Whose name?
How many computers ago - how many years ago - did he last email me?

Last week, I was talking about a NASA physicist I had met in the 1990s. We talked about man-lifting kites and the aeronauts of the Civil War. "You should write a children's book about it," I said. Funny thing: he'd already thought of that.

We all have awesome ideas like that.
Most of us never write a single one of them down.

Phone numbers. Sometimes on the back of a concert program or in the margins of my checkbook, I'll find a phone number. Always so confident I'll remember whose number it is, I rarely write down the name.

Rarely do I recognize the number or remember who gave it to me, or why.

Espionage is clearly not my calling, not if a good memory is required. Need a tech-tard? Call Carol.

You, however: you are a writer.

You see contest prompts, and ideas start escalating in your head.

Pick your genre. Pick the gender, the identity. (Romance? Thriller? Science Fiction?)

Change "name" to phone number or address or whatever serves your purpose.

So many, many directions you can go with this. Here's one:

“People think we had a love-hate relationship.
Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him.
We had mutual respect for each other, even as
we both planned each other's murder.”
― Werner Herzog (goodreads quote)

My own story idea was born of a struggle to recall the name of that NASA engineer who wanted to write some historical fiction and probably never did. How I'd love to happen a children's book with soldiers in hot air balloons doing surveillance during the Civil War!

One author asked if she could change the premise to its opposite: instead of almost-remembering the man and searching for his name, she clears out some clutter and happens across the name that would have remained forgotten.

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I am not a stickler for how closely one follows a story prompt.

Where does inspiration take you? That's the purpose of the prompt (for me).

Start thinking. Above all, have fun with it. Yes, punctuation and mechanics matter. The fun of imagining a story - and telling it - is where the magic is, for me.

Our Fiction Workshop is free, so take advantage of it - enter your contest piece and identify it as such. Click here for The submission form

I won't lie. I read all the Rhino Contest #2 entries that showed up in the spreadsheet and offered comments on every one of them. No writer got more help or more encouragement from me than another.

In a few weeks, I will officially announce the contest and deadlines.

Word limit? I don't count words. In the ball park of 500 to 1,500 ought to suffice.

I will be the sole judge.

@bex-dk has already donated $10 sbd toward the prize pool.

With only $20 left in my wallet, that's all I plan to offer, this time.

But any upvote $ from contest posts will be shared among the runners-up, or added as a bonus to the winner.

Have fun!

Pixabay photo credits:

Woman, Man in profile and Computer: courtesy of geralt * Gerd Altmann