Your daily creative prompt
Hello! I hope you’re well.
Today I want you to create a spell or a charm.
Think Harry Potter. Think Terry Pratchett’s witches, or the wizards at Unseen University. Think back to your favourite fantasy book or TV show when you were a kid.
“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.”
If it was good enough for Shakespeare then it’s good enough for you.
Spells and charms interest me not because I’m a practitioner of the Dark Arts but because they are artefacts. They are evidence of a history – in both real life and fiction - of the human longing to have some kind of control over this random universe in which we find ourselves.
They are also an exertion of will, a focusing of attention, an expression of intention, desire, and need.
So, as a creative person what do you need?
Do you need to summon inspiration out of the void? The write a spell to do that.
Do you need to protect yourself from hurtful criticism of your work. Then make up a charm to ward that off.
Do you need to reclaim your confidence? Then do a working to summon it.
Do you need to banish writer’s block? Then exorcise it.
“Go away now most calmly to your place, without murmur and commotion” - Excerpt from an exorcism, translated from the latin
Make it fun and silly, or go about it seriously; do it for real or do it for laughs. It doesn’t matter.
The real point of this exercise is to state that creative need, and then to work your imagination in answer to that need. And that, in and of itself, is an exercise in creativity.
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. – Roald Dahl
See you tomorrow.
Meredith
If you like what I do, maybe put a little something in my Christmas stocking by leaving me a tip at Ko-Fi.