All prompts from The Wife of Willesden by Zadie Smith
Speed Writing Prompts
1. And a lot of what you said made me feel a bit
And a lot of what you said made me feel a bit melancholy, to be honest. I mean, I know you're happy with all the things you've done and all you've achieved, and I'm happy for you, I really am, but I just can't help but compare all your success with all of my, by comparison, abject failure and it just ... made me feel a bit shit if I'm completely frank. I mean, go you, but also fuck you and your perfect life.
2. You want to think you’re a saint
You know, doing a nice thing for someone does not immediately make you a good person. It doesn't make up for all the stuff you've done before that ruined lives and took away people's happiness. You've found a new purpose in your life now and maybe you've learned something but you want to think you’re a saint and you've got a long way to go before people will think of you as anything but a bastard.
3. Man owes a debt to his wife
(A dodgy sequence of dodgy haikus)
Wife gives up her job
Focuses on home making
Changes all her dreams
House is kept lovely
Man owes a debt to his wife.
Works hard, always out
Wife then gets lonely
Wife finds better things to do
Man finds self alone.
4. You’ll pay in cash; it’s the wages of sin
We have a few special offers this week, and there's a menu on that wall over there. If you take up any of the special offers of course, you'll pay in cash; it's the wages of sin, quite literally. We can't be putting these things through the books now can we? HMRC think we're a proper legit therapy studio.
5. But then she come to
(more dodgy haikus. I struggled with some of these prompts)
But then she come to
The world all as she left it
All so familiar
Looks around the room
Decides she will slumber more
Here worse than nowhere
Unconscious again
Dreams can be terrifying
So can reality
these places take turns
At first being the escape
and then the nightmare
Fifteen Minute Prompt
Tell the story of a relationship with multiple voices telling the story, like a multi person monologue, based on a section of "The Wife of Willesden" where Zaire and Alvita are discussing Alvita's relationship with Ryan and how it went bad.
I tackled this by imagining it was me and my partner talking to someone else about a big issue seller that I know.
K:
So we saw her again, she was there in the square
with her big issue bag looking hopeful...
H:
... but yeah
By the time we walked past with some cash for her though
She was gone.
K:
Her train might have been late in the snow.
When I first talked to her she looked cold as the night
So I bought her a scarf. It was fluffy and white
And now when I see her she always says hi
H:
She's probably hoping you're going to buy
A big issue.
K:
I doubt it. A very long time has gone past
Since I bought one of those. I just usually give cash
Or sometimes a sandwich but she likes to chat.
Her husband's a wrong-un, and his dad's a twat.
Though she'd never say so. I found out this all
from the girls on - you remember that old sandwich stall?
H:
Yes that's gone now too, which is a proper shame.
They did lovely butties.
K:
Cheap too, so that came
To be where I would get the sandwiches we had.
It was those girls who told me the creep was her dad.
H:
Her dad's got another pitch just across town.
Did he once ask for money?
K:
Yeah I turned him down
Cos he asked me for two hundred quid for their rent
I was dropping off kids stuff cos she was pregnant.
It was cheeky at best.
H:
That's a generous word
He's a creepy old git and a bit of a turd.
But she always seems lovely.
K:
She is, you'd be right
But her horrendous life makes her deal with such shite
She gets pregnant each year despite taking the pill
So she's always with child or if not she's just ill
H:
But she's been there forever, she's a fixture of town.
She's outlasted businesses, loads have closed down.
If the market is open she comes on the train
To stand there and sell in the sun and the rain
K:
She just calls me "man", she's forgotten my name
But I've known her for years now, she's always the same.
So if you see her, just by the greengrocer, looking
around just remember she has basically nothing.
Buying her mags could be the difference between
Her kids going hungry or being warm and clean.
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