Perusing the Prompts

Good morning everyone!

I’ve been perusing this morning’s offering of writing prompts and noting how they might mesh together quite nicely.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt — my choice this morning — is WANDER
The Word of the Day prompt is WISTFUL
Fandango’s One-Word Challenge is WAIT
and Your Daily Word Prompt is OTIOSE
(Had to look that last one up; it means futile, idle, at leisure, or without purpose or function.)

Put these together and you can imagine someone wandering “lonely as a cloud,” as the poet William Wordsworth termed it, going along without purpose, hoping something interesting will present itself. Perhaps he’s rather wistful, pondering something he’s done —or not done. Or maybe he feels a little lonely and wishes he had a friend to walk beside and converse with.

In the course of his otiose ambling through the lovely park he pauses, perhaps to watch the ducks in a pond or chivalrously step aside to wait as a slow-moving senior passes. Shall we give our percipient rambler “a host of golden daffodils” to gaze at? Or maybe the falling leaves of autumn, allowing him to contemplate the brevity of life. But then he continues on his way, thinking maybe a strong cup of coffee at the local bistro will perk him up.

Oh, wait! Coffee and writers go together, so let’s make him a writer puzzling over a plot twist. His wandering isn’t otiose after all; as he walks he’s working out scenes in him mind, hoping he can get fresh ideas for that manuscript he’s been working on. Now we can understand and feel with him in his quandary. Haven’t we all been there, wondering how to make the characters believable or get them out of the mess we’ve put them in?

But wait! There’s one more writing prompt to work in. Daily Addictions has given us the word HOSE.

So, en route through the park, our writer is suddenly smitten by another angle for his book. Driven by his brainwave and no longer perceptive of his surroundings, he trips over a hose the gardener’s been using to water one of the flower beds. He staggers, loses his balance, and lands in a patch of freshly puddled earth. A.k.a. mud.

A small price to pay for a brilliant new angle.