- those of us who need an idea, any idea to get us started
- those who have an idea and get more writing done in the summer than the rest of the year
- those of us who desperately await the return of the first day of school to write anything at all
(There are other categories, but humor me)
I fall into that last category. However, I also need to keep writing and finishing something during the summer or it's hard to get started again in the fall. So...
This weeks prompts will help those who need ideas, and those who just need to keep writing during the summer.
Read the prompt and write up to 400 words to share with us in the comments.
Prompt #1
You’re outside cutting your grass when you come across a large hole in the ground. You’ve never noticed the hole before, but it looks to be some sort of tunnel to another world. You decide to peek through and see where it leads, only it leads you to a pivotal moment in your past—and it’s giving you an opportunity to change it. Write this scene.
From http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts
3 comments:
My steps echo like a hollow drum on the wooden footpath. Ahead is an opening and I want it more than anything in my life. To place myself into that moment, to fade into the background and change the direction of my days.
I stop at the edge and the smells of a gas station, the oils and fuel, strike me. A young eighteen-year-old boy is washing a car, splashing water in good humor. His back is to me and he doesn't know I'm there.
How young he is, slender almost too thin. And hair. No balding pate like now. So different from the man I quarreled with only that morning, forty years later, so unlike this version I see now. Life is ahead of him with all the possibilities and glamour. He doesn't know the trips and falls that await him. Only heavens bright stars are in his eyes.
I look at my hands. No wrinkles, no age spots but the smooth, tan skin of a teenager who is sprinting to college and thinking the world was hers.
I remembered that moment, that spangled time. All I needed to do was get his attention and my straight arrow plans would kink into something I never expected would happen.
All I needed to do was lift my hand.
I stepped back into the shadows breathing like a bellows. Did I want it all again? The heartache, the sorrow. Did I want the squabbling, the missed chances on the life I’d planned?
No. I would not do it again. I moved back, back. My chance to divert my life was at hand, to change it all. College, a career, and a place far from where I’d grow from a kid playing hopscotch to a grown woman.
He was singing, barely, a horrible off-tune number, that he’d sung the day he drove our old tractor in the rain, hollering the words at the top of his lungs. Even now, it made me laugh to think of it. I peeked around the corner.
His arms, corded with muscle, the same ones that would hold his baby daughter in ten years. His mouth, wrapping around the song, sour in temper, sweet in kisses.
My breath caught like a trapped bird. And just like that, my mood changed.
I stepped into the light.
I raised my hand.
And he looked up.
Ooo! Love this Huntress. Taking charge of that moment is a great image.
Oh wow. This seriously brought tears to my eyes. Well done, Huntress! I wish I had time to sit and write one this week...
Great prompt, Charity!!
Post a Comment