The Weird Week in Writing: Lunar man-bats, a 6-year-old with a book deal, and Danny Glover as Captain Ahab

Freaky Friday—the latest from the weird and wonderful world of
writing this week (followed, as always, by a prompt). Happy weekend!

“You can’t go wrong with a good lunar man-bat”: 175 years ago, a newspaper revealed that life had been discovered on the moon. The findings? Unicorns, biped beavers, and even lunar man-bats—“four-foot-tall creatures that talked, flew, built temples, and fornicated in public.”

The Atlas can’t shrug some things off: After 10 days and 12,328 miles traversing the country with a GPS, an Ayn Rand superfan drove the words “Read Ayn Rand” into the planet—and into Google Earth, as seen from space.

The career early bird: Gets the 23-book deal. Put another way, the 6-year-old gets the 23-book deal. (Via HuffPo.)

“Call me Ishmael. Or, for that matter, Detective Murtaugh”:A new cinematic spin on Moby-Dick replaces the title whale with a white dragon, and casts Lethal Weapon’s Danny Glover as Captain Ahab.

Anti-Bucket List: In 101 Places Not to See Before You Die, Catherine Price riffs on everything from Beijing’s Museum of Tap Water to the Blarney Stone. (Who knew you could request a cleaning of the rock before you place your lips on it?)

A Gertrude Stein stein: And a dollhouse miniature volume of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. And Albert Camus earrings. Jacket Copy whips up a hilariously great list of their 12 favorite non-book literary oddities currently for sale.

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WRITING PROMPT:Last-Ditch Confessions
(Thanks to WD’s Brian A. Klems)
Feel free to take the following prompt home or post a
response (500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below.
By posting, you’ll be automatically entered in our
occasional around-the-office swag drawings.
If
you’re having trouble with the
captcha code sticking, e-mail your piece and the prompt to me at
writersdigest@fwmedia.com, with “Promptly” in the subject line, and I’ll
make sure it gets up.

The love of your life is getting married to someone else. In a
last-ditch attempt to win this person back, you bust into the wedding
and profess your love mid-ceremony. Start your story with the line,
"Don't say yes!"

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Want more writing prompts and exercises? Brian Kiteley has packed more than 200 wildly original ones into his 3 A.M. Epiphany. Check it out here.

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