Whoa, my friend Tyrean Martinson! This time your prompt in your book for writers, which I abuse for inviting readers to have conversations instead of staring at screens, got the better of me. I’m drawing a total blank.
Indeed, I googled whether this was part of some poem or song lyrics. Failure. I finally came up with exactly two quotations, one part of the so-called Taylorology, a fanzine about Hollywood legend William Desmond Taylor, whose murder to this day is a cold case. I never read the whole magazine (you can find it on the internet) – but it looks like the quotation refers befittingly to the shutter of a camera. The other quotation is from J.G. Ballard’s book The Kindness of Women and either refers to temporary unconsciousness or being blinded by the sun. I haven’t read the book either.
So, what do I do if there is a prompt, a topic tossed to me of which I have no clue?
Of course, I could go on and make something up on the go. That’s what a writer of fiction does, after all, right? But wouldn’t it ruin my reputation as a human being who tries to be honest with her readers if I simply dished them something about which I had no clue?!
To me the sun has no doors. I’m not that lyrically disposed that I would imagine them as a metaphor for anything like a shutter or a pair of eyes or anything else, for that matter. And I’m no writer of fantasy or sci-fi who might send a super-hero on whatever mission to the sun to free an innocent maiden from the prison behind the sun’s doors. That would mean I’d take them literal.
As simple as that, I’m passing on this prompt. I admit that I’m clueless. I admit that I have no imagination whatsoever on a topic when it hits me like this. Surely, a person who realizes that I’m clueless will either leave off of it or enlighten me with a short explanation and then see by my reaction whether it is even worthwhile to carry on with it.
Sure enough, I have an opinion on a lot of things; I should hope for the right reasons, too. Because the reason I have an opinion is that I try to get as many angles on one topic as I can. They don’t have to be appealing. They have to make sense. And it starts with the small things. Such as rather weeding by hand (my writing one was quite ruined from it in May) than pouring weed killer over the lawn which seeps into the ground water and wreaks who knows what damages to the environment. Of course, it would be easier to use the chemical mace! There are bigger topics in which, admittedly, my opinion sways.
And then there are those times when I draw a blank. It’s as if you asked me whether Durian fruits were delicious or not. I know what the fruit looks like. I hear that its smell is overpowering. I’ve never eaten one. I’m inexperienced. Just as with “doors of the sun closed” – and you have to admit that these are quite a few words on a topic about which I have no clue. Well, you know I’m a wordsmith …
It’s actually a rewritten phrase from a poem. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53994/the-house-of-the-sun
But even without that reference, I guess I hope that writers will skip the prompts that they can’t use and move onto the next.
Thank you ever so much! I still thought it might be a point to admit one has no clue when that’s a fact. So many still fake it. And then, we reveal the truth. It could be less harmless than a poem.