Creative Prompt (Lost shoe series #3): A Tiny Rainbow

Jan 21, 2022Jan 7, 2022 / The Magpie at Midnight / Leave a comment

There is something equally charming and forlorn for me in seeing a lost child’s shoe. This one in particular caught my eye because of the little rainbow on the side of it. I took the photo in gloomy weather on a shabby part of a main road, and the little flash of colour caught my eye.

The shoe remained there for a few days after I took the photo, moving up and down the pavement a little bit, perhapse being moved to more prominent locations by a pair of helpful hands, before it eventually dissapeared. Perhaps it was finally reclaimed by it’s owner.

Like the other two prompts in this series (you can see them here and here), this photo makes me think of crime thrillers or police procedural TV shows. A child’s shoe on the pavement could be a good opening scene to a story in these genres.

How could it have got there? What could have happened?

I’m not a huge fan of creative exercises, so it’s not my habit to tell people what to do with these prompts. There are lots of options – a scene, some flash fiction, a short story, an idea for a short film or a physical piece of art. If you do have a go with this one and would like to drop the result in the comments please do so. I would be very interested to see what people make of these so please do link to blog posts or comment below.

Thank you for reading. I also write, make art and films. If you like these prompts and want to get a copy of a free short book of them I wrote, and to hear more about my writing projects please join my mailing list here. You can see my films at my YouTube channel here. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

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Creative Prompts (Lost shoe series #2): A Missing Step

Jan 14, 2022Jan 7, 2022 / The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

For reasons that I don’t fully understand, I see a lot of lost or abandoned shoes about. So many that I only stop to take a photograph these days if there is something particularly odd or interesting about them or the way they are positioned.

When I spotted these shoes the other morning in the car park of a super market my first thought was ‘huh, that’s odd’. There is something about the way they are positioned which invokes movement of a person in my mind, or perhapse a journey. It’s a bit like someone, for an unknown reason, has kicked off their shoes as they were rushing away from something, or rushing towards somthing.

Why would somone discard their shoes like this? What do you think that thing was?

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Creative Prompt (Lost shoe series #1): ‘Was there a body nearby?’

Jan 7, 2022 / The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

It doesn’t happen to me very often, but now and again you see something and a blog post almost writes itself. That’s what happened with this creative prompt. I was out walking with my son on New Year’s Day, having taken him to the park to burn off some of that Christmas energy, and we were on our way home via the train station so that he could look at some trains.

Just outside our local station is a set of railings that fence off the embankment for the tracks leading inot the platforms. Over time the space between the slope of the embankment and the fencing has become full of stuff. Rubbish, brambles (both dead and alive), and odd bits of clothing. I saw this shoe poking out near the bottom of the rails and stopped to take a photo.

Later in the week I posted the photo on instagram (you can follow me here, should you want to) and someone made a comment along the lines of ‘was there a body nearby?’ which I found kind of funny. But it did get me thinking – given the build up of stuff behind those railings, who knows what is burried at the bottom of it? It feels like it could be the beginning of a good thriller or police procedural story for someone.

Who do you think the shoe could have belonged to? How do you think it got there?

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A year and more in creative prompts: all the links

Jan 1, 2022Dec 30, 2021 / The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

Happy New Year!

It’s been a little bit over a year since I began posting regular (sometimes weekly) creative prompts for anyone who may find them useful. My normal format now is to post a photograph of something I find interesting or quirky, and to add some thoughts or observations of my own. This is a format that had developed over time – as you’ll see the prompts in 2020 posts were quite minimal, with a photo and a very simple caption. Over time the written parts of the posts have developed into longer, slightly more complicated thoughts or questions. This culminated earlier in the year in the production of a little book of prompts and thoughts about creativity, which you can get here for free if you sign up to my mailing list.

When I started writing this post I had an idea that I would wrap up the year by posting all of the creative prompts from 2021, but as I began going back through my posts I realised that I had actually been posting these for a little bit longer than a year, and that there were patches of time earlier in 2021 when I didn’t post at all. I had wanted to write a post that bought them all together in one place, as thank you for anyone who has been following along with these posts. So, here they are, all 49 of them, in one place. I hope this year proves to be a little kinder to the world than the last two have been.

Prompts from 2020:

Prompts from 2021:

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Creative Prompt: The Chariot (to take us into the new year)

Dec 31, 2021Dec 30, 2021 / The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

We had a cold snap about a week ago, and while I was walking towards my home one morning I noticed this little car, dusted with frost, sitting on the wall. As we were approaching the end of another strange year, it bought to mind the idea of a chariot to carry us into the next one.

In normal times, for many people the turn of the year is a time to reflect on what has happened over the months that have past, and think about what they may want to do in the months to come. It is a time for resolutions. But these have not been normal times, and making any concrete plans for the next few months may feel premature to many.

I’m not a fan of New Year resolutions in any kind of time, as my ideas seem to shift frequently enough to make them feel outdated quite quickly. I have a list of projects that I have been working on for a while, and I’ll continue to inch towards the finish lines with those, but this doesnt feel like a new ‘resolution’, just a continuation of what I’ve been doing over the last few years. However I do think it’s quite a good time to stop and take stock, creatively speaking, of how things have been developing and to think about what may come next.

While this wasn’t part of the plan when I started them (like there was a plan!), these creative prompt posts are becoming quite in interesting space to explore ideas in a short form way that won’t necessarily make it into bigger projects. A few weeks ago I published a series about neighbourhood intrigues (here, here and here) that diverged a little from my usual format, and detailed strange little incidents or behaviours I had observed in my local area. I had begun to feel like I was writing the same thing over and over, so to do something a bit different was refreshing and enjoyable. I’m hoping to do a bit more of this, and to also explore some other sources of inspiration. I have wanted to take a deeper look into the idea of psychological archetypes for some time, and these posts may lend themselves quite well to this. So, look out for a few new approaches from me next year. I hope that this time provides you a similar moment of pause, that allows new ideas to flow.

Do you have new creative ideas that you would like to pursue next year? Where may this chariot carry you?

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Creative Prompt: A festive find

Dec 24, 2021Jan 7, 2022 / The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

Over the last few weeks I’ve been keeping an eye out while walking in my local area for things that might make a good festive creative prompt. Unfortunately I haven’t had much luck. There are some nice displays of Christmas lights, but as a rule I tend not to take photographs of people’s houses as it feels intrusive to me.

It was actually back in the summer I spotted this tiny tree, sitting on the pavement infront of a slightly rusted gate, and I stopped to catch a photo. It did not look like it was a gift, as it was outside of the gate, rather than inside it, so I assumed it had been discarded. It seemed like such a strange, forlorn little thing and it made me wonder how it came to be there. Who would have bought such a thing? Who would have left it?

If you’ve been following these prompts through the year, thank you for reading and I hope you have a cheerful festive season.

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Creative Prompt: A key on the pavement

Dec 10, 2021Dec 29, 2021 / The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

It’s getting close to the end of the year and I have been trying to spot some more festive creative prompts for the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately I’ve not actually come across many that I like yet. However, while I was out and about yesterday I did spot this key on the pavement in the lunchtime sunlight.

I was particularly drawn to this little key because of the rust on it. When I look at it I get the sense that it may have been lost for some time, dropped somewhere cold and damp a while ago, only to return to the light now, for reasons unknown. It brings to mind the opening sequences of those adventure movies I used to watch as a child, where some kind of object like a treasure map, or indeed an old rusty key, falls into the hands of a gang of children, who then decide to set off on their adventures.

This key is a bit more modern looking, but they mystery of what it may be the key to still stands. What kind of lock do you think this key opens? A bike lock? A security box? A burried box of treasure?

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Creative Prompt (neighbourhood intrigue series #3): A Disagreement

Dec 3, 2021Dec 29, 2021 / The Magpie at Midnight / 3 Comments

Long time followers of these posts will know that my usual format is to post a photograph of something quirky that I have seen, often an object that has been lost or left somewhere, and then add my own thoughts or questions as a kind of prompt for other people to have other creative ideas. In this mini-series of neighbourhood intrigue I have been trying out a few different things. I would be very interested to know if people like these experiments with the form?

I tend to try to adopt a mindful, curious approach to my day to day errands these days, as in these Covid-19 influenced times, I don’t often get to roam as far as I used to for inspiration. Recently I’ve been quite intrigued by some of the little clues I see to odd little interactions happening between people who live near each other, but may never have actually met.

One of the recent little dramas I have become intrigued by started with this sign:

Someone had printed and laminated a number of these signs, and stapeled them to fences or taped them to lamp posts along a particular strip of pavement along one of the streets where I regularly walk. Along that particular route someone else seems to regularly walk their dog and frequently doesn’t clean up after it releaves itself on the pavement. I have never seen the person with their dog, but can only assume it is a large dog from the available evidence.

After these signs went up, there did seem to be an improvement in the problem for a while, but then a few weeks ago the dog mess seemed to return, and this had happened to the sign:

This is where I leave the story for now, as this is where my clues run out for now. But I am curious to know, what will happen next?

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Creative Prompt (neighbourhood intrigue series #2): Character Study

Nov 26, 2021Dec 29, 2021 / The Magpie at Midnight / 2 Comments

When I write these posts I have a few rules about what I’ll include. I don’t take photos of things on private property, or of people, or of things in cars. I feel like this would be an invasion of privacy as the people involved are very rarely there to ask permission.

But I have been very intrigued by someone I see on a regular basis, mostly for a behavior I have spotted him engage in. He seems to like to hang around by a pedestrian crossing which isn’t far from the local train station, and you can often see him kind of ‘standing watch’. There is a coffee shop with outside tables close by, and sometimes he sits there instead. A few weeks ago I was waiting at the crossing and a car raced through is, continuing along the high street at high speed. It’s a busy area, frequented by families and clusters of kids going to school, so speeding here is especially dangerous.

I saw our guy jump up and pull a note book from his pocket and try to write down the number plate. The car went too fast and he quickly replaced the notebook in his pocket with noticeable frustration. This little action really intrigued me. As far as I can see he is not a member of any official neighbourhood policing project, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen him involve himself if situations that may relate to that kind of thing.

I find this really intriguing. What does he think he’s doing? Why is he doing it?

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Creative Prompt (neighbourhood intrigue series #1): Love Note

Nov 19, 2021Dec 29, 2021 / The Magpie at Midnight / 3 Comments

One of the things I find myself doing when I’m out and about is puzzling about things that I see that seem a bit odd, or intriguing. For creatives I think there can be great benefits in trying to practice a kind of mindful curiosity where ever you are, no matter how mundane or suburban that place may seem. Seeing a hint of something when you will only ever know part, or indeed nothing of the actual situation can give a creative mind free reign to invent something new.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to publish a collection of creative prompts that are based on some of the tiny neighbourhood intrigues that I have noticed over the last few months.

I saw this note on the pavement in the street outside my house. I didn’t open it or read what was inside as I felt this would be an invasion of privacy, and so I do not know who it was for, or what is said. But I was very taken with the little hand drawn heart on the folded flap. Someone had taken care when making this note.

It made me wonder how it ended up on the pavement, looking like it has been casually discarded. Had it been dropped by mistake, or thrown away? Who had written the note? What does it say? Did the person it was written for ever read it? What did they say?

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