History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Another Batch of DefConOne Instagram Writing Prompts

| July 10, 2026

It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about a person who frames artwork. Write a piece about a constellation resembling a gate. Write a piece about a knight attempting to reach a location. Follow the DefCon One Instagram account for writing prompts on Fridays, or check them out when […]

Fun for Friday: The Big Pink Book of Prompts, Fantasy Vibes = Rhymes!

| July 3, 2026

For the sixth prompt in my Big Pink Book, I decided to use the fantasy imagery, particularly the unicorn, to write some poetry. At the top of the page, I wrote seven lines of what amounted to vaguely iambic pentameter (it’s not perfect, but it’s in that ballpark). And none of the lines rhymed, though […]

The Big Pink Book Prompt 6: Fantasy Theme

| June 29, 2026

The sixth prompt in the Big Pink Book is a mostly blank page. The stickers are an empty thought bubble with a green border at the top right, and a row of stickers across the bottom of the page. From left to right, they’re a rectangular sticker with a photorealistic blue sky and pink-ish clouds […]

Fun for Friday: July 2026 Writing Prompts

| June 26, 2026

It’s time for the July 2026 writing prompts! This month, the first column is the little life July 2025 prompts from @pastichecostudio. Many of these are summer-themed prompts, but they’re also very evocative! The second column is the Doodlewash July 2025 World Watercolor Month prompts, which was the 10th anniversary of World Watercolor Month. This […]

Fun for Friday: The Big Pink Book of Prompts, Flags and Leaves

| June 19, 2026

So this prompt page wound up with me writing a lot of tiny notes, and it’s kind of a mess, honestly. Instead of trying to transcribe it, I’ll summarize what I’ve got. First off, I identified the flags as papel picado, because I hadn’t known their actual name before. They’re connected to the Day of […]

The Big Pink Book Prompt 5: Flags and Leaves

| June 15, 2026

The next prompt in the Big Pink Book is another page with loads of room for writing. It has a small round sticker at top left that says “Here” (glittery yellow with purple text), a string of black and gold papel picado (perforated paper flags often seen at Day of the Dead events), and a […]

Fun for Friday: The Big Pink Book of Prompts, Magical Books

| June 12, 2026

On Monday, I shared the blank version of this page, and today, you get to see what I did with it! Here’s what my notes say: Hymnal of Transformation (with an arrow pointing to the books) music as magic = lyramancy RyA theme -> predicament what if you have to finish a hymn if you […]

The Big Pink Book Prompt 4: Magical Books

| June 8, 2026

The next prompt in the Big Pink Book is a simple page with a single, larger sticker that depicts books (four stacked, one open, some plant clippings, and a purple liquid in a corked bottle. Of the books in the stack, only two have titles showing. The higher one is The Hymn of Transformation, while the […]

Fun for Friday: The Big Pink Book of Prompts, “It’s Funny …”

| June 5, 2026

Time to share what I did with prompt 3 from the Big Pink Book! I’m not much of a puns person, so I took the “It’s funny” prompt and came up with some first sentences connected to that. Even though there were 20 dots on the page, I only wrote 10 sentences, since some took […]

The Big Pink Book Prompt 3: It’s Funny …

| June 1, 2026

The third prompt in the Big Pink Book is another list-making prompt, this time themed around some puns and an intro of “It’s funny.” The puns, in the stickers to the right, are: “You are deer to me,” “Love you a latte!,” “That’s bananas” (with the bananas as an image), “No Prob-llama,” and “Donut worry. […]