On Thursdays I normally share random thoughts I plan to use as writing inspiration or prompts. It’s been a cold week here in Stockholm and part of me wants to do nothing but curl up in bed with a good book while the cat sits on my head. Tomorrow night it’s supposed to go down to -19. Trust me, I’ve asked myself all week why I willingly gave up California and Georgia sunshine for this. But as much as I want to burrow under the covers, I can’t until I’ve posted my Thursday Thoughts post =).
So, besides the cold, what am I thinking about?
Parties — This weekend we’ll celebrate my son’s birthday with a handful of his friends. I guess there’s something you should know about me. Birthday parties are not my favorite thing. For one thing, people always have these high expectations like cake. And fun. And other hosting stuff. But mostly he wants cake. Most of the time, I can steer him towards something reasonable, like ice cream. Didn’t work this year. No. This year he wants a Lego cake. Should be fun, right? I’ll just tell him there are many ways to interpret the word Lego. Seriously, if I could hire someone to do the whole party hosting thing while I sat back and took photos of my son’s adorable face, I would. I don’t have that option, so this weekend I’ll be playing hostess and to keep me going I can secretly think about using a party as a setting for a story. So many opportunities!
Giants — Three empty cans of Green Giant corn are sitting on my counter, waiting for me to chuck them in with the other recycling (Swedes recycle everything, probably even old socks). Every time I go to fix a cup of tea these giants keep staring at me from their tin cans. I wonder if they’ve heard about the party? I’m not sure what giants would do at a party, but that’s what makes it so interesting, isn’t it? Anything and everything is possible.
Stars — I keep seeing stars. I see them at night, of course, but I see them other places, too. Especially this past week as dozens of space pictures popped up on Facebook the past couple of days, usually accompanied by a photo of David Bowie and either a quote or the song Life On Mars? written on it. So I’m thinking about David Bowie, of course, but the images of the stars stay with me long after I’ve turned off my phone and I’ll find myself wanting to paint a picture of them in the middle of the afternoon. But it’s not just that. When I look at the stars, I still have this child-like fascination about them. This is also why I love science fiction and fantasy. These are the genres that ask, ‘What if . . . ?’ and all of those stars, so far away from us, so easy to forget, become not so abstract anymore.
Seaweed — Yeah, I’m not sure where this came from. Maybe it came from this poem by Raymond Foss. So much vivid imagery, but my mind keeps going back to the seaweed. I guess because when I lived in California, we were less than a 5-minute walk from the beach and everyone envied us. What they didn’t realize is seaweed covered the beach. Smelly, rotten, foul-smelling stuff. ‘Oh, you’re so lucky to live two blocks away from the beach!’ they’d say. We didn’t go to the beach. Because seaweed had devoured it.
A strange group of thoughts this week for a story. Seaweed parties and giants. I don’t know what will come out of it, but it’ll be fun to read, that much I can guarantee.
Happy Thursday!
Cas Blomberg Communications 