Your August Creativity Mini-Challenge + An Exclusive Short Story from Me

A quick, 5-minute creative hit to take you into the weekend

Evelyn Skye

Aug 08, 2025

Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:

🎉 5-Minute Creativity Mini-Challenge

✍🏼 From My Fiction Desk - A new short story, just for you

📸 The Moment Behind the Image - the real story behind the prompt photo

🎉 5-Minute Creativity Mini-Challenge

We haven’t done one of these challenges in a minute, so let’s have some fun! My apologies that there’s no audio voiceover today. I’m traveling and wrote my short story in bed this morning but now I’m about to dash off to a meeting. Still, onwards we go…

It’s a common myth that creativity has to be a huge undertaking. I actually believe we can spark it with just small moments, and anyone can do it, not just professional artists.

Also, these little bursts of creativity can lead to larger inspiration or simply bring a smile. Both are wonderful and enough in their own ways.

So here is your Creativity Mini-Challenge for this month. It’s based on a picture from my life and will only take you five minutes. (Below, you’ll find my take on it, although I admit time gets away from me once I get going.)

Look at the photo below (alt text available for accessibility).
Tell yourself a super short story or doodle something about it.
(optional) Share your story in the Comments below!

Old cannon on a red metal base, pointing upwards. It sits in an idyllic tree-lined promenade. White buildings are visible on the edges of the photo.

✍🏼 From My Fiction Desk

A new short story inspired by the photo above, shared exclusively with subscribers of CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY:

No one knew exactly when the cannon had appeared, but legend has it that if you lay your face against its cool metal in just the right way, you could convey a message and it would shoot your message into the world.

The question was—what was the “right” way?

Most people did it wrong. They’d smash their faces against the cannon or sometimes they’d barely skim their cheeks. Children and teenagers would climb onto it and lay the entire lengths of their bodies along the barrel. The commonality is that they would all wish for something.

“Dear Santa, if you or the elves can hear me, I want a drone and my sister wants a scooter. Please.”

“Sophia, please go out with me!”

“Hey universe, I want to win the lottery!”

But the cannon was not a genie’s magic bottle. It was not there to grant wishes.

One day, though, a young woman who knew nothing about the cannon’s legend, went up to it and gave it a hug. As her face pressed affectionately against the patinaed metal, she said, “Today is going to be a good day.”

Then she went on her way.

Unbeknownst to her, the cannon blasted out her message. It was a quiet blast, more like a whisper on the wind than an explosion, but the gentle beginning meant it did not burn itself out, and the message could go on and on and on. It traveled to every person walking on that tree-lined promenade, to every person in the city, and then swirled onward through the state, the country, and even made it across the ocean to the other side of the world.

It had worked because she had not made a wish. She had simply said something she felt was true and good, with no asking of anything in return.

Today is going to be a good day for her.

For me.

And for you.

📸 The Moment Behind the Image

This cannon from the Prussian War sits on the campus of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The students fire it to celebrate key moments during the school year, like graduation.

One year, MIT students came in the middle of the night and stole the cannon into a moving truck and drove it all the way across the country to Massachusetts as a prank!

The Caltech students got back at their techie rivals by showing up on the MIT campus and handing out free MIT mugs… but it turned out that when you poured hot coffee or tea in it, the logo changed from MIT to Caltech (and the color from MIT’s red to Caltech’s orange).

I love a good student rivalry!

🥰 Want more of my writing?

You can support my work by buying one of my books for yourself or for a fellow reader — thank you so much for being here. I write these stories for you. 💛

In case you missed it, you can RSVP now (it’s free!) for my virtual launch party + origami workshop, where I’ll teach you to make 2 paper roses inspired by my book.