Flash Fiction: 5-Minute Writing Prompt #1

I've been on a writing blitz lately, so I've been slack in updating this site, which seems a bit ridiculous, something I've only figured out now. So instead of trying to come up with other ideas to write about, I'll start sharing some actual writing!

The writers group I participate in starts out every meeting with a writing prompt exercise. Someone grabs a random book from the shelves of the library where we meet and picks out a page.  The first sentence of the page becomes our writing prompt and we have five minutes to come up with something. Every now and then, I actually come up with something coherent, so I'm happy to share it.

Today's writing prompt is the sentence, "That's the park."

Let's see what I came up with after the jump....

Oops

I was looking at the details for submissions to the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and I realized that for some reason I thought the limit was 5,000 words, rather than the 2,500 it actually is.  Unfortunately the story I had been planning to submit is already over 3,400.  With little time left, I don't plan on editing it down to the right size, so after all that struggle challenging myself to come up with a story that was more upbeat and positive (and not succeeding there either, as the story has taken a decidedly dark bent) I'm going back to the story that I wrote for the writing prompt exercise.  This probably wouldn't have happened if I had been more productive with my writing time in the past few weeks.  Two things that certainly didn't help: starting a new day job and the Olympics!

Someone once told me that "the writing process is a battle against procrastination."  Yes, indeed.

Holiday Gift Exchange: The Writing Prompt

At the end of last year, the writing group I joined at the local library had a holiday gift exchange.  The catch was that gifts had to be writing prompts, objects, words or some combination thereof designed to spur ideas for a writer.  After an anonymous gift exchange, I ended up with a lovely little Christmas card, with a passage written within, which I've reproduced below.  It's an evocative passage, chock full of possibilities.

The story that I wrote garnered a positive response from the group (a good sign, as they are thorough and incisive critics) and once I'm done final edits, I'll put the results up in a later post and expand a bit on the thinking that took me from the prompt to the full story.

What story ideas come to mind for you?

You've been troubled by insomnia and your grandson suggests you smoke a little weed with him. You are desperate so you agree.

You fall asleep easily. Soon you are dreaming of the time when you were twelve and so delirious with fever that your parents called that faith healer, grandma swore by.

You can't get her chanting out of your head, it is driving you mad.

You sit up, wide awake and your mother exclaims, "It's a miracle!"

 

The Contest

This year's Toronto Star Short Story Contest is up and running.  I was going to enter a story I wrote recently as part of a writing prompt gift exchange with my local writing group (more on that later) when I came across this piece interviewing last year's winner.  Fred Ni says that most short fiction is dark in tone.  Based purely on what I've read, I have to agree, and that certainly covers most of what I write as well.  As a challenge to myself, I think I'll try to write something upbeat and positive and enter it in this year's contest.