Prompt #34
Something Different
Hello, everybody.
Happy August!
Yes, I’ve posted a photo of upside down legs and cute boots for no reason whatsoever! I just liked it! (Photo credit: Cedric Wilder from unsplash.com)
So, I wrote a prompt for this week, but I decided to save it for next Monday. Today, we’re going to try something different. No worries—next week, we’ll be back to the usual fare!
The reason I’m not putting up my usual prompt is that I came across something new and different the other day that I thought might be fun for all of us. We’ll see how it goes. Don’t hate me but… take a deep breath…. this week, I’m borrowing prompts from someone else! That’s right. I’m letting someone else do all the work for me. Ha! And you thought I was perfect!
Without further ado:
I’m a subscriber to Rebecca Makkai’s substack, “SubMakk.” Maybe you are, too. If so, then you probably already saw her post from last Friday entitled “What Happened When I Posted 731 Writing Prompts Online (part 1).”
Seven hundred and thirty-one writing prompts! Come ON! That’s ridiculous. But, as it turns out, she actually DID post 731 writing prompts—one per day, on Twitter, over the course of two years. What a hoot. And now, she’s posted 183 of them (so far) on her Substack.
Here’s what Makkai has to say about prompts:
“I’m allergic to vague prompts (“Write about a time you were sad!” “What frightens you?”) and much more interested in extremely specific ones that get us writing about things we haven’t already said a hundred times. Also, my brain could generate fifteen of these an hour (thanks, ADHD!) and it was nice to have somewhere to put some of them.”
I have to admit to pausing for a moment when she said she could generate fifteen prompts in an hour—but then I looked at the prompts themselves and saw what she meant. She’s riffing here, letting her brain spill out in all directions, catching bits and pieces as she goes. Her prompts don’t come with explanations or examples. They are snippets, meant to get your mind moving. And they are wonderfully fun to read through.
Like Makkai, I’m generally not a fan of vague prompts. I like and need more than that. But unlike Makkai, I’m not a fan of the kind of prompts she calls “extremely specific.” I don’t like being told too much. Maybe it’s my knee-jerk negative reaction to authority figures and being told what to do, but when a prompt asks me to, say, put Clara in a diner with Phil and then have the two of them argue over the bill—well, that’s just too much for me. I clam up. The prompts I favor the most are the ones that deal with structure or pattern—not content. And those are the kinds I try to offer up to you.
Makkai’s prompts are very different from mine. Her prompts run the gamut from very specific to off the wall to—well, go look for yourself! I really like this one: “Your uncle’s trick for slicing tomatoes.” That prompt definitely prompts my imagination. I see uncles and cousins and family dinners. I could use that prompt and very well end up with a story that has no uncle and no tomatoes!
So, I hope you enjoy the prompts I’ve chosen for this week, all of which come from Makkai’s list. (Thank you, Rebecca Makkai. I didn’t ask permission to cut and paste a few of your prompts here, so please don’t sue me.) I think the key to using these prompts is letting your imagination fly—but all of you are already so good at that! Also, allow yourself to start with one of these prompts while knowing you can veer off from the prompt altogether. See where these lead—no fear!
Note: Among others, Makkai is the author of the novel I Have Some Questions for You (which I could NOT put down), and The Great Believers (which is waiting patiently for me on my bookshelf). A link to her website is HERE.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Here are ten prompts from Makkai’s long list. Please choose one! When you post your story, be sure to tell us which you chose. Stick to just these ten, please. If you want to try any of her other prompts, you can certainly do so! She’s posted them for you to use! But for our purposes today, I’m hoping you’ll choose one from among the following:
Meghan is your bartender. It’s Meghan’s last night.
The sociology professor hasn’t shown up to class for a full week now.
The chickens of Moscow
People who work in the drive-thru window at Starbucks get an inordinate number of bee stings.
The mother of the bride is drunk.
Put your character in a bad situation, and then make it worse. And then make it worse again. And then make it worse again. And then: Gladys shows up.
You thought you could just drop your kid off at this birthday party and leave, but apparently all the parents are staying and drinking wine while their kids watch the bubble guy perform.
The vending machine in the basement of the rec center.
There are thirty tiny polar bears living in the refrigerator.
Your niece wants to play horses with you.
As always, 400 words or less in the Comments section. Thanks everybody!
(I used "the mother of the bride is drunk.")
This is on the twenty-eighth floor of the Markham building downtown, famous for the bathroom stall windows with their views of the Olympics, the islands, and the vast blue of Puget Sound. But the mother of the bride-to-be, she’s not looking out the window. In fact, it seems she never made it into a stall at all as there is a small splash of vomit next to her face. I pray she does not get vomit in her hair and in that moment she does. The sisters—oh, those nasty sisters—they are laughing, and I’m not sure what to do. If her own daughters aren’t going to help her off the floor, is it my place to do so? They are hysterical with laughter, mind you. Well, I could have told you we were headed someplace bad (though I never imagined this particular scenario) when the comments began over the first course. (Rehearsal dinner.) The mother of the bride said there was something she needed to say, and then there was the shouting, and then the mother ran out of the room and the drunken sisters followed. And finally, well, it seemed someone should go see what was going on and that someone turned out to be me.
“Sorry” I said to her, slightly shoving her face away from the vomit and throwing down a few entirely ineffectual paper towels.
The odor—horrible.
“What should we do?” I said to the laughing sisters, which only made them laugh harder, which momentarily covered the sound of the mother’s ugly weeping. There are scenes you remember the rest of your life and I knew in that moment I was in the middle of one.
Perhaps my date (groom’s brother) was a nice enough guy, I’ll never know. I peeked in a stall to see the famous view—yes, it’s true, the mountains looked fabulous, the sun was just then beginning to set—walked out of the bathroom and headed for the elevator. Wedding went off, I was told later. But then—cocaine, gambling, another woman—well, turns out the mother of the bride was right after all.
#3 the chicks of Moscow
The chickens of Moscow shit just like any other chickens of this world. It’s amazing how a bird originating in the sub tropics of Indonesia winds up in the icy streets of Moscow and why they continue to live there like the ancient dinosaurs they are never comfortable in the snow.
The chickens in Hawaii wonder the streets and peck at your toes when you drink your coffee at the Aloha Press. Always begging for crumbs of your cinnamon roll.
I don’t particularly like or dislike chickens, it’s just the poop on the deck next to my chair on my sandals that causes my distress. Chickens don’t expel liquid pee; the pee ejects with the poop –– which is the dark color, and the pee is the white content. Also, after observing chickens I don’t believe they can see directly in front of their beak. Note how they turn their head to the side to peer at you. That’s probably why they cross the road.
Furthermore, the chickens of Moscow are like any other chicken of the world and have the ability to peer one eye into the sky in search of an incoming hawk and the other eye to the ground to search for a beguiling city ant on his way home from road construction.