Coming up with new inspiration is never easy. This week, my mind kept circling back to two ideas.
The first was the old saying that things come in threes—a memory sparked by a YA series I read years ago. I thought it might’ve been The Westing Game, though I’m not sure anymore. One character had a string of bad luck, but by the third time something happened, his fortune had shifted. Maybe good things come in threes after all.
Then there’s the idea of lightning.
We often say lightning never strikes the same place twice, a comforting phrase meant to reassure us that rare, painful events won’t repeat. But how true is that, really?
Growing up, we had an ash tree in our backyard that weathered countless storms—until it was struck by lightning not once, but twice. Scarred the first time, split the second. What are the odds?
You be the judge.
✍️ Inspiration Prompt: Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice
That’s what they say. But tell that to the ash tree in my backyard—scarred but proud after its first strike, split and silent after the second. Now it’s just a memory, like the shed that once stood beneath its branches.
And tell that to the people who’ve survived not one, but multiple lightning strikes—living proof that the improbable can happen again, and again. What does it mean to be marked more than once by the same force? To carry the charge of recurrence in your body, your story, your silence?
This prompt invites you to explore repetition, inevitability, and the myth of safety.
What happens when the extraordinary returns? When the pattern repeats? When the storm circles back?
Write, draw, compose, or create something that wrestles with recurrence—a second chance, a repeated trauma, a rekindled love, or a pattern that refuses to break.
Does lightning strike again in your story?
And if it does, what’s left standing?
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