Write Starts: Creative Prompts to get You Writing! Part 2

I recently received a wonderful gift: a thin journal filled with the most randomly outrageous and mundane prompts, all in the hopes to get the writer inside of me to write. I will do my best to fill this book. I'll keep this short and sweet. Now let's go!

Prompt: Write the Ending First

Last Sentence: A truck was oncoming, its headlights shining brightly.

I don't believe in you. But what I believe and what is actuality has long been separated. We are all ghosts, floating and lost on some permanent but ephemeral plane. I run after you, my love, so I can finally sleep. So I am no longer a ghost. I don't need to be happy. I just need you back somehow.

You dash under streetlights, shimmering from the yellow spotlight above. The dust casts a haze. For a second, I wonder if it's you. And I see the broach. I know it's you. It has to be you. I need it to be you.

I stop between two lamp posts. A taxi stops in front of me. I wave him off. He drives away and across the empty street, the shadow of a man stands next to you. It's you. No doubt. I hungrily stumble onto the black tar. The shadow steps forward. It's the doctor.

He has no expression but I know he's smiling. "Welcome to the realm". Blaring sounds. I look left. A truck was oncoming, its headlights shining brightly.

Write Starts: Creative Prompts to get You Writing! Part 1

I recently received a wonderful gift: a thin journal filled with the most randomly outrageous and mundane prompts, all in the hopes to get the writer inside of me to write. I will do my best to fill this book. I'll keep this short and sweet. Now let's go!

Prompt: Department store dummies have come alive! What happens next?

Dear Abigail,

I am writing you from the children's dressing room at Macy's. There isn't much time. I want to take this time to let you know that I've loved you. From the moment I wake up and I put on my make-up, I say a little prayer for you. Dammit, sorry. That song suddenly came on over the speakers.

By the time you've received this letter (if you receive it), I may be long gone. They probably want me first. From that time I placed one guy's hand on the other's butt. Or the time I managed to switch my clothes with one of them and walked out the store with a new outfit. There was also that time during Christmas when I managed to recreate a nativity scene. Abigail. Thank you for that. For dressing up like Mother Mary.

They are coming for me. Don't be afraid when they come after you. Never be afraid, Abigail.

I long for skies of blue and distant yellow
That disappeared in the embers of the bellows
Erupting not in flashes of sapphire gold
Whose ashes linger on in stories told

If I don’t make it back
Before the sky turns black
I don’t want my name remembered
On etched gray stones in November

So please soldier on through the days
And keep me close so I stay ablaze
In time, our names won’t matter
As long as our memories are gathered

Originally Written: 2/18/2011

I’m listening to “You Won’t Let Me Go” by Ray Charles. And I’m happy. I can’t stop smiling. I’m looking at the corner of my cubicle, surrounded by the artificial white light of my three desk lamps. And I’m filled with this…anxiety. This happiness that for these few short moments, I know I can’t suppress. It’s something unexplainable now and will be more unexplainable later so I should write it down to the best of my abilities. The softness of the background vocals coo as the idiosyncratic voice of Ray Charles chimes in: “I love you now/I said I love you/Whoa, with all my…heart and soul/So darling, well, if you love me/I know you won’t let me go/Well, you won’t let me go.” An impending storm looms and I’m excited for it. I feel like everything is going to be washed over. And made clean.

The Comic That Never Came to Be - "The Citizen"

PREMISE: Semi-dystopia in an alternate, not-too-distant future. A run-down café. A young reporter sees The Citizen, a superhero who retired long ago (he now goes by Vincent). She approaches him and asks him if he really is The Citizen. After an exchange, she finally chides him into admitting it. Here is the short ensuing conversation.

REPORTER: I knew it was you.

VINCENT: How?

REPORTER: There’s this air about you. I can tell. You were good. You are good. Like that man over there. There’s…not a good air about him. He’s not evil, but he’s – there’s something wrong with him.

VINCENT: In this world, there’s no such thing as a hero or a villain. Divisions do not exist. You talk how some people have this air about them? You can just tell whether they’re good or evil? There’s no air. It’s all just gray smog…that leaves you dirtier when you finally leave this Earth.

Fade to Black

This is my feel good day
Where I quietly pray
Good things for good people
And more love to everyone

Full of hatred and sadness
My black ball is now gone
Everything that’s all wrong
Fading to its blackness