At our writer’s group meeting last night, we did a freewrite, which we haven’t done in a while, but we’ve been meaning to get back to. “Freewriting” means taking a prompt and writing immediately for a set amount of time–no planning, no stopping, no editing, just see what happens. If you haven’t tried it, do so! It’s fun.
The 5 Pictures idea is one where I pull out five (or so) images from a huge stack I’ve cut from magazines over a number of years. Writers can choose whichever one they want to write about, and the way we do it, no-one is under any obligation to share what they’ve written when the time is up. Usually people want to share, which is great and makes the exercise even more fun as we read our pieces aloud afterwards, but there’s no pressure. I think the knowledge that there’s no expectation of sharing makes it easier for people to let go and write.
Anyway, I rather liked mine from last night, although when I randomly pulled this picture from the pile my first thought was, “boring!” In the end, though, this was the one that spoke to me. We wrote for ten minutes, which is not long to tell a whole story, but I think I pulled it off…
“What They Don’t Know”
House-hunting with Marta is a bitch.
“Nothing too big,” she admonished, “because how many bathrooms can one person be expected to keep clean?”
I closed the browser tabs for all the places over 5000 square feet.
“And lots of windows,” she added, smoothing her dark locks.
“With wide windowsills,” I said, “for you to sit on.”
“Goes without saying, but yes.” She stuck her pink tongue out at me impudently.
“Neighbors?” I asked.
She gave me a green-eyed stare at that.
“Right,” I said. “No neighbors too close.” I closed more browser tabs.
“And you know how I feel about dogs,” she said, stretching over to look at the laptop screen.
“Well, the density of canine population isn’t usually part of the property listing,” I reminded her. “We might have to take our chances.”
Marta sighed languidly. “Of course, you’re right, darling. We’ll just have to ask the agent when we go for a viewing.”
I stroked the silky fur on the back of my wife’s neck. “I assume you’ll be in human form for that?”
She butted her head against mine with a rumbling purr bubbling up like laughter. “Darling,” she said. “Who in their right mind would sell a house to a shape shifter? But what they don’t know…”
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