Little Thoughts About...Issue #17
Writing...occasionally
When I can I like to take attend the free Write-Ins offered by Gotham Writers, I started during the pandemic and while I can’t make them every week anymore, I do try to attend at least one a month. No matter the teacher, each session is about the same. They give you a prompt, a set time to write, and then people can read what they wrote. There’s a short break and then we do it again with another prompt.
Sometimes I see the prompt and I just go, and sometimes I stare at the prompt for like five minute and have no idea what to write. The session I attended in August was like that, the first one I had no idea where to go and then it clicked that I had read something about how your current job would translate into StarTrek and being a member of Starfleet. This is what I wrote for that prompt:
Prompt 1: Joy
Joy, a noun, a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.
Quch in Klingon not to be confused with Joy’ the Klingon for torture, which this mission was starting to feel like.
What had started out as such an exciting opportunity, quickly became the most boring thing Lexi could imagine. How could a research mission to another planet to study creation stories, her favorite thing to study, be such a disappointment. She had such high hopes for getting out there and being the one to document the oral stories. Spend time hearing the stories, hearing the nuances of the speech and not just reading the words on a page. She spent so much time just reading them. Yes she could listen to the pre recorded versions, but they lacked something so vital from hearing them in person.
Lexi walked into her cabin and set the door lock to ‘ Do Not Disturb’. She really liked the group she was with on this mission, but they were just a bit too social for her, she needed some time alone after this long day. She had the perfect night planned, some comfy clothes, a plate of pasta number 15, and her current read, a Bajoran romance book set during the Cardassian occupation.
Prompt 2 I just started writing and it was just a quick little thing that came out. I’ve been thinking about this blurb and now I want to expand it, but ask me how many half complete short stories I have right now saved on my desk top…too many!
Prompt 2: tomato
Summer is one of my favorite seasons, especially when the home gardeners have bountiful harvests. Today as I walked into the break room I noticed a big container of cherry tomatoes. A great snack, I take a paper cup and fill it to the brim. Walking back to my desk I pop one in my mouth and I am transported back to my childhood. Summers playing in the backyard, taking snack breaks at the tomato plant in the back corner of our yard. It wasn’t our plant, my neighbor had a budding garden, and the tomato plant started growing through the slats in our fence. We had free reign to eat those little red tomatoes that tasted of warm summer and sweetness.
I’m reminded of my mother’s stories about growing up with a small family farm. She would take a salt shaker out to the tomatoes on a hot summer afternoon to find the perfect one to eat like an apple. Sprinkle salt, bite. Sprinkle a bit of salt, bite. Pure bliss.
I open my notes app on my phone as I pop another tomato into my mouth and add a reminder to stop at the little roadside booth on my way home to pick up some nice big jersey tomatoes.
I’d love to have your feedback on these!
Happy Reading and Writing!
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