Thank goodness for Mars

Cake by Yeners Cakes

It's Thanksgiving on Mars. So what are the colonists giving thanks for? What event or dreadful times did they survive and now celebrate? Are there heroes and villains? Was it Human versus Nature? Who survived and who died?

You can write their first Thanksgiving. Or their tenth. Or their hundredth.

What is the meal like? What kind of food do they grow on Mars? What would count as a feast? Are there special foods that tie into the period they're giving thanks for?

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Something I stumbled across while writing this post: Is Martian soil actually good for farming?

Best Thanksgiving episode ever

For your favorite series, create a Thanksgiving episode.

What's the goal? To get everyone together? To survive? To find something to be thankful for?

Be sure to include a unicorn.

No thanks

Use at least 15 of the following words in a piece that is NOT about the Thanksgiving holiday.  (Just like eating a Thanksgiving feast, it helps to pace yourself rather than try to cram them all in at the beginning!)

pie
turkey
thanks
giving
cornucopia or horn of plenty
family
fall
feast
gravy
relatives
harvest
oven
squash
Thursday
tradition
pudding
pilgrims
gather

Be thankful today because tomorrow ...

Bigger at Motifake

What are your characters thankful for? Yes, even the bad guy.

Let them be blissfully thankful today. Because all those things they're thankful for are their weaknesses and tomorrow you will have Fate and the bad guy take them all away <eg>.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A scrumptious word feast

Come up with enticing and scrumptious ways of describing food you'll be eating. What if your descriptions were in competition with other family members' to win the coveted right to present the Thanksgiving day feast?

Or, if you're doing Nano, have the characters declare a one day truce and each describe the dish they'll bring to the Thanksgiving day feast.

Good eats!

Pick your favorite recipe. Your character has been planning to create this dish for quite some time as a special event or celebration. The dish can be grand but needn't be -- like the last ballpark hotdog with relish eaten with Dad, the "special" last maggoty meal the evil overlord served his prisoners -- but it's emotionally tied into the character or someone the character feels strongly toward and holds some special importance. Each ingredient has been carefully chosen or overseen from its beginning.

As you go through each ingredient, have your character talk about where it came from, why and what its importance is. Maybe they're far from home -- a ship? another planet? an alternate universe? -- and the ingredients aren't easy to come by.

Then describe what it's for. It could be something sweet :-) It could be twisted Wherever it leads you.

Turkeyful

It's well after Thanksgiving and there's still 10 pounds of turkey left and you're thinking that if you ever see turkey on your plate again there had better not be sharp implements within your reach. For 5-10 minutes brainstorm ideas of what to do with leftover turkey (including the carcass if you'd like.) It doesn't need to be for eating purposes!

Thankful for minor disasters

If your character experienced just the worst parts of Thanksgiving day, he or she would need a week to recover from the holiday. But all ended happily.

What was the surprising good that came from each incident, or the really big good that came out of the whole series?

If you find a more inspiring order as you're writing, go for it, but make it easier on yourself by using the order given or choosing randomly rather than seeking some "best" order. Your character didn't get to choose! ;-)

• lost keys
  
• burnt dinner
  
• missing relative
  
• flooded basement
  
• hail storm
  
• broken finger
  
• lost power
  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Be thankful

You know those trees with the handprint leaves you write something to be thankful for on? Your favorite Evil Dude (E.D.) has been inspired to create one. Of course he'll use severed hands instead of construction paper and carve his message with a fresh craft knife rather than use crayon.

So, what's he thankful for? Make a list.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Food, glorious food

One great technique for upping the all important word count for NaNoWriMo is writing about food.

In NaNo, there are no lattés. But there are no whip, one pump, double shot, 120 degree, pumpkin spice venti lattés with organic soy milk. (16 words!)

In NaNo, there isn't even roast goat, but there is organic Canadian maple roasted goat's meat topped with cloves, festive green maraschino cherries, and organic Canadian pineapple rings all drenched in a delightful cane sugar and organic Canadian clover honey sauce. (31 words!)

(Remember, anything can be organic and everything can be from Canada. And dash mark's come later in revising. honey-roasted=1 word. honey roasted=2 words.)

So, write about a feast or just a piece of (nine grain organic spelt sourdough) toast but be as florid as you can possibly be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Harvest Moon

It's the harvest moon and she's agreed to pose for a portrait. Who is she?

(Click the image to open a larger one in a new window from Amy Brown's website. Or here if she's moved her pictures again and the link doesn't work.)