Daily writing prompt
What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
el matador. No significance whatsoever.
PROMPT: Middle Name
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Category Archives: Biography
PROMPT: Autobiography
Daily writing prompt
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
“And that’s how you do that!”
(I’m told that in medias res is the ideal narrative approach for memoirs.)
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Prompt: Biography
Slow Learner Sings the Blues
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PROMPT: First Name
Daily writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
I think it means “naked bear,” which is quite apropos because (while – for a human being – I’m quite hairy) as a bear I would definitely need Hair Club for Bears. (Adopted into English over time from the German Bär + nackt.)
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BOOK: “Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway” by Jeffrey Meyers
Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway by Jeffrey MeyersMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Website – LSU Press
I enjoyed this approach to biography. Instead of telling Hemingway’s life story chronologically or even via some other form of overarching arc, Meyers gives us forty-three chapters that each shine a light on a different facet of Hemingway. In many cases, these facets are Hemingway’s relationships to other people: writers, artists, wives, and other personalities. In other cases, the facets are events or concepts, such as his suicide, war, achievements, etc.
This approach can, on occasion, lead to repetition, but I find repetition that is not overbearing to be useful in taking in key information.
If you are interested in what made Hemingway tick, I’d highly recommend that you read this book.
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PROMPT: Colleges
Indiana University [IUPUI], Georgia Tech, and Georgia State.
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PROMPT: Year You Were Born
I’m told Nixon was in the White House and the Beatles broke up, but I don’t really know anything about it. (If you want to get epistemological about it.)
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PROMPT: First Day
Daily writing prompt
Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.
Today is the first day of the rest of this week.
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PROMPT: Book
Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway by Jeffrey Meyer; a biography of Ernest Hemingway that is written in an interesting and creative way. Rather than a chronological telling of life events, the book relates Hemingway’s life to a series of other individuals and events.
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BOOK: “The Jefferson Bible” by Thomas Jefferson
The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth by Thomas JeffersonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
PDF available online [Public Domain]
Thomas Jefferson (yes, the same one who wrote the Declaration of Independence) produced this book by cutting and pasting excerpts from the Gospels so as to produce a distillation of who he believed Jesus was and what Jesus’s essential teachings were. It mixes parables and other New Testament teachings with biographical description.
There is an introduction which offers the reader more specific insight into Jefferson’s thinking than can be gleaned merely from what he includes and what he trims. The Introduction also discusses the similarities and differences between Christian philosophy and that of the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans.
If you’re looking for a condensed version of the New Testament, I’d highly recommend this book. Jefferson was obviously a sharp guy who looked at the Bible from the perspective of Enlightenment-era thinking.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 