Like the Ponts des Arts in Paris, weighted down by locks symbolizing couples’ love, we need to release the weight of those emotions before the bridge collapses. Writing is an intimate affair, plumbing emotional depths from tears to laughter. Why not release your emotional lock’s keys into the air, letting them fall with a splash into the water? And from the water emerges art.
After all, on the internet, no one knows you’re an Odd.*
*Except us. But we’re a friendly bunch.
Onto the prompts!
| Prompter | Prompt | Prompted |
| Cedar Sanderson | You’ve bought an antique high boy dresser. As you are preparing to put it where it belongs, you discover something has fallen down behind the drawers… | Jim and Anne |
| Jim and Anne | As I tried to hurry through my breakfast, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cat door open, and a fat raccoon squeezed through. I didn’t start to worry until the fifth or sixth, but they just kept coming. | nother Mike |
| Fiona Grey | A dragonfly buzzes by your windshield. You blink, and realize those last three letters did not belong. |
Cedar Sanderson
|
| nother Mike | The neighbors were surprised when the new couple started going door to door, asking, “Have you seen our bobcat? He got loose this morning.” | Leigh Kimmel |
| Leigh Kimmel | Pane of peculiar-looking glass from a ruined monastery reputed to have harboured devil-worship set up in modern house at edge of wild country. Landscape looks vaguely and unplaceably wrong through it. It has some unknown time-distorting quality, and comes from a primal, lost civilisation. Finally, hideous things in other world seen through it. | Fiona Grey |
The visual for Jim and Anne’s prompt: 
New? Welcome! Share your writing, art, sculpture, cookies, or what-have-you in the comments (non-wordy art must be a link because it’s WordPress). If you want to join us regularly, submit a prompt by Tuesday night to oddprompts@gmail.com. Too much commitment? Grab a spare prompt below. Submit ideas the same way, but put “spare” in the subject line.
| Spare | Looking through the enchanted glasses, they saw evil green oozing around some people, while others were surrounded by sheaths of white light. |
| Spare | When they used toy plastic human organs for the ritual summoning of a demon, they got… |
| Spare | Why did the gargoyle cross the road? |
| Spare | A story inspired by your favorite recipe (sweet, savory, drink). |
| Spare | Write a short story (flash?) in the form of a recipe, title, ingredients, and instructions. Make it tasty! |
See you in the comments! And please don’t feed real keys to fish, unless that’s what cyborg fish eat.
More Odds Than Ends 
Damn, forgot to send something in last night. Well, I’ll use one of the spares.
But I love Jim and Anne’s prompt! Happened to me years ago. Sitting on couch in living room with my then-boyfriend when one of the cats (we had four) *backs* into the dining room from the kitchen hissing like a steam engine. We look at each other and get up to see what’s going on. All four cats are clustered at our ankles as if to say, “go get ’em!” In the kitchen are two raccoons eating the cat’s food. A third is trying to come in the cat door, but he’s too fat and is stuck. When boyfriend and I appeared at the kitchen door, the two who were eating panicked and rushed back to the cat door…which was blocked by Tubby. He starts to frantically try to back out, but he is well and truly stuck. The other two are now shoving him to get him out of the door. They finally manage to get Tubby unstuck and race back out through the door. We were laughing so hard we were crying.
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*Ponders racoons*… “Oh CRAP! HUMANS! Damnit… OUT! OUT! OUT!”
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That’s exactly what it looked like!
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This didn’t happen to me, and the guy whose picture it is interacts with them regularly, to the point that they’re partially tame.
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The photo at the top reminds me of another prompt I ran across. Not the same photo, but one very similar. The response was supposed to be 100 words, I ran over by 25.
No one remembered when it has started, just that it was sometime after the Revolution. A lock showed up on the old gate with a name written on the side. Just a first name though, no one knew who Larry was or why a lock with his name would be on the gate.
Slowly more began to appear, with different names, like Sarah, Kate, Brad and John, just average names.
As the months turned into years people started to notice that the locks would show up right after someone vanished during the night. They usually one name, sometimes two, or just initials. A few had only an emblem, suggesting that no one knew that person’s real identity.
I wonder if one has my name now.
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[…] some ideas and I’m working them out. And finally, I missed sending in a prompt last week for More Odds Than Ends, so I used a spare one this […]
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Here’s mine with the spare prompt: Why did the gargoyle cross the road? I tied it into Cursebreaker.
https://profornery.wordpress.com/2020/08/11/gargoyles/
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This one went places I did not expect, and I’m okay with that. 🙂
https://fionagreywrites.com/mother/
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that was beautiful.
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Thank you!
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[…] you’d like to learn more about the Odd Prompt challenge, head on over to More Odds Than Ends. Join us! It’s fun, and we don’t bite […]
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Ducking in under the wire with another long snippet… Hatrack is officially novel-length now at 40K words and growing. https://www.cedarwrites.com/2020/08/11/the-case-of-the-perambulating-hatrack-part-26/
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I’m going to be late this week. I tried, but I’m not sure I’m making sense. I had an early morning today and I’m fading fast. Meanwhile, check out the new theme my sister did for our blog. Pretty slick! https://scorchedimagination.com/
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And mine is now up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/796408.html. It’s gotten my protagonist to a farm that’s based upon my actual grandparents’ farm. Now if I can just figure out how this takes us to the next set of events.
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This week, Jim and Anne prompted me with this (and a picture!)
As I tried to hurry through my breakfast, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cat door open, and a fat raccoon squeezed through. I didn’t start to worry until the fifth or sixth, but they just kept coming.
Aha! So… let’s see… darn it, I got a beginning, again, but… not sure where to go with it? Maybe I need another prompt?
A Vacation Sight (370 words)
By Mike Barker
Elizabeth shook her head. She still couldn’t believe that she had managed to get to Japan, and rent a house, way out in the countryside, for her vacation. Her lifelong dream, getting to visit Japan, and with Jim, too! She looked around the old style room, with the fire pit in the middle, and smiled.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the little pet door that someone had added to the farm door flip open. Was there a neighborhood cat or…
That’s when the raccoon squeezed through the door. It glanced around, then scurried forward.
And another raccoon squeezed in.
She held her hands over her mouth, watching, as raccoon after raccoon squeezed in. Then she watched the eight of them quickly form a circle, and sit up, in the entryway.
As the ninth animal squeezed in through the doorway, she blinked. Wait a minute, those aren’t raccoons. This is Japan. Those are… she remembered the stories she had read, practicing her Japanese. Tan… tanuki! Raccoon dogs.
Read the rest at https://mbarker.dreamwidth.org/236150.html
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Oooo, please continue this. I love the Racoon Dogs. And Japanese folklore is fascinating.
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Yes, please continue this. Racoon Dogs…whoa.
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[…] is week 32 of Odd Prompts, and we’ve decided on a simple and classic adventure. Our prompt for this week reminds me of […]
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Finally finished. We went for something different this week. I’m not sure it worked, but it was worth trying. Check it out at http://scorchedimagination.com/2020/08/13/week-32-of-odd-prompts/
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