Prompt #44
Pick a color, any color
Hello, You Wonderful People!
Question:
Have any of you read Bluets by Maggie Nelson? A lyrical examination of the author’s internal life by way of the color blue, the book is written in short, numbered bursts—240 of them—each a sentence to a paragraph long. Throughout it all, the color blue grounds the reader, giving Nelson something to return to time and again.
Here's how the book begins:
1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession; suppose I shredded my napkin as we spoke. It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then, one day, it became more serious. Then (looking into an empty teacup, its bottom stained with thin brown excrement coiled into the shape of a sea horse) it became somehow personal.
2. And so I fell in love with a color—in this case, the color blue—as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get from under, in turns.
I won’t go on about the book—you can read it yourself, if you’re interested. (I loved it.) My main point in bringing it up here today is to present the idea of using a color in your own writing.
What do I mean by using color in your writing? You decide! Obviously, colors evoke emotions, so there’s that to think about. But to help give you some ideas, here are three examples of short fictions that incorporate the concept of color:
First off, is the story “Pink” By S.G. Smith, found online at Flash Fiction Magazine. This story startled me when I first read it. The color pink—usually thought of as so sweet—goes to a dark place in this one.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to access “Grayness” by Sheila Heti in The New Yorker. If you’re not a subscriber, you get a few freebies a month. If you’ve already used your freebies, try a new browser. Something to note while reading this story (aside from her use of colors), is her use of the device “one day,” which we’ve talked about before in these posts (Prompt #6). Usually, when we see the words “one day,” we can be fairly certain that the meat of the story has arrived. But Heti uses that phrase more than once. In fact, she uses it three times in the space of one very short (and amazing) story—something to maybe think about as you read her words.
Here’s one last story for today. It’s from Brevity (which means it’s nonfiction). Written by Abby Frucht, it’s called “Blue Shirt”, but of course it’s about a lot more than a blue shirt.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a little story that incorporates in some way a certain color of your choosing.
It may help to start by making a list. For instance, write a list of all the red things you can think of. Use that list to write your story.
That’s it! That’s the whole prompt.
Alternative prompt: A coyote in the neighborhood
Feel free to post up to 400 words in the Comments.
New grandchild arrived and i'm unable to respond at my usual pace. He's adorable and perfect and bringing so much happiness to his family and new friends. I'll be back here tomorrow to read your pieces. xoxo
Funny you should mention blue.
Yesterday was a long day all blue.
Blue sky, blue water, blue mountains, blue shirt and pants even.
I was not blue, that's important, but some other color I don't know the name of yet.
The mountain blue was the blue that really got me.
At first I walked away from it, but kept looking back to see what the blue looked like in that moment.
Miles away, and receding into the sea many, many miles, all the blues becoming more or less blue, and the water, sky and mountains belonging to more or less each other than to a particular blue.
That is to say, what could you quite say about any of it except everything was something blue.
But the mountains' blue was really something. I'd like to send you a picture of their blues.
For god's sake this are blues pushed six thousand feet into blue sky from the bottom of the blue ocean. I look at their blue for a long time trying to think what I can say about them but a day later I'm still in wonder of their overwhelming blue.