspects of life and what needs fixing. Has America become a disability culture? Why do we need a disease-based model to describe aspects of our society?  Do we even have a model of right?

Thomas Armstrong in his new book, Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and Other Brain Differences suggests that instead of calling the above "conditions" dysfunctional, we should view them as aspects of the brain's function. He focuses on the brain as an ecosystem rather than a machine.

Brain differences among individuals become as essential and enriching as differences among plants and animals. He would like to use the concept of neurodiversity to reverse the trend to medicalize and patholgize people who respond differently to life's challenges.

Armstrong says, "Knowing we are all connected to each other just like ecosystems means we need to have a greater tolerance for those who neurological systems are organized differently."

Funding for brain research deals with what's wrong with the left hemisphere of the brain. Armstrong indicates, "Little research, however, exists on an area in the right hemisphere that processes loose word associations and may be the source of poetic inspiration,"

He hopes researchers, teachers and families will assist these "labeled individuals" to discover their places in the web of life rather than to let them exist as outcasts with dysfunctions. They need to learn what they are doing right.

Spend a day acknowledging what's right about your experiences, challenges and writing!

Creative Write: Today write about what you do right!