Spotty internet has made this take longer than planned/expected, especially as more feedback came in as I was working on it, leading to a greater degree of adjustment to my original plans for #NiNoBilMa.
I describe the changes and the reasoning behind them in the update post, before getting into the exercises. The short version is I'm figuring out that "the basics" to get back to when it comes to writing is very much not open-ended and undirected writing.

buttondown.email/AlexandraErin/…
So I think that the difference between this month and the ones that follow, in terms of the prompts, should not be about having less direction now, but directions with lower stakes/pressure.
To that effect, I have come up with a writing prompt game in the form of a short questionnaire. It's found in the linked post here, but it's also something I feel could be done on Twitter, which is perhaps ideal.

So, in a moment I'm going to start a new thread with a brief explanation and then the questions, each one as a tweet. Please feel free to participate if you want a little creative warm-up or distraction.
That new thread with the questions in Twitter-interactable format starts here.

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More from @AlexandraErin

8 Dec
The very visceral and deep-seated defensiveness of Paul that statements like this provoke from some quarters are probably mystifying to people who aren't plugged into Christian theological politics, but I find them very revealing.
If you read the entire Christian Bible up to but not including Paul's letters, and that was your whole context for Christianity, you would never in a million years guess that the whole course of the religion and its modern form depends on the later opinions of some guy named Paul
One of Paul's letters (One Corinthians, as a much-revered US conservative Christian thinker would style it) contains a verse that translates as something like "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, for you are still in your sins."
Read 14 tweets
8 Dec
@AlabamaAmigo @beth_doc @C_Stroop I'm not, in fact. I'm very calm, if only because I'm too tired at the moment to feel much of anything, even as you sit here impotently trying to hurt me with words of calculated disrespect, for your own petty and twisted reasons.
@AlabamaAmigo @beth_doc @C_Stroop But your attempt to wound me and to project your anger onto me only demonstrates how accurately I have described your state of moral and spiritual bankruptcy. You have no faith. You have no conviction.
@AlabamaAmigo @beth_doc @C_Stroop I am the woman that God created me to be, but you'll address me as though I were a man out of your desire to hurt me, but you lack the courage to admit that desire. It's not you, you'll swear! You judge no one, you'll swear! It's all your "God"!
Read 7 tweets
8 Dec
@AlabamaAmigo @beth_doc @C_Stroop Literally everyone does what's right in their own eyes. It's your eyes looking at the text and deciding what parts you see are being "illuminated" by God. That's why other people can look at the same text and have different conclusions, which they were equally led to "by God".
@AlabamaAmigo @beth_doc @C_Stroop You have made yourself the arbiter of truth and morality, deciding for yourself that there is a God, that the concept of God you prefer the most is God, and that the way you choose to read your preferred version of the Bible reveals that God's will.
@AlabamaAmigo @beth_doc @C_Stroop But it's you making all these decisions.

The only difference between you and someone who is aware they are doing what's right in their own eyes is moral conviction.

They have it.

You lack it.
Read 6 tweets
8 Dec
Yes. And this is the thing that kills me about the discourse around The Very Challenging Comedians: they and their defenders simultaneously insist that comedy is this sacred and important thing, and also insist that it's powerless and means nothing; i.e., "It's just jokes."
If none of your jokes mean anything, if they don't matter, and if they don't affect anything, then it doesn't matter if you stop making some of them. Or all of them. What are you doing with your life?

But if they do matter... then you have a responsibility.
I love comedy. I think it's very important and very powerful. I think it's important because it's powerful. And I can't imagine any of the principals involved in the production of Bojack Horseman not feeling the weight of the work they put out, no matter how raw or real it got.
Read 9 tweets
7 Dec
Her name is Poppy. Poppy O. Podes, but her best friend started calling her "Butterfly" because "Poppy O" sounds a bit like "Papillon" and now that's what their friend group calls her most of the time.

#NiNoBilMa #AboutMyOctopus

Butterfly lives in Riptidedale, a medium-ish town of somewhat indeterminate size and geographical location, but somewhere vaguely off the Atlantic coast of the northern United States.

#NiNoBilMa #AboutMyOctopus
She loves popcorn, but she hates when it gets soggy. This fact alone keeps sending her away from Riptidedale to a nearby boardwalk that has a popcorn stand as part of an old-fashioned fun fair.

#NiNoBilMa #AboutMyOctopus

Read 12 tweets
7 Dec
#NiNoBilMa game for December 7th: Tell Me About Your Octopus.

This is a creative warm-up game for anyone who wants to write more (or to play along for fun). You can learn about #NiNoBilMa under the tag on my Patreon, but no prior knowledge is necessary.

patreon.com/AlexandraErin/…
The next ten tweets will each contain one question. You can answer to yourself, or in a private document, or as a reply/QT of the question. Putting the hashtags #NiNoBilMa and/or #AboutMyOctopus in answers will make it easier for others to see your answers, if that interests you.
Imagine an octopus.

1. What's your octopus's name?

#NiNoBilMa #AboutMyOctopus
Read 13 tweets

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