Writing Prompt: On Loving and Being Alive
A “prompt” celebrating Pride, Tank and the Bangas, and the beauty of a rollercoaster.
June is pride month here in the US, and you know we have to have a little celebration! There is so much beauty in queerness, so much power in living outside of the strict cis-hetero norms that pervade the entire world (remnants of the spread of Abrahamic religions, but we’ll leave that alone for now). Each and every day we wake up with an acceptance of the self that we are told repeatedly to deny—that’s power.
In the same vein, our characters have the chance to break boundaries. When we write, we build a world with it’s own rules. Often, we write our protagonists trying to navigate their life within those rules, or straight up antithetical to these prescribed regulations. We venture into their fear, their hesitations, their obstacles, and we explore the ways they overcome all odds (or how they fail to do so).
This month, I had the good fortune of getting to see Tank and the Bangas in Richmond, VA, and they played one of my favorite songs: Rollercoasters. You can watch a live rendition of the song on NPR’s YouTube (it starts at 13:49, but the whole performance is fantastic) and notice the spoken word roots of Tarriona “Tank” Ball as she discusses the fear and the rush of being alive.
This song gives me goosebumps—it makes me ache to hop on a coaster, or fall in love, or jump into the ocean. It makes me so eager to explore the foibles and fortunes of my characters and scenarios. It reminds me of the rush of allowing my full self to come through in whatever I’m doing—the bravery it takes to be so unabashedly passionate about the world around me.
Give the song a listen, and see what it brings up for you. Maybe the adrenaline of a new action-packed scene in a current WIP, or the blushing confession of love from one character to another, or maybe just a damn rollercoaster.