Writing Prompts: follow up

Between facebook and blog participation, I have three writing prompts to work with after Monday's blog entry. This one is most likely to yield results, simply because I've written songs this way in the past:

I think it would be totally cool (fittingly nerdy) to do a medley or series of songs that serve as odes to your favorite books and/or book characters. Even if the songs come out a little silly.

I agree.  Book characters are fun to write about, because creative interpretation of them also seems to yield different insights to the characters than plain old analysis does. In addition to my song, "Ophelia," I've also written a cycle of four songs (meant for dramatic performance) from the point of view of Nina, from Chekov's The Seagull.  I learned a lot more about her character that way than I think I would have from a traditional paper.  So, perhaps this prompt will inspire some songs.

Another prompt:

...What would you say to your 10-year-old self growing up on Horseshoe Trail? [The name of the street where I grew up].

This one is very difficult for me. It's hard not to make something like this too sentimental or cheesy, like a bad country song -- something like: "remember the laughter and summertime friends/ and hang on to summer, 'cause summer always ends..." On the other hand, I might be prone to a certain level of bitterness in talking to my 10-year-old self: "When it's time to go to college, don't get a music degree; the industry will fail and never recover..." But that's not very helpful, and doesn't make a good song. So, I'm going to have to think hard about that one.

The final prompt is more of a brainstorming exercise:

Recently I was given a prompt to make two lists that characterize me--one of just physical traits, another of personality traits--then make those lists with traits that don't charictarize me, or traits of "not me". It was a telling and helpful exercise.

This I completely intend to carry out, because it involves making lists -- something I love to do.

As promised, if any of these writing prompts yield a song or songs, I'll post it here.

And if you come up with any creative results based on these writing prompts, I'd love to hear about it!