Prompt #57
Tick tock, Tick tock
Good morning, everybody.
If you took a look at…
…the Bonus Post I posted at the end of last month, you already know about a recent visit I took to the Emergency Room with my neighbor, Eric. If you didn’t read that post, I’ll fill you in briefly: It was a long wait. From the time we arrived at the ER to the time I got home, nearly twelve hours had passed. But because Eric is such a great guy, it only felt like eleven and a half…
(All ended well, by the way. Eric is a-okay!)
The wait, and all that ensued as we waited—including some fairly dramatic ER action: screaming, barfing, moaning, loud talkers, and a trio of nuns—left me with a lot of good fodder for future stories. In fact, when Eric told me he was so sorry to have put me through all of the waiting, I told him this is what writers live for. Watching things happen!
It’s funny to think about writing a story that’s about waiting, as it seems waiting would be the opposite of action. But of course, there is so much tension in waiting, so much of an "unknown future.” The character who is waiting is not passive—it sounds counter intuitive, but a character who waits is actively waiting. (An interesting character, anyway.)
The waiting—it’s a clock ticking. It’s a countdown. At some point, something’s gotta give. At some point, the waiting will end.
HERE’s a story from Brevity where a man and his father wait for their turn to tee up on the golf course. “Waiting to Hit” is by J.T. Bushnell.
And HERE’s a classic story with two characters talking about something important, if not devastating, while waiting for a train: Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a story about a character who is waiting for something.
Or your story can be about two people waiting, a group of people waiting, an animal waiting—whatever you choose!
The thing your character waits for can be anything. A letter, the newspaper, the arrival of a baby, a vacation, the water to boil, medical test results, to get to the front of the line, for an Uber to arrive… your choice.
The main thing is—whatever they are waiting for has a sense of urgency. It’s important. They are a little, or majorly, stressed about it.
That’s it. Four hundred words max in the Comments section.
A quick reminder: Encouraging and supportive comments in response to stories are wonderful. Critiques and unasked-for suggestions should be avoided. Thanks, everybody!
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I hadn't slept well for weeks. Either the worries about whether our house would sell fast enough, at a high enough price or without too much complication, or the worries about where we would live next and would it ever be as good there? These competed for anxiety space in my brain, and there's a lot of that kind of space available most days, reserved parking for debilitating and often imagined, worry. I had confidence things would play out well, a little anyway, but also waited for the wheels to come off the wagon. Then it burned. The new town, the target area, burned to the ground in a fire of historic proportions. We were stunned. "Didn't we just have lunch at that pizzeria last week, the one that guy is in front of, sifting through the ashes?" Indeed we did. And indeed we won't again. And it was pretty good pizza. Didn't we look at a house on that street, the street that now crosses a field of ash and chimneys? But once we learned the kids were OK and their nearby neighborhood was OK, I felt a sense of elation. The disaster had arrived. And it was OK. The bullet missed us. The music stopped and there were still chairs for us. Our home here, that I wasn't quite ready to leave, became once again the sanctuary we love to inhabit, instead of a product we were preparing for market. It is weird to feel this pleasurable sense of relief as others suffer. But I am no longer waiting for the next thing to happen. I fell asleep last night at 8:00pm and slept like a baby.