dawn.vogel | June 13, 2025
Useless Etymology recently posted about the origin of “magpie,” as in the bird, and it’s a wild ride! First off, you’ve got “pie” as a name for a bird, which is derived from the Latin “pica.” Hang on, though. “Pica” is also a condition in which humans eat non-food items, normally because of a vitamin […]
dawn.vogel | June 6, 2025
Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! We’re starting this month’s weird history with The History Place, for historical events for every day of the month. Not all of them are strange, but there are certain to be gems hidden amongst the events! The History Channel has […]
dawn.vogel | May 30, 2025
May has absolutely flown by, and here we are at the edge of June! For this month’s prompts, I took column 1 from @solarwings junicorn art challenge. While the idea of Junicorn is unicorn themed, I thought this year’s prompts were nicely evocative of speculative fiction ideas, whether you include a unicorn or not. This […]
dawn.vogel | May 23, 2025
It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about a replacement for a diamond. Write a piece about the requirements for an unusual ambition. Write a piece about a golden seed and what it sprouts. Follow the DefCon One Instagram account for writing prompts every other Friday, or check them […]
dawn.vogel | May 16, 2025
For this week’s Fun for Friday, I thought I’d do a different take on “spring” and some image prompts. The images are all sourced from Pixabay and were uploaded long enough ago that I feel pretty confident that they are not AI generated. The first image is of a glowing yellow electrical light filament, arranged […]
dawn.vogel | May 9, 2025
Since it’s nearly Mother’s Day, this week’s Fun for Friday is about etymology and mothers! “Mother” is one of those words with very deep roots, across multiple languages. Part of the explanation of this is that “mater” originally comes from Proto Indo-European, which is the root of a LOT of languages. And of course, this […]
dawn.vogel | May 2, 2025
Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! As usual, I start with The History Place, which always has the fullest coverage for every month. You may need to pick through the list to find truly weird events, but I’m certain they’re there! Meanwhile, Historic UK has a […]
dawn.vogel | April 25, 2025
May is not quite a week away, but it’s time for me to post the monthly writing prompts, so they’ll be ready for you on May 1st! May is always MerMay for me, so the first column is the 2025 MerMay official prompts! You can use this column with the words as they are or […]
dawn.vogel | April 18, 2025
I recently heard someone refer to themself as a “Fellow” in an academic sense, which got me thinking about the origin of that word in that specific context. The origin of “fellow” (in a non-academic sense) is that of a companion or partner in a business sense, going back to Proto-Indo-European and coming to English […]
dawn.vogel | April 11, 2025
It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about what happens when a fox encounters fuzzy socks. Write a piece about early flowers and late icicles. Write a piece about repairing a lamp with the wrong tool for the job. Follow the DefCon One Instagram account for writing prompts every […]
