Thursday Thoughts – Fiery Hair and Snake Skin

Last week I began a new weekly post on the blog called THURSDAY THOUGHTS, where I share with you random thoughts I plan to use as writing inspiration or prompts. So far, it’s a success. Okay, so only one week has passed, but I did take last week’s thoughts and plugged them into two short stories, one of which I’m in love with, which counts as success in my book =). I’m hoping I’ll get some good material out of today’s ideas, too.

Today I’m thinking about:

• Saint Lucia – On December 13th every year, Sweden celebrates St. Lucia, the beautiful blonde with candles stuck in her hair and a red sash around her waist, who was killed for refusing to renounce her Christian faith. At least as far as one story goes. Or maybe it’s just the darkest night of the year (close enough) and they wanted a creative way to light a bunch of flames. Most schools have a charming celebration and the kids can’t wait to dress up as Lucia, or the gingerbread man. I’m not quite sure how he fits into the story, but he’s joined by Tomte (the Swedish version of Santa Claus), a bunch of hand maidens and star boys. Somehow the whole motley crew teamed up to help out Lucia during her persecution. Another story has Lucia poking her eyes with a needle and to mark this occasion Swedish children everywhere bring a tray with eyes on it. Either that version of the story is frowned upon now, or it happened somewhere else because I have yet to see the schools serve up eyeballs for their Lucia festivals. Talk about story ideas! Women with fire in their hair and eyeballs on a tray. Or, I suppose I could keep it cute. I don’t know why I gravitate toward the strange things . . . It could be cute and strange, though. Right? I mean, if I take the eyeballs off the tray.

• Meetings. Ugh! We have a meeting later today so meetings are on my mind. It’s a good thing I can live vicariously through my writing, because while meetings are a necessary part of life for most of us, I think we should spice them up more. So when I think about meetings today, I’m going to think about the craziest, most bizarre meeting I can come up and see where that takes me. Why can’t we bring animals to meetings? What if we all randomly inserted a phrase after every thing the speaker said? What if we sat through a meeting blindfolded? What if every five minutes we had to get up and switch chairs? What if the Mad Hatter were running the meeting? What if we took an item of clothing and gave it to the person next to us and they HAD to wear it? What if a race of people had opposite meetings and invited the one guy who didn’t get the memo to the meeting? What if you had to come to the meeting, not only dressed like, but also acting like a character from the past? Tesla? Billy the Kid? What if your boss did this every week and you were so sick of it? Lots to think about here. Perhaps I’ll even do it while I’m in the proper, official meeting.

• Hats. This one feels natural after Lucia wearing a crown of candles on her head and bringing up the Mad Hatter. Who wouldn’t think about hats? Tall hats. Berets. Sombreros. Baseball caps. Stetson cowboy hats. Those little hats with the beer cups attached. Inspector Gadget’s hat. It’s odd how little I read about an awesome hat in today’s literature. I’m going to have to change that. Writers, remember to show the hats some love.

• Snake skin. Last week I listed wicker as a texture. This week, I’m thinking about snake skins and how they feel rubbery, and scaly, and sometimes a little rough all at the same time. I’m scared a snakes, though, so when I use this in my writing, my characters are sooo not gonna be scared of snakes.

I guess that means this week’s challenge is to use a woman with fire in her hair, a meeting, a hat, and snake skin in whatever pieces I work on. Should be fun!