Play Me A Song On The Ghost Piano
Somebody Write This Book
Hi! Hello! I’m Kirk Reedstrom and this is the Somebody Write This Book newsletter where I send monthly, occasionally (okay, okay—often) absurd creative prompts to your inbox. You probably signed up for this on my website or on Twitter. If you’d like to unsubscribe, just click that link at the bottom of the newsletter. One click, all done, goodbye and sayonara.
A Prompt:
When I saw this image, I immediately thought it popped straight out of a Karen Russell story. I’m a sucker for tales about abandoned, discarded things, and their second lives, so let’s do a squiggle character of the musician who plays that piano. If you need a refresher on how to create a squiggle character, you can find instructions in my first newsletter. Ready?
Here’s my squiggle:
Here’s my musician:
I had a hard time figuring out what to do with all of those lumps, so I decided to turn my pianist into a pile of ghosts. Is that cheating? Nope. There are no rules, people! I will say that my pile of happy-go-lucky specters turned out to be a little more terrifying than I was expecting, but that was a welcome surprise. For these exercises, I like to use color I wouldn’t normally choose in my work, and to allow myself to wander in creative directions I typically avoid. Now I’m left wondering how terrifying it would be if I stumbled into that thing in the dark of night. Even (especially?) if it was plunking out Doris Day tunes on those decaying ivory keys.
If you want to keep exploring this story, here are some more questions to ask yourself:
What was the last song played on the piano?
Does the piano remember it?
What about the its first song?
Who attends the ghost concert?
Try setting a timer for 23 minutes and free write a little story that’s about 100-200 words from the perspective of the piano or its musician. You can go over or under that word count. You can write for a longer or shorter amount of time. If a story’s not your cup of tea, try a poem or four panel comic. Again, there are no rules!
Three Neat Things:
A Book:
I’m going to continue this ghost party with Kevin Brockmeier’s The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories. To take things full-circle, here’s Kevin Brockmeier discussing the collection with Karen Russell.
An Album:
Speaking of hauntings, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Arooj Aftab’s hauntingly beautiful album, Vulture Prince.
A Poem:
“Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall....” -From Russell Edson’s Let Us Consider
Thanks for reading. If you’re hankering for more prompts, you can read the archives here. If you really enjoyed it, forward this email to a friend or arch nemesis.
If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time (Hello friend or nemesis!), you can subscribe here.
-Kirk
www.kirkreedstrom.com