Prompt #103
The NPR Prompt
Hello, everyone!
It’s mid-December. (What?? That’s crazy!)
I’ve got a lot on my plate—as do all of you, I’m sure. So, I’m giving myself a little break this week and borrowing today’s prompt from NPR (National Public Radio). A little over a decade ago, the NPR program All Things Considered offered up a series of writing prompts called The Three-Minute Fiction contest. Winners, as selected by guest judges, had their stories read over the radio.
I’ve cut and pasted three of the prompts for you here. Hopefully, one of them will speak to you.
The writer Karen Russell offered up this prompt:
“Write a story in which a character finds an object that he or she has no intention of returning.”
Mona Simpson gave this one:
“Write a story in the form of a voicemail message.”
From Luis Alberto Urrea:
“Start a story with this sentence: “She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.”
TODAY’S PROMPT
Choose one of the three NPR-provided prompts (above) to write this week’s story.
That’s it!
See you next week!
(Photo credit: Eric Nopanen on Unsplash)
The air was six below zero that Tuesday afternoon before Christmas. Moanna was determined to walk though, and layered for the cold with her warmest things, including her wool mittens knitted by her sister for last Christmas. Really there had not been much weather since to warrant wearing the mittens, which were not only extra warm, but decorated in needlepoint with gold and red threads with delightful shapes of hearts in varying shapes and sizes.
Moana had never married and could barely be said to have had a boyfriend. She was 37. She wondered if Silvie was sending a message with her hearty mittens. But if there was a message in the mittens, she didn’t know what it was. When she put them on and went outside and the cold made her eyes water so that tears fell out and froze on her cheeks, and then when she brushed her cheeks with the hearted mittens, well, she really didn’t know what to think. Alone on Main Street with the light failing and another year winding down.
She passed the Smith’s house with its spectacular lights all over and knew they were inside drinking eggnog with the Jones, because, that’s what they did every year. Then the Grant’s house with the single candle in each window, including the second floor, in their annual understatement, so like Margaret. Herman Stiller, the old widower was next. No outside lights there. His porch light had been out for years. A dim umbra fell on the apple tree outside the kitchen window, where she happened to know he sat at the table reading, reading, reading.
Just at the end of Herman’s leaf clogged sidewalk an object of unusual shape and color got her attention and she picked it up and brushed away the rime and frozen leaves. She didn’t recognize the object, but it looked important, and assumed it belonged to Herman, and with some trepidation walked up and knocked on his door. It was a heavy bronze knocker, a sculpture really, a form of a naked cupid. One lifted it by the ankles, and tapped the feet against a heart shaped bronze plate. She rubbed the object in her hands and waited. She tapped the cupid again and waited more. When he opened the door he looked younger than she remembered. Moana, he said, noticing the object she carried, please, come inside.
My take on the prompt from Luis Alberto Urrea: Start a story with this sentence: “She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.”
*****
TITLE: Latest Effort
She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.
"Lovely, just lovely," she murmured to herself, a phrase she usually used after reading the final sentence of a story she found wholly satisfying and charming. "Good for her," she added. "I should be more like that."
And, indeed, that is exactly what she thought as she closed the book, put it on the table, and arose, finally, to walk out the door.
"Great ending," the literary agent said out loud as he finished reading. "What a great story. It was the perfect ending. My God! I'll never read anything better!" He closed the attachment, shut the lid of his laptop on the table, and decided to walk through the door forever: he could never hope to read a more perfect story ever again.
"So poignant," thought the publisher who read the story about the agent reading about the woman who read a story. "So ironic! Where has this author been!" He just sighed. "I need a break," he told his staff. Then he walked out of the building, forever. His staff was curious. What was a story that could get that type of reaction? What could move their curmudgeon boss like that?
They opened his laptop and huddled over the screen to skim the story. After some oohs and ahhs, one asked the other, "What did you think?"
"While I enjoyed it very much," the other staffer answered, "I just don't think it would be a good fit."
"Yeah," agreed the first staffer. "Too bad."