Tiny Coffins Challenge: December (bonus!)

 Welcome back! This final prompt is:

"undeniable beauty in desolation"

Ice storms are an annual event around here. They're destructive as hell. Freezing rain that coats everything it touches in a glaze of ice. The extra weight breaks trees and pulls down power lines. The ice covering every flat surface makes roads impassable and footpaths a hazard. But when the sun comes out and sparkles through the branches of the trees that are still standing and makes the world look like it's plated in silver, it's still beautiful.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: November

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"deep water, cisterns, and the harvest"

Fall is my favorite time of year. The weather's beautiful, leaves are changing color, and there's all the harvest time celebrations. I try to make it up north to the Lakes at least once during the season each year. When I was little it was Lake Huron and we'd camp and fish for salmon. The past few years it's been Lake Michigan for rock hunting. Standing at the edge of a body of water that huge is peaceful in a way that's hard to describe. A view of nothing but water across the entire horizon. It's beautiful enough to make you forget just how many ships and people the Lakes have swallowed over the centuries.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: October

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"cool nights, bonfires, and the full moon"

Campfires are a family tradition. I learned how to build, light, keep, and safely extinguish fires almost as soon as I was big enough to carry a bucket of water. Growing up we had a dug-in fire circle in the backyard that we used constantly. Build a fire, let it burn down and cook dinner over the coals, then build it back up at sunset and relax while watching the bats fly. I miss it now that I've moved away. There's no place to responsibly light and feed a fire around here.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: September

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"decay, fungi, and transformation"

I like decay. Signs of wear and tear on everyday items, dilapidation and visible repairs on old things, and the way places and artifacts fall apart when they're abandoned. There are so many flavors of rot. Fallen trees festooned with mushrooms and bracket fungus, the wood still holding its shape but soft enough to push a finger into. Forgotten sheds and junked cars slowly being torn apart by plants and rusting away to nothing. Abandoned factories caving under their own weight as the elements eat them away. The endless variety of ways that it can happen is fascinating to watch.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: August

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"seeking to escape the relentless sun"

While it's the source of all life on earth, never forget the sun is a giant self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction that eternally screams at us in an unending electromagnetic barrage. It hates us and being out in its light is cumulatively bad for you.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: July

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"disguises, sacrifice, and a snare drawing closed"

I have a lot of memories of my dad getting bit by snakes. When I was little we'd go on family hikes in the woods and I'd catch animals along the way. Mostly toads, turtles, and bugs. The only snakes I was allowed to catch were garter snakes, because they're not likely to bite and are easy for a kid to identify. Dad would catch all the rest. He'd scramble down a river bank and come back up with a water snake wrapped around his arm and its teeth sunk into his finger, then tell me how its anticoagulant saliva worked. There are lots of local species I've only been able to see up close because he was willing to get bit, scratched, or stung in order to catch and bring them to me. Thanks dad.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: June

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"the first signs of your efforts coming to fruition"

I grow morning glories every year. I've grown the same seedline for almost a decade now, collecting seeds to plant again each spring. The plants I have now are exceptionally hardy because I'm a neglectful gardener. Only the ones who can withstand regular droughts and bad soil make it to flower. I still worry though, mostly about the newly-sprouted seedlings. Will they survive frosts? Is their soil draining properly so their roots don't rot? Do they actually need fertilizer this year? It's not until about June when the vines have climbed onto the trellis and started flowering that I can be sure something won't go terribly wrong.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: May

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"winding trails, disorientation, and the scent of flowers"

Getting lost in the woods is a peculiar feeling. It quietly picks at something superstitious in the back of your head. The absence of people, places, even background noise you could use to orient yourself gets to you in a way that just 'not knowing where you are' doesn't match. It's easy to get turned around, even when you're on a trail, and if you can't find a blaze or marker to get your bearings you have to look for landmarks. A distinctive tree, a big rock you passed, the sound of a stream, anything that might cement where you are. I used to use the smell of honeysuckle. Most of the parks around here have their parking lots and trail heads in meadow areas where they grow; so smelling honeysuckle meant I was on the path back to the car.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: April

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"waking, hunger, and iron determination"

Early spring is a hard time in nature. The hopeful associations with renewal are something that we attached to the season. Yes, the snow's melting and it's warming up, but there's not much food yet. The winter forage is mostly gone, new plants haven't grown in yet, and most of the small prey is still dormant. The creatures that are active are running on the fumes of their winter stores and have to hold out until there's something to eat. One of the few things that thrives is skunk cabbage. It generates its own heat to melt through the snow and start growing weeks before other plants even sprout. It can survive frosts and drinks in the weak sun like nothing's wrong. The sheer moxie of this plant is breathtaking.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: March

This month's prompt is:

"volatility, predictions, and the slow grind of change"

March might technically be spring, but around here it's still very much winter. The snow's only barely begun to melt, the weather changes by the hour, and the days aren't getting noticeably longer yet. It can be demoralizing, even when you know the season is turning and you just need to be patient. The best sign of change is the birds. When the robins start building nests and the goldfinches turn yellow again you know spring is actually on the way.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: February

Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"bonds and letting go"

We usually think of bonds in the context of connections to people and not the connections we have to places, objects, and times past. Things that shaped us or anchor us back through time with memories. Your childhood home, the park you used to hang out in, the small collection of cool rocks you picked up over the years, your pet's old collar kept as a memento. What do we draw from those bonds and what happens when we decide it's time to let them fall away?

Have at and have fun!

Tiny Coffins Challenge: January

 Welcome back and happy new year! This month's prompt is:

"waiting, sleep, and the in-between"

I'm all about liminal spaces and states. We're in the heart of winter now, here in the north. It's a time of thresholds and change according to the calendar; but outside most everything is dead or dormant, on pause until the snow melts. Winter is a season-long liminal state while we look forward to spring and a static silent time all its own. Plenty of time to think about all the changes that happen even when things are supposed to be still.

Have at and have fun!

Tiny Coffins Challenge: December

First prompt! Let's see how this goes. The format for these will be [prompt] and [what was in my head when I chose it]. The 'what I was thinking' bit isn't part of the prompt, it's just a second serving of me shouting into the void. Run with it or ignore it as you like. 

This month's prompt is:

"trust in the strength of what you stand on"

There are abstract interpretations in that, but for me it's very concrete: The solidity of the actual surface I'm standing on. The sense of sheer mass underfoot when on a slab of exposed bedrock, the perceptible sway and rattle while climbing a lighthouse staircase; but mostly childhood memories of walking out on the ice. Knowing that a foot of ice could support a car and I'm perfectly safe; even though I'm looking down into dozens of feet of dark water that would kill me in minutes if I fell through. And later in life, the heart-stopping realization that I've made a horrible mistake as my boot sinks inches into a patch of spongy, partially-melted ice.

Have at and have fun!

*I'm using #TinyCoffinsChallenge to announce these, so that hashtag exists for real now. Go ahead and use it if you also want to yell on twitter.

Introducing the Tiny Coffins Challenge

I've been introspecting about the reason I've not posted as much (or at all) this year. It's mostly that my blog content is fueled by my in-person games and the material I make for them. Pandemic hiatuses cut that off and I moved to working on other things like zines and books instead. While I'm not going to force it, I am going to try and post more. Writing small bits and pieces along with the larger projects is probably good for me. I'm also going to start giving challenge prompts. That way even if I fail to write, others might be inspired to create.

Here's how it'll work:

It'll be an informal, open blog-writer's circle. Each month I'll post a prompt and some associations it brings up in my mind. Anyone who wants to can think about it and do something with it. It can be RPG related or not, just so long as you make something. Then over the course of the month everyone can share what they've done and compare where your minds went.

I'm not going to write for the prompts or be involved in any way beyond yelling them into the electronic void in an expression of Tiny Coffins. I may not even look at the results. (Though I likely will if you tell me you wrote something.)

We're too late for a prompt this month, so I'll post the first one in December. Hopefully it'll be fun and we'll see some cool things come from it.

Obviously and as always: Give content warnings as needed and no bigoted or -phobic content.

*If you want to share posts on twitter, maybe try using #TinyCoffinsChallenge. That hashtag doesn't seem to be used for anything.