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The creative fun continues. Your mission: write a 6 sentence story based on one of the prompts below.
Here’s today’s prompt from Robert Lee Brewer …
Today, I want you to write an outsider poem. You can be the outsider; someone else can be the outsider; or it can even be an animal or inanimate object that's the outsider. As usual, get creative with the prompt and don't be afraid to stretch the limits.
And our selection from The Writer’s Book of Matches (Writer’s Digest Books)…
You’re secretly in love with your best friend’s wife, and you suspect she feels the same way.
I’ll post my meager effort in the comments later. Post yours in the comments, email them to me, or keep your gold for yourself. Up to you. Good luck and good writing, one and all.
Bearing Witness--The Wall
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Today they started building The Wall. When I woke this morning and went
down to the kitchen, Mum and Dad weren’t there. I followed the low murmur
of the ...
7 years ago
8 comments:
Let this one be a dire warning to us all: This is what happens when a good metaphor goes bad :)
Greta
Adrift
Don was the rocky shore of Lake Superior and Carol the deep lake. Tides of longing brought her to him; he repelled her and she crashed against him.
I loved them both, so I calmed their raging waters, said he doesn’t mean it and that’s just how he is, and, finally, you’re too good for him.
The tide turned.
Now Don is the lonely shore and Carol the still lake. I float adrift on her waters.
There is a subtle change in the air when two people in a room find an immediate, fundamental attraction to one another. It's a magical sort of feeling when you are young and single and you see that just-right girl across the room and you know you can skip the small talk because you two are going to knock boots before the evening is over. It's quite another sort of feeling when you are meeting your best friend's wife for the first time,; less magical and more "oh shit" if that sort of expression can be quantified as a feeling. You know from that first moment on you two are going to have to be very careful around each other; that if her husband, your friend, hasn't picked up on it already, it will be that subtle glance or that inconsequential brush of hands in passing through the narrow doorway that will clue him in, and boy-howdy will the paradigms change then.
So you keep your eyes on the TV or your buddy or the veggie dip or anywhere except those smooth, toned legs and that little crooked tooth that makes your skin tingle with anticipation of tasting the uneven contour with your tongue. And you're extra nice to your friend, buying the beer, bringing the ribs for the cookout and offering to lend your pickup because you know no matter what you do, in the end you're going to need every single one of those chits when the two of you break his heart.
John, this was brilliant. I give you my highest praise: I wish I'd written this myself. That last sentence is the stuff a writer's dreams are made of. You're on a roll!
I took the Poet's prompt instead:
I look across the room at the open balcony, watching the running lights of boats slowly drift across Lake Michigan. I could really use a cigarette right now; the craving’s so bad my muscles are humming, but Mimi told me no. These people frown upon smoking, she said, so could I please do without it for one night? Looking around, seeing the load of cocktail drinks and listening to the mindless drivel over the works of dead guys whose names I can’t even pronounce sober, my guess is these…people also think themselves above a beer, a foot-long and a simple game of baseball. I asked one the guests what he thought about Alex Rodriguez and his current plight in New York—I actually used the word plight, thinking it sounded more intelligent, you know?—and this guy responds by saying, “Wasn’t Rodriquez the one who wrote that Nobel Prize-winning book?”
I so need a smoke.
Looking at my Six now, I wish you had a giant Delete button. Mine really sucked. That's what I get for trying to write in present tense with a narrator talking about some things that have already happened. Yuck!
Here's my REALLY outside the box 'outsider' Six. Oh jeesh, just be kind, ok? I'm not sure it's clear.
The Sharpest Needle
He yearned for that flashing needle. It glimmered and held grown up magic. If he could possess it, he’d have the magic too, he’d have something special of his own too. But no one gave up their needles easily. Canny, he crawled across the room and before she could twist it away, he grabbed and threw it in a triumphal arc. She spent the next hour searching for it in the shag carpet instead of sewing, while he played with his pink toes, safe in the playpen.
Stephen, you're your own toughest critique. I really liked yours. And Lord knows it's better than mine. Mine is what our English teachers warned us all about.
If you want, I'll delete it. But honestly? It's way better than I think you think :)
Jane, yours rocks. They always do. And I can relate. I catch The Kiddo with my knitting all the time. Yesterday, she had about four feet of yarn wrapped around the needles like one of those God's Eye macrame things from the 70s.
You're too hard on yourself, Stephen. I bet you could submit it to 6S as is and they'd take it.
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