Writing prompt: beautiful places
Autumn leaves at Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens
Beautiful places inspire me.
Today I am posting a series of photos taken at one of South Australia’s beautiful places, Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, about a half hour drive from the Adelaide CBD. It is a wonderful picnic area all year long, though one should perhaps avoid it on really hot days which we occasionally have in summer. (The park may be closed on a handful of days a year when there is a high risk of fire.)
The gardens consist of hundreds of different species of native and exotic plants. There is something of interest for visitors around the calendar. And there is plenty to inspire the poet, story writer and even song writers. Even if a poem or story does not come from your visit, just wandering along the many walking paths in the gardens will refresh you so much you will return to your writing room ready to pour out words again.
Writing prompt:
Write about your “beautiful places”, locations you love to visit and which inspire you to write. This may be a poem, lyrics for a song, a short story, a blog post or even a scene in your novel.
Good writing.
Autumn leaves at Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens
Autumn leaves at Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens
Writing prompt: autumn leaves
Autumn leaves in the Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens
I love autumn.
Not only is the weather where I live very pleasant – most of the time – but we also have the delight of watching the leaves turn colour and fall, blanketing the ground in a carpet of gold. It’s the stuff of poetry.
Talking of poetry: how about writing a poem about autumn, autumn leaves or beautiful, calm, balmy weather. Or anything else today’s photos inspire?
Good writing.
Autumn leaves at Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens
Writing prompt: close encounters with birds
A friendly visitor to our picnic
Last week my wife and I went for a drive from our son’s home in Artarmon, Sydney, to Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. We stopped in several places along the way and ended up at West Head Lookout. From here you can see over Broken Bay and some of the beaches and islands in that area.
At one point my wife was sitting on one of the seats admiring the view when her phone rang. It was her sister calling from South Australia. She was so distracted by the conversation that she didn’t notice our visitor, an Australian Brush-turkey (see photos). The turkey just casually wandered around us, merely a metre or so from us. It was a wonderful photo opportunity.
Writing prompts
I love having close encounters with birds and the natural world of animals. I’ve written many poems about birds.
- Write a poem about a close encounter you’ve had with a bird, animal or other creature.
- Include animals, birds and the natural environment in a short story.
- Relate an incident where you were surprised, frightened, amused or amazed by a close brush with a bird, reptile, fish, animal or some other creature.
Read more about Brush-turkeys:
Australian Brush-turkey, West Head, Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park
Poem #47 Visitor
Visitor
He saw me first.
As I came around the corner
Of the shed he straightened up,
Looked steadily at me coming his way,
Alert, observant like a soldier on duty.
I had glimpsed him watching me
Despite being partially hidden
In the shadows of the trees.
I moved slowly, not desiring
To frighten him into flight,
Wanting to get a closer look,
Pleased he had come to visit
Our little patch of scrub.
I obviously came too close
And he bounded off away from me,
His long, curved tail counter-balanced him
As he escaped, though I meant no harm.
Come again soon.
© 2013 Trevor Hampel
All rights reserved.
Kangaroo
A poem a day
Every year as November rolls around, I think about joining in the National Novel Writing Month – or NaNoWriMo for short.
The idea is to challenge yourself to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That’s an average of 1667 words per day. That is quite a challenge to many writers, myself included. On an average day I am generally happy with 500 – 1000 words. On a good day I might stretch this to 1500, and on a fabulous – albeit very rare – day I can even get over 2000. I think my best day was a super 3000 words, but that mean about 10 hours of work.
I considered joining the challenge again this year, but realistically I just don’t have the time with my many responsibilities outside of my writing.
Poem a day
So instead I am going for an easier, softer and far more achievable goal: a poem a day for the month of November. So far I’m on track. I might even publish a few of them here on this site. (The first one appeared here.)
I have done this successfully before. On a six week holiday in Ethiopia, Morocco and Spain we were away for 45 days and I wrote 55 poems. Admittedly, some of them were haiku, but I achieved my goal. And I wrote some great poems as well.
Thought: perhaps I will create a new habit and write a poem every day of the year. Now that’s a challenge I can achieve.
Good writing.