Fantasizing Fotos Not-a-Friday #3

There's no need for you to share the specifics of the mystery or of the explanation you seek.

Are you searching for a mystery? Or for an explanation? Or something else?

If you find either within this forest, in what form will they be?

Do you see anything else or anyone else either before or after your search?

~~~~~

Remember to think about the picture and imagine what is going on

before looking at what I wrote. No two people will imagine the same thing.

That would be weird.

~~~~~

Please accept my apologies!

I posted this prompt to our imaginations as soon as I saw the picture so I have yet to muse on my own responses.

I'll post about what I imagined later today.

Photograph borrowed from Grace Bridges' FaceBook page. Thanks, Grace!

Fantasizing Fotos Not-a-Friday #2

I didn't expect to post an entry today. The official arrival of Spring and my good friend Demaris had other ideas.

Demaris sent me a fun Jacquie Lawson animated card showing a "Many-Bunnied plus Labrador Prima-Ballerina ballet" set to  "The Waltz of the Flowers".  I love the cards Demaris sends from that site! 

I also appreciate how Jacquie Lawson provides recipients with an easy way to respond.

Below is a jiggery-pokeried version of the spring landscape artwork used on today's free Jacquie Lawson thank you card.

Ambiguous pictures work best when it comes to stimulating our imaginations but structured images also work.  All we have to do is give our imaginations a nudge or two. For instance we can try asking ourselves a question beginning with one of the following,

Who? What? Why? When? Where? Or use any other prompt that appeals to you.

~~~~~

As always, remember to think about the picture and imagine what is going on

before looking at what I wrote. No two people will imagine the same thing.

That would be weird.

~~~~~

I tried the reporter's friends: who, what, why, when, where, but not in that order. It was only partially successful.

Who?  (beats me)

What? (well, it's a house...)

Why? (Why what? Stop that! I already answered "what?". Well, sort of)

When? (Ooh! I know! Spring!)

Where?Hmm.. 

Likely in an agricultural region, though sometimes well-off suburbanites choose to build farmhouse-like houses. Not this house though, for at least two reasons: There's so garage and, so far as I can tell, no driveway. The path on the left is wide-ish but nowhere near wide enough for a car.

Speaking of the path, what is it made of? First thought: concrete old enough to allow a bunch of grass around each rectangle. Or maybe just the ground trodden flat and bare from a lot of use? On the other hand, look at how light the bare soil is! Is it really dry? If so, that seems out of sync with the healthy vegetation. Wait! Back up! Bare ground could look like this after just a couple weeks without rain. No need to imagine a drought! 

Enough "where"? I'd love to know geographically where but I'll let my subconscious work on it.

Backing up one question. 

When? Not recent--again based on the lack of a garage or a driveway. I'm going in circles --orbiting garages.

Wouldn't it be cool to see a bit more of what's in front of this picture! Except I don't need to. There's an actual road there, passing right to left, but it's not close. Drivers would be able to see the house.

Or, people in carriages? Yeah... No. Not that recently but the house is old enough to remember a time of horses and early automobiles. Look at the hint of English Tudor architectural detail under the eaves.

Maybe there's more of the Tudor design behind that huge green bush.  I don't think I like the bush! For one thing, it blocks my view of the front of the house so I'm left wondering about the Tudor design. Except it has to be there, doesn't it? There's a hint of it--to the right of the bush that intends to eat the front wall of the house.

That's all for now.

(By the way, someone needs to remove the oleander. It's pretty but--like ivy--it tends to do a number on structural integrity.  Oh, north England?)

Thinking Outside The Box (THT again)

NEW!
Send email to The Daily Scroll or to The Scroll Chamber Press 
scrollchamberpress@gmail.com

Go to "Now For Something Completely Different" for an extract from "The Last Battle"

(Tree House Tales fantasy novelette)

Thinking Outside The Box About Something Outside The Box

I knew I needed to write a book description and an author bio for my Tree House Tales antho but I avoided both chores until the last minute. Have you noticed how obligations appear more difficult the longer you procrastinate? The last minute for these chores arrived when the publishing process refused to complete its routine until I turned in my overdue homework.

I tried to write something suitable several times, loathed every effort and erased them all. In the old days, especially in old comedy films, crumpled paper would have been scattered all around my full trash can--or maybe knee deep around my chair. 

So here I was, owner of a blog about "Imagination, Inspiration and Creativity" who was defeated when she tried to describe her own work. It wasn't like I was writing a description of "Ulysses".

Why was this so hard? Simple. I was approaching the fearsome Book Description the way I imagined I dreaded writing high school book reports, specifically imagining writing a book report late at night after just skimming the last third of the book.

I didn't skim or rather scribble a rough draft of my Tree House Tales entries. Some entries were written nearly 30 years ago. I reworked and revised the already revised twenty short stories and the thirteen anecdotes or "whatevers" for nearly a year. I spent much longer than I'd expected choosing art and deciding which "Narenta Tumults" extracts to use with my "How I Write" afterword. 

I knew THT maybe better than I wanted to by the time it was ready for publication so I wasn't in the best frame of mind when required to describe the project.

There was a solution for that and it didn't involve Swiffer mops. Once upon a time, I was inspired to create everything in THT. Now it was time for all those odd little entries to do their share. Time for them to start 'thinking outside the box' of their individual stories, to inspire each other to create a book description that fit them all.

I was about to tell them this when they told me. They pointed out that all they lacked were hands--more specifically fingers--to key in their account. Since I was handy, they h/i/r/e/d/  d/r/a/f/t/e/d/ threatened me to do it.

Seriously. Threatened. "Write this up in the third person, or we'll chase away your Muse. Again."

So, with trembling fingers (and toes) I offer t/h/e their Tree House Tales Book Description.

"TREE HOUSE TALES is a fantasy collection of short fiction & non-fiction written between 1983 & 2014. THT was never a planned literary work nor was it a proto-collection awaiting critical mass. It—or rather /w/e/ they—were files saved in a common folder, once manila & now digital. Short stories, anecdotes, art, poetry and "beats-mes" kept company for as much as 30 years—all that time left to /o/u/r/ their own devices.

I theorize that works which originally had little in common—besides being file neighbors—began communicating in ways humans cannot begin to understand. I think they found they had commonalities they never guessed and not just that "We have the same author" thing.

Fantasy, folk tradition & mythic stories about the Fae discovered they had more in common than some author.

Horror & humor agreed to disagree. Maybe even work together. Deities and Demons, not so much.

Short stories written by and about Aliens compared notes with Tales by and about the Fae, i.e. elves, faeries, brownies or maybe clever mice.

Stoahs, dragons, cats and seabirds debated the existence of humans beyond their presence in fiction.

Wishbones & bear-eating fish learned about “reality” (whatever that is) at the feet of both humorous & scary non-fiction. (feet?)

Since none of their fellow literary prisoners were alike, the short works suspected that readers might vary in their tastes. There might be 100s or 1000s of people yearning to read about vengeful trout, queens of the Fae, unlikely aliens kept safe by Witness Protection, what hit men do on their day off, and why tech can be scary & hurricanes terrifying but sorcerers are much worse!

Critical mass just sort of happened. Short stories, anecdotes, artwork, poems, extracts & “beats-mes” discovered that they felt homeless & unread because they were homeless and unread.

Every anecdote & each tale from the Faerie Realm began dreaming about living where Ursa Major, Narenta & a Mother Goose pumpkin patch shared the same saunas.

Or finding their true home on the bookshelf of a compulsive reader. Or lurking inside a Kindle waiting to scare their reader inside out!

It was time to take their futures into their own … titles, join together & become a book! Not just any book but a COLLECTION!!!

Together they vowed never to rest until they had been read not once but many times!

Or until their author became a blithering idiot! Or both! Yes, both!

“Unread is unknown!

“Unknown is unread!"

~~~~~

TREE HOUSE TALES ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS

TREE HOUSE TALES is a collection of short stories, fantasy, humor, suspense, SF, horror & beats me; fantasy art, anecdotes, poems & novel extracts.

Here's the annotated table of contents.

  ~~~~~  

Fantasy Mostly

  ~~~~~

I Need a Horse;
A Sailor's Tale (mythic tale);
Sisyphus (interlinked horror story); 

Circles (aliens & daydreams);
Garden Mosaic (poems);
Daisy & the Paper-Mice (2 sides of a paper trail); 

The Windowed Door (prose poem);
Luckiest Hunter Ever (story outline, story-telling suggestions);
The Dragon's Tail Tale (tall tale fantasy); 

No Substitutions (Parental love & Fantasy adoptions);
Winter's Season (a what if);
Smashed Fairy Song Cycle (humor); 

Dream, With Joey (strange luck w/ a side of paranoia);
A Dream with Bowling (Confidential informant in hitman land. With bowling); 

The Queen of the Tor Sidhe (poem);
Shadow Harper (new take on an old tradition); 

The Pumpkin Smasher (Mother Goose vs the FBI. With trolls);
Gajit's Research Expedition (SF, undergrad research papers, culture shock);
Dingle (finish the story challenge); 

The Last Battle (novelette: faerie tales, horror & war) -- 

  ~~~~~  

Reality, Whatever That Is

  ~~~~~  

Preteens, Horses & Aliens;
Baffled by the Green Door;
Fandom 101;
How I Learned to Hate Phones; 

A Fannish Internet Sub-Creation of a Hyper-Dimensional Pocket Universe; 

Sherry's Cake is Major Hit at Coffee Hour Film at 11; 

EgoBoogling or what artists, authors, actors & musicians do when they ditch work; 

Catzis#1 by the human,
Catzis#2 by Khiva & Vartha;
Rainstorm Coming (scattered drops of poetry); 

Hurricane Hazel (an 8-year-old's memories);
Between Worlds (poem re Ocean City NJ)

END OF REALITY (that's a relief!) 

  ~~~~~  

How I Write

  ~~~~~  

Extracts from 5 Narenta novels: 

Seabird, Earthbow, Marooned,

The Gryphon & the Basilisk; Da Boid,Da Tree-rat 'n' Da Loser

A Smidge of Plot, A Glob of Character:

Khiva the Stoah (Earthbow and G&B);

Bert-and-Marsha-from-Hoboken (Marooned).

 ILLUSTRATIONS

~~~~~

TREE HOUSE TALES; A Collection of Short Stories, Non-Fiction Shorts, Art, and Extracts From Five Narenta Tumults Novels

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692348441/

Tree House Tales at Goodreads

Fantasizing Fotos Fridays #8

This Friday, I offer you --us-- two portraits of rather different people.

Feel free to work with either of them or both.

Before you begin, you might want to review parts 6, 9, 12 of "The How To Be An Explorer Of The World" (August 28 entry, near the end) and this past Wednesday's entry on "Interpreting What You See". Summaries of both may be found just below today's pictures.

@ Michael C Hayes

@ Joseph Dolderer

Summaries for August 28 and September 17 entries

This past Wednesday's entry was titled, "Interpreting What You See When Observing People".   A few points relevant to today’s FFF challenge follow, for those who "skipped school” on Wednesday.

I wrote, "Interpreting What You See describes techniques similar to those we've been practicing on Fantasizing Fotos Fridays...”

From the extract:  "Don't Be In A Hurry"; "Look Closely At Facial Expressions"; "Using your imagination to connect the dots is the next step."

Do you remember the “How to be an explorer of the world" list?

The 6^th suggestion on the list was, “Notice the stories going on around you.”

Followed literally, this bit of advice may or not be useful. If we're making only a conscious effort to see a pattern, we'll gather only surface information. Once we allow our imaginations freedom to create stories based loosely on our observations, our stories will be more creative i.e. unique imaginings rather than data captured on video.

The 9^th suggestion was “Incorporate Indeterminacy"

("the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system")

...No matter how much you stare at a person, study a photograph, try to analyze a strange sound or scent, or otherwise seek to document --everything-- , you will inevitably miss something... For those of us who are strengthening our imaginations and developing our creativity the gaps in our observations are a gift.

The 12th was "Trace Things Back To Their Origins" 

One suggestion I offered for practicing #12 was,  Ever wonder why one elderly person smiles frequently while another frowns? If we don't know someone well enough to ask them about this, our imaginations can delve into a past that we've created so that we can find an answer that suits us.

(I decided to offer pictures of two people for today's FFF while I was writing this practice scenario.) 

~~~~~

Remember to think about the picture and imagine what is going on before looking at what I wrote. No two people will imagine the same thing.
That would be weird.

~~~~~

Michael C Hayes portrait
I've been all over the imagination map when it comes to this man. 
When I chose the picture, I had the impression that he was a helmeted warrior from ages past.
Then the helmet reminded me of a fireman's helmet. I'm not sure why. It took some time to shake that idea. Time--and remembering that firemen's helmets typically have a light in the front and a long brim(?) in the back.

Back to ... well, nothing. The three ridges grabbed my attention next. Art Deco! But why would a man be wearing an art deco-styled helmet?
Would any period of ancient warriors wear a helmet that heavy? It really looks heavy! Conquistadore? Eh... Probably not. The helmet's the wrong shape. The more I look at the helmet, the heavier it gets.

I'm feeling guilty for studying the helmet and ignoring the man. I rather like his beard, I think because it's in a style that men have worn many times in history. Pseudo-history too. Didn't all the villains in Errol Flynn era movies wear a similar beard?
More wool-gathering! Back to his face. He looks strong, weathered(?) Old before his time... Rough work... A leader's experience.

Wait a minute! Where are his eyes?!? I see the bags under his eyes. Maybe the darkness above them are his eyes? The shadow from the helmet makes it hard to be sure.

All I'm sure of? I rather liked him at first. Now I'm wary. He's been through a lot. He's seen--and done--a lot. And as St Paul wrote, he doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Except Paul wrote about people who did suffer fools gladly. Who didn't...?

Wow! I'm way off track! I'm sticking with the tough, experienced leader. But, from who knows what period of history. Could be a fantasy world...*

~~~~~

Joseph Dolderer portrait

I'm out of time for now but I will get back to the young woman. I was sure of a couple of things as soon as I saw the picture. Something scared her recently. Maybe even traumatized her. She's in a safe place but she's afraid to trust its safety. Someone may be talking to her. She's trying to put up a brave front. It's working. And not. If the person talking to her can't read faces, she may keep up appearances. More likely not.

What's going on with her right arm? Is her right hand clutching her shoulder or something else? Or is part of her arm in a cast? The shape is odd, even allowing for the cloth draped over it. I suppose a cast might look strange if partially concealed.

I don't think the blue material is a coat. Not even a cloak. The pattern is very small and intricate. Maybe it's a bedspread? Something she snatched up as she was... Well, fleeing something No. Getting away just before she would have been discovered? But then, there's the maybe cast...

I hope she's safe and stays safe for a long time.

~~~~~

* Note to self. He'd be great in a Narenta novel. Sure that he's right with all that experience. And maybe he is. Or dead wrong, and following the lead of someone clever and manipulative. Okay, this is not good! I can't have yet another Narenta story premise murmuring, "Write me. Write me." Why does this guy have to be so mysterious in the intriguing sort of way? No! Do NOT come up with backstory!

Muse, I know you're here. If you want to help, help with something on which I'm already stalled! Where are ... Oops! Great! Probably pissed her off. Again.

Did you know when they leave in a huff like that, it feels like a black hole pulling all the prose out of your brain?

Story Tellers (repurposed Peanuts cartoon)

Liz DeJesus shared 

The PAGE International Screenwriting Awards's photo.  

Liz is a member of a Delaware writers group.

Aside from consciously thinking 'what the hell happens next', 

what nonverbal activity is likely going on in any creative person's brain?

The Other Swiss Army Knife

We all have at least one swiss army knife.

Probably not this one

Wenger Giant Swiss Army Knife: 85 tools, 110 uses, 100% bonkers

"…absurdly stuffed Swiss Army Knife: over two pounds in weight and nearly nine inches across, it has 85 different tools and 110 ways to use 'em...    $800.00"

Talking about the one you were given in elementary school is "safe"

as is the one you later learned to use in scouts & have used ever since.

Mentioning the swiss army knife inside your brain, not so much safe. 

This in spite of expressions like, "She's sharp-witted." or "He's got a mind like a steel trap." Only small children will imagine we have a tiny mouse trap inside our heads.

Okay, there's your best buddy but they already know about that off-kilter way you look at things and how you express your reactions. They've got it too. Looking at the world differently from your other friends and family probably brought you together.

But claiming our minds are like swiss army knives? Most people won't try to debate this--they'll just wisk around the other side of the jeans rack as fast as they can. Preferably before you prove your point by opening the top of your skull to show off that Wenger Giant. 

Yes, that would be strange... Please don't back away. My brain is full of imagination, not teensy knives. Wanna see? ...Phooey! Lost another one.

Back on track. We were all gifted with a brain capable of astonishing multitasking and filled with so much data we sometimes need our internal version of Mr. Peabody's "Way-back Machine" to recall details or even an entire incident. (Associated scents help us recall memories, by the way.)

We all dream during the REM stage of our sleep. (REM=rapid eye movement)  Yes, all of us do, even those who never remember their dreams when they wake. If I remember right scientists say the building blocks of dreams are memories, issues not yet resolved usually from the previous day and current sensory input. We may also be gifted with unexpected insight and guidance. Viable solutions to the real life problems in our waking world. Hence the advice, "sleep on it."

For example, you dream that you're chocolate melting into a candy bar mold. Only to wake up and find the kitten curled up on your chest, your spouse's head on your shoulder, and the beagle wedged between your knees and ankles. As you gently shift souces of excess warmth, thoughts kick in. Heatwave... 3rd day... lightweight shirt... TWO water bottles... icepack on neck... ooh... Uh...Mmph... electric bill...get car's A/C chec...

Last Friday on FFF #4, I wrote... "we have the freedom to create as many scenarios as we wish from whatever raw materials we choose..."

There's a never-ending supply of fascinating "stuph" stuffed into our versatile brains and "room" to stuph in even more. And that's "just" our brains. We're surrounded by an infinite variety of "raw material". First, everything to which we have sensory access in Creation. Second, and increasingly, everything we have access to via human endeavor --whether we want it or not. 

Each bit is waiting for us to notice it when we're conscious. Or, close enough to conscious to get on with it. 

"Each bit is waiting.." Did you find my wording uncomfortably anthropomorphic?  Maybe you're reading the wrong blog.*   

We may tweeze and examine, or split something apart gently in search of its origin. Or study the movements of a hawk, the sparkle in a child's eyes, the sniffing of a dog on a trail we can't sense--only guess at by the animal's actions. Fascinated we may even scribble a word or three. (If you write it down, you're more likely to remember.) We sniff, taste, touch if carefully. Poison ivy! Personal space issues! No matter where we are or what we're  else doing. We only need be observant about everything selected things around us--including other people--to enrich our lives and stimulate our imagination. 

Immersing ourselves in our environments may seem like nothing more than a time well to some. EgoBoogling is a time well! The practice I've been describing isn't, whether you make practical use of the experiences you've gathered up like wildflowers. O savor on your own. Once you get the hang of it, the practice is virtually effortless. More trouble remembering to turn it off when necessary, than to turn it on.

I hope you give this a try, not once but many times. Pass what you've experienced on to others. Use relevant bits in classes, at home or at meetings. Where possible, don't just describe the hawk's drift along the thermals. Add hints about your physical, even your emotional reactions at a given moment. The shiny leaves, the itch, the feelings of stupidity and doom. 

Of course, you can't insert your experiences randomly into every conversation. If you do, you'll find yourself involved in far fewer conversations as friends flee your imminent encroaching on their personal hearing space.

Much of which you've taken note may find a comfy home inside your memories, next to be noticed in a dream, a fascinating image or a flash of inspiration. I hear on good authority that everything we've experienced remains somewhere in our thoughts. Maybe if we shake our heads vigorously, out will pop the elusive image of our tenth birthday cake.  If desperate, we could visit the paint shop and clamp our heads... Yeah. Maybe not. 

Unless we're misers, we don't gather up stuff just to store it. If we're creative--and we all are--we can select and blend images and every other type of experience into something new. And free!**

Myriads of sensory experiences--not just from nature--are waiting in our seemingly barren offices, sidewalks and staircases, supermarkets, car washes. Thousands upon thousands of words from conversations, books, media. Allow your inspiration and imagination to pick whatever they wish. No limits. No boundaries. It's all free. Never tell the "I & I buddies" to put something back.   ;-P

Creativity will pitch in without your prompting. Don't set limits. Don't clamp down. Accept. Nothing yet? No pushing! Toss that wonderful pile of experiences up into the air like a pitchfork full of hay. Eat dinner. Do your homework, work on tomorrow's report, listen to a concert, play with your pet. Do anything but push. Remember the brain multitasks. Creativity & imagination work best when you don't stare at them, tapping your foot.

Just before you go to bed (pets shut of the room tonight), later in a dream, the next morning as you dump yogurt on your cereal--or your coffee if you're not yet awake-- a line of poetry or a lyric, a new image, the beginnings of a tune or an unexpected link between seeming disparate thoughts will gift themselves. 

Enjoy!

For more on how to gather the good stuph:

"Discover YOUR place in the world!"

And the Places of Things, Joy, Living Beings, Curiosity, Thoughts. All in your world...

"Discover YOUR place in the world!"  Photo: Brain Pickings

Maria Popova owns the "Brain Pickings" blog.
You can have her blog entry issues emailed to you. Cool, huh?

~~~~~

*     "Maybe you're reading the wrong blog."   No, please! Don't go! Give me another chance! It'll get weirder!
**   Unlike those expensive natural food juicer/blenders "Hurry! Call now, and we'll send you two!" (for the price of ten blenders).

Fantasizing Fotos Fridays #4

Pinned from magicalnaturetour.tumblr.com

Remember to think about the picture and imagine what is going on before looking at what I wrote. No two people will imagine the same thing. That would be weird.

Curious. Why is this slender tree protecting a moonlight egg?

Or is the tree hatching from it? When the tree matures, in a century or a hundred centuries, will it produce a host of new moons as its fruits?  

Notice the swirls of light around the tree? Do they echo light shifting about inside the egg? Or are they evidence of creatures flitting about, disturbing the air?

Tiny fairies? Bitsy beings battling the tree for possession of the egg? Is the tree a protector, a hatchling or is it a captor?

And the bright moonlight egg--Is it in fact our moon? Could it be a "New Moon" not in our common daily parlance, reduced to a mark on a calendar, but a new moon struggling to reach its proper place in the heavens?

I suspect the artist had something specific in mind when he painted this. Maybe it's "actually" cover artwork or a screen capture from a game. If so, I apologize for choosing something totally unambiguous to anyone who recognized its source.

But... Nothing has only one meaning or only one purpose. The fruits of your imagination are as true as the mundane role for which this painting was created. And we have the freedom to create as many scenarios as we wish from whatever raw materials we choose. 

The photo for next week inspired a few lines of dialogue in a scene from a story that doesn't exist.  :-D

Until then, happy creating!

Fantasizing Fotos Fridays #3

Fantasizing Fotos Fridays #3

What's the story behind these pictures?

copyright, Mountain Diaries,Ramyareddy

Remember to think about the picture and imagine what is going on before looking at what I wrote. No two people will imagine the same thing. That would be weird.

Male, female shapes blur in mist-soft light, entering with early morning sun haloed about them. Seeking refuge? A deed to accomplish? A truth tucked in riddled words?

Is this forest a host of mankind’s secrets? The smooth bridge betrays human intrusion. Tall trees, thriving undergrowth suggest ancient memories tucked within each brittle leaf. Something hastens to meet the visitors before they leave the bridge & tread into old memories. Do they know? The forest does. 

A Thought: Maybe they're walking away from us. Perhaps they're passing each other. Which of those three did you imagine? Something else entirely? Cool!

If you like, go back to the picture and assume one the other possibilities.

What's happening now?

And now?

Silhouettes provide less information so they offer more latitude for our creativity.

~~~~~

Just for a laugh...

"Oh, no! Not again!" (He wasn't always a bowl of petunias.)*

~~~~~

I'm cheating. I took this picture, so I know what it really is. 

Never let your creativity shut down because you know what something is. 

What do artists and authors use as the building blocks for their creations?

Anything we find. Fortunately there's a never-ending supply, no matter where we are or what we're doing. We use our imaginations to select, to rearrange and join our fragments in just the right way, creating something no one else ever has.

~~~~~

* Agrajag in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

I created the photographic building block above years ago while trying to scan my cat. 
No felines were injured in the creation of this blog entry.

Imagination-exercising #1

When you come home,

you find that the stairs up to the second floor are going down.

As you start down the steps to investigate,

you find...

Fantasizing Fotos Fridays

Krystine Kercher and a couple other Lost Genre Guild authors set up a LGG Pinterest board this past February. I knew virtually nothing about Pinterest back then--not even how to spell it! (I think it was MikeD who corrected me in an email.)  Being a loyal LGG member & author-buddy, I promised to post material on "the board". Whatever that was.

It took a couple of days for the board to go up and for Krystine to issue invitations. I decided to check out this "Pinterest Thingie" while I waited.
Big. Mistake.

In my opinion, every human being has at least one vulnerability in our personalities. There's the "fast women/fast cars", "fashionistas", or "15 Minutes of Fame" seekers". Then there's the "auto-fantasizer" who sees a picture or looks through a shop window at people talking and can't resist theorizing about what they're discussing. Maybe there's nothing going on, but that hardly matters! Give us a few minutes, and there will be!

I inherited this a/f/f/l/i/c/t/i/o/n/,  c/o/m/p/u/l/s/i/v/e t/r/a/i/t/  hobby directly from my maternal grandmother. She loved to "people-watch" whether from a boardwalk bench or as a passenger studying the people in surrounding cars. You daren't leave her alone with her own thoughts for a minute! Given no time at all, grandmom would share their background, motivations, place of origin & destination with you. Her theories were invariably plausible because she took time to observe details and weave them into the scenarios she shared with us.

Back to Pinterest--which insists you register if you want to play. Krystine hadn't mentioned whether we needed to be a member in order to access the LGG board. I chose not to wait to find out. So... back to
Big Mistake.

You remember the line from "2001: a Space Odyssey"? "It's full of stars!"
Pinterest is full of pictures, most of them photographs but with enough art to balance the mix.

I was hooked. Indeed, I was hooked to the point that I had created two boards of my own before my first pin on the Lost Genre Guild's board.  I have 5, 7, 9 boards now. My first two were "Oceans: Real and Imaginary" and "Ima Writerly Writer Who Writes".

And so finally to the point of this blog entry, "Fantasizing Fotos Fridays" and God willing all of its future progeny.

I introduced the "Ima Writerly Writer Who Writes" board like this:

"People say they’re not creative so they can’t write or do art. Nonsense! I bet you daydream? Anyone who daydreams has an imagination. As a fantasy author, I use my creativity to write stories. I love books! But I’m fascinated by photos & paintings. Ambiguous pix stimulate our imaginations. We wonder, What’s she thinking? or Why would anyone make that? or Why does that tree attract me/ make me feel uneasy? When we make up answers, that’s our imaginations making up stories."

I've added 159 pins--pictures with brief comments--to the IWWWW board over the last five months. Their subjects vary but form what I believe is a cohesive collection: books, quotations from respected authors, tips on writing, what I call "pep talk" quotations, tips on marketing and finally photographs or artwork gifted with a fascinating ambiguity. When I p/o/s/t/e/d/  pinned one of these pictures to the IWWWW board, I would wonder aloud what so'n'so was or maybe spin a theory about what was happening.

Pinterest doesn't allow pinners to make long comments. While anyone viewing someone else's pin can comment on it. doing so is very rare. I've found this a little frustrating.

So--as you've doubtless guessed by now--I intend to post a picture here every Friday with the short commentary that Pinterest permitted. I hope you will enjoy looking at the pictures and that you'll take a couple of minutes to offer your reactions of whatever kind. No two people will imagine the same thing. That would be way weird!

My comments will appear directly after the picture to make downloading/uploading easier. I hope you will --ignore- what I've written until you've studied the picture to your own satisfaction. I hope you offer your thoughts in the comments!

Have fun!