Good times were had during our latest writing stream. We started off with a fun exercise: we used a random word generator to get 10 random words, and then we wrote a story using them as the first word in each sentence. Because that’s how great writing gets done.
The words were: construct, announcement, arrange, suffer, ladder, constitution, audience, sweat, like.
I somehow ended up writing what seems like a speech made by a crazed dictator. Funny how… that happens? Read it here in all its glory:
CONSTRUCT me a statue in the shape of an eagle. ANNOUNCEMENTs need to have a certain power to them, and a stone eagle-machine will belt them out with the necessary force required. ARRANGE them in a row of eighty, because of course we need more than one, such that everyone within a ten mile radius can hear our righteous call. SUFFER will the ears of the masses with our mighty proclamations, and that is good for their progression toward betterment! LADDERs have more than one step to them, and this is but our bottom rung. CONSITUTIONs are no more than saws that try to cut the ladders of greatness down from their highest potential. AUDIENCEs made up of less than every single ear in the nation are worthless. SWEAT will pour from their heads as they listen, as will it when they labor with thoughts of our greatness in their minds. LIKE they are supposed to.
After the exercise we voted on a writing prompt. I actually really like where we ended up… even if (or especially because) it contains 100% more Nicholas Cage references than most of my stories. Although isn’t 100% of zero still zero?
Prompt: You are a time traveler. However, you travel by swapping minds with people from a certain time period, and you can’t have the same body twice.
Here’s what we wrote:
The first time I time traveled into someone else’s mind, it was a high like no other. I finally got my powers on my eighteenth birthday, just like my mother told me I would. The ability to travel through time, but only by swapping minds with someone from a certain time period, is hereditary, you see. And I inherited the good genes.
The only catch? I could never swap into the same body twice, not even my original one. But with billions of other bodies to choose from, who cares, right?
I’d spent my entire life up to that point preparing for that day. History was always my favorite class during school, not because I was interested in boring wars and politics, but because I wanted to know all the interesting people I could become. I set up a chart in my room of all the historical figures, everyone from Napoleon to Caesar to Genghis Khan, with the information on how long they lived, what they did, everything.
Finally, on my birthday, I was prepared. My mother (if you can call her that – I doubt the person who gave birth to me hadn’t time-swapped with someone else eighteen years later) wished me good luck, and I was on my way. My first time-swap, like I’d planned for years, was to live as George Washington. What better way to start off my time-traveling life than by helping to found America!
I’d researched his life thoroughly, so much so that I lived it perfectly as him for years, achieving everything that he did as necessary. I crossed the Delaware, ruled as President, and lived (mostly) a life of luxury.
But eventually I grew bored and time-swapped to someone else: Cleopatra. Living a life of indulgence and having wars started over me was pretty great, but I grew bored again. A few time-swaps later, and my boredom only grew stronger. I realized what was wrong: I was just living these people’s lives as they had, breath by breath. It was no fun. No different. I needed to experiment a bit.
So I decided to get a little daring and I time-swapped into the body of Nicholas Cage. Ever wonder why his acting changed so suddenly around 1997? That was me. Just having some fun.
Or when I time-swapped into the body of Andrew Carnegie and started his whole “giving away money to libraries and schools” thing. Might as well do some good.
Or when I time-swapped into the body of Bill Clinton. Bet you can guess what I did while I was him!
Then, just for fun, I time-swapped into the body of my mother. I wanted to see if I could find out how long she was actually “her,” or maybe even find out who she actually was.
Unfortunately I didn’t find out anything, and it was pretty boring. Just regular mom stuff, no time-traveling amazingness to be had. So to spice things up, I decided to have a chat with my old, younger self. When my mom first sat me down to have “the talk” (as all time-traveling mothers do with their sons), instead of giving it to me straight, I told myself that I had no time traveling powers and not to bother with it. I just did it for fun, maybe cause a time paradox or two, but whatever. No big deal.
After that I got bored with being my mom, so I time-swapped to Taylor Swift.
But then I found myself floating in a white void. I had no idea what was going on.
Then, with horror, I realized what had happened. I’d caused a time paradox, just like I’d thought. As my mother, I’d stopped myself from time-swapping, but in order to stop myself from time-swapping, I had to time-swap in the first place. The universe couldn’t handle that paradox, and to prevent temporal collapse, it had expunged me into this nothingness.
There was only one way out: I had to time-swap into my younger self and decide to start time-swapping anyway, even if my “mom” told me not to.
I tried to do it, but couldn’t. I tried to time-swap into my mom again, but I couldn’t. That’s when I remembered: I can’t time-swap into the same body twice, meaning the only two bodies that could save me were off the table.
…except for one other. The person writing this. If I could time-swap into his head, and edit the story, then I could change things back to the way they were.
Wish me luck.
If you missed the stream, you can still watch it here on rerun for a few weeks until Twitch deletes it and see the story for yourself.
And if you want to join us and find some inspiration with exercises, troll me as I try to write, or share your own stuff for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-9:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
Hope to see you next time, friend!