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Category: Writing Prompts
I found some topics on Pinterest grouped monthly. Thought I’d give it a whirl.
{#63 Word count 200. You are on death row. Describe in detail your final meal} It arrived on a styrofoam plate but even that couldn’t diminish my delight. The bacon wrapped filet, prepared medium rare, was the most perfect piece of bovine excellency I had ever laid eyes on. (It could nearly be cut with my fork, but I had been allowed a plastic knife for the occasion). Paired with a two pound sweet potato, dripping with cinnamon butter and brown sugar, I couldn’t get it in my mouth fast enough. There was spinach maria too, creamy, cheesy, salty, and steaming. I sunk my fork into the shallow dish and watched the cheese stretch. A marvel. I gulped the sweet tea and reveled in memories of decades ago, on my momma’s porch, before everything went so wrong. Mama tried. Lord, she tried. The roll I requested was hefty with quality grains and yeast. I slathered it with butter and didn’t look up except to eye the turtle cheesecake patiently waiting for me with a glass of milk. I took my time, relishing in every bite, savoring the texture and all the flavors. Bless the hands that prepared it, and the farmers that grew it. Let them never know the evil that I had in me…
You don’t have to crack the spine to read a book. I’d prefer you never crack it at all. If given the opportunity and GIFT of holding a brand new book in your hands, simply open it, fan through the pages a couple of times and gently bend the front and back covers 90°. That’s all that is necessary for breaking in a new book. Now, once you’ve chosen your new book, or it has chosen you, as is so often the case, you just open it up and get to reading. My preference is to be in a chair I can nest in, with my water and chapstick nearby, under a good light. I plan to stay awhile. I don’t want to be sidetracked, so I don’t have my phone near my person. I might even bring snacks. And then I’m whisked away, often to the Lowcountry, but sometimes my Book Club forces me out of my comfort zone and I have to read about the poor women in Kabul, or tribes in Africa two hundred years ago. Sometimes I don’t read about people at all. The best part about reading is there are no rules. Whenever I meet someone who says they don’t like to read, after I swallow my disdain and overall nausea, I quickly ask them about their interests. And guess what? People always enjoy reading something, whether…
I was born with eight brothers and sisters. One of my sisters didn’t make it. I was the runt, but you can’t tell it now, can you? My mother was fawn colored, with little patience for us and our needle teeth. She tolerated us until she didn’t have to anymore. Her relief was visible. I only knew my father from a distance. He was massive, and kept behind chain link on concrete. His ears were docked, and he was the color of a ten-year old nickel that had been carried in many pockets. I thought he was magnificent. One day, the man who feeds us brought another man and I was picked straightaway. I was happy to be held, and my ears rubbed. Nobody had ever given me singular attention before. He put me in a box on the seat of his pickup, and I promptly jumped out. He let me ride on his lap to my new home. It was so exciting to be somewhere new! All the smells! All the sounds!! All the people!! I was loved for a time, and then the family all left. I was put in a black cage. It was lonesome. I missed my brothers and sisters who were always climbing all over me. There were two other dogs there, but neither were extra friendly. One was downright hateful, and I think the one who was grey like the fog was not hitting on all four…
{#60 word count: 60. A gypsy places the most ridiculous of curses on you} Of course I would make fun of her nose. Anybody who had eyes in their head would. It was truly hideous. So the old woman with the bulbous nose and curly gray hair woven with tattered ribbons pointed a gnarled finger at me and said I would never finish another sentence. Now, isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever 😂😂😂 I especially like this one. Take that, you bunch of whiners who always want MORE…
Because one writing challenge isn’t enough. I’m gonna try to run two as long as I can stand it. Seeing as I’m starting this one over a week late, we’ll see if I get burned out before I ever get caught up. For these prompts, I’m choosing to take a more realistic approach. Of course, being only one word, they are much easier to manipulate than the almost full scenarios the other challenge presents me with. I promise to do the best I can to entertain you. ********************************************************************* It was one of those days I didn’t want to get out of bed. I just knew if my feet touched the floor, I was either gonna throw up, cry, or fall down. But things had to be done, so I slowly peeled the covers back, relishing the feel of cool air on my clammy skin, and began to ease out. I kept a hand on the bed for reassurance and I crept, gingerly now, along the side towards the bathroom. When I got to the corner of the big tester bed that had been in my family since they came over on the Mayflower (not REALLY, but just about), I gripped the post and breathed deeply through my nose. “You are not sick, you are not sick,” I chanted. I squinched my toes against the dark plank scuffed hardwood. “You are not sick, you are not sick…
{#463. You’re in witness relocation when at your job for a grocery store in this faraway place, someone recognizes you} My life isn’t stressful anymore. I don’t have to wonder who I’ll find on my couch at three o’clock in the morning, or check my backseat before getting in my car. I don’t have to thoroughly inspect seals on containers and examine my food before eating out in restaurants. I no longer have to avoid busy intersections or make excuses to always ride alone. I’m not forced to have a backup plan with alternate routes to get from point A to point B these days. What I have is a home in Bear Lake, Idaho, nearly cut off from the world. I work a routine job at the local Stop-n-Sav just to fill some hours in my stretched out days. I could be anyone I wanted to be, but who I wanted to be was a hermit. And the government didn’t mind at all. They were thankful to have someone that wouldn’t cost a bundle and that wouldn’t be a headache. Bear Lake isn’t much of a tourist destination, and certainly wouldn’t be for the colleagues I had in my past life. They’re all the glitzy glam of Vegas or West Palm Beach. Here we have mountains, but not the pristine slopes…
{#48 Word count 100. Write a eulogy for a famous fictional character. Only reveal who it is at the end} She was the hottest trick in shoe leather, all the beaus of the county after her. And no wonder, with a seventeen inch waist! But she married Mister Charles Hamilton to provoke her true heart’s desire. Shortly thereafter, widowed by the war, she moved to Atlanta to join her sister-in-law and aunt. She nursed injured soldiers at the hospital near the depot for a time and delivered her SIL’s baby with little to no help from her simpleminded darkie. She finally left Atlanta with her stolen mule once the Yankees began to burn it. She, her SIL, the newborn baby, and maid waited out the Union Troops under a bridge in a flood. Upon returning home she found that the farm had been seized by Union Troops and all their livestock and crops had been ransacked and stolen. Her mother dead, and her father gone batty, she was forced to be at once both the lady of the house and the overseer. She shot a Yankee deserter who broke into the house while her family picked cotton in the scorching hot red clay fields. Flat broke, father now gone as well, she and her mammy fashioned a dress of curtains to beg for tax money for the farm from a wealthy gentleman she had befriended in Atlanta, but all was in vain. It was…
{#262 The monologue of a serial killer before court on why he did it} “It’s funny how you can see people, you know, and think how much better lookin’ they’d be dead. I mean, I get it, we’re supposed to wait on the wraith of God to strike ’em down, but I never was much none for patience….and this ol’ girl, she was on a bad road, y’know? In a bad way, doin’ bad things with bad people. And her little boy deserved better’n that, so I just waited one night, when she was comin’ up her walk, there, in them slutty shoes and that indecent dress you could see straight through, and she was a-rootin’ through ‘er bag for ‘er keys. And I was sittin’ there a-waitin’ crouched down real low-like beside them bushes and I just reached out and caught ‘er. She didn’t even get a chance to scream. That clothesline, hit was a good ‘un, paid six dollars for it up at the hardware…I knew it wouldn’t give till the job was done. Hit sure didn’ take long, neither. She had one of them real skinny necks you see on girls that do so many drugs. Her breath was right awful, though. I don’t know what she’d drunk…
Day 3 of the rest of my life. And the rest of yours. I’m digging these prompts, I hope you are too. {#240 You are taking medicine that you’ve been required to take for a year now. You notice that the label seems strange though, you peel it back to find something curious.} 6:00 a.m. A struggle. One eye open to mash the big silver button. Sleep. 6:13 a.m. Did you know you could set your snooze to more than nine minutes? You do now. Although I could probably use at least another hour of REM, the team could use me. I rise, and is my custom, head for the medicine cabinet. I should really invest in one of the those pill-a-day containers, because halfway through my first cup of coffee I’ll be wondering if I already took it. But of course I did. I do it first thing every day so I know I did. My eyes are adjusting as I try to focus on my face in the mirror. Law, another zit. How come when you hit nineteen they don’t just up and disappear? Here I am, nearly twice that, and they’re still popping up unwanted on my chin. Or on my cheek. On the inside of the my nose. Those little bastards HURT. I shake out my allergy pill, my vitamin, and my script. It’s a small thing, innocuous…
