Words Down 12th June 2023 - Grace Paley Short Story week

All prompts based on the short story "Wants" by Grace Paley. An unusual week given that it focused on prose rather than poetry. The  speed writes were based on gathering ideas rather than on producing anything creative per-se.

Speed writes

1. Bad advice my dad/mum gave me about aging

My parents were convinced that the right thing to do was getting on the housing ladder ASAP.

In early 2007 they were pushing me to buy saying that the price was only going one way.

I held off, not believing that the growth was sustainable, then the credit crunch happened.

I bought my house in 2010. It's the only time I've made a genuinely good financial decision.

2. 5 things you want

Me and my wife to live forever

An ADHD diagnosis / medication or just for it to go away

A chinese takeaway

To get some points in the writing competition I did over the weekend

To be paid a good wage to do something I'm passionate about.

3. Wrong reasons only – why did the relationship end

The cat didn't like them

They had opinions which were TRASH

They were part of the royal family and they got ordered to get rid of me before I spoiled everything

They hated my knees

They broke my camera

4. Awkward places to encounter an ex

At their wedding

At your wedding 

At the GUM clinic

In a police station (where one of you is the police and one is very much not)

In your wardrobe

Main Writing Exercise

20 mins to write a short story / scene about someone bumping into their ex somewhere awkward and having a conversation

-------------------------------------------------------

"Well! Of all the gin joints in all the world!"

The voice came from behind me. I was standing by the desk. Well, I was standing behind the line in front of the desk, while the heavy set woman with the stern face listed my possessions on a form and dropped them into a bag. One wallet, brown. One bunch of keys on a carabiner. One small folding knife, one cigar in a tube, one lighter. I turned my head to look towards the words and there she stood with a smirk on her face, her uniform as ruffled as it always had been after a long day at the station, the handcuffs glinting on her belt in the sickly green artificial light.

"Hello Joanna", I said. "It's been a while."

"It has hasn't it. I did not expect to come across you in here. Well, I suppose I did given all the stuff you were into back in the day, but given how much time has passed I figured maybe you'd given up all that stuff. Is that what they've got you in for? Possession?" 

She walked around behind the desk and squinted at the monitor screen.

"Ooh drink driving. That's classy."

I looked down then met her gaze. "I only had two. I'm sure the blood test will clear me. I'll be out of here before you know it."

"Well good luck. We don't enjoy having guests in here. To me, an empty nick is a happy nick. I assume you're not a happy Nick right now though."

I managed a wan smile. "You would be right on that."

The desk sergeant finished checking me in and Joanna said something to her that I couldn't hear but she nodded and told her that "five is free". Joanna came round to my side and put a hand on my arm. "OK let me show you to your suite" she said, still smirking. I'd always hated that smirk, almost as much as she hated my knees. They used to gross her out and I never quite understood why. They were just normal knees. I suddenly wished I was wearing shorts so I could watch her shudder as I did that twisting thing with my legs that she used to dislike so much.

"How have you been anyway? How's the cat? Is she still a dickhead?" she asked.

"Yeah she told me to pass on a message, what was it now..." I gave her the finger. "Obviously she did it a little differently."

She laughed. "Yeah that little shit always hated me. That's probably why we didn't work out."

I shook my head. "No, we didn't work out because my beliefs didn't align with your hatred of everything and everyone. That and the knees thing. Plus I'm secretly heir to the throne and got ordered to get rid of you."

"Excuse me! I dumped YOU!" she retorted.

"Indeed, but I engineered it."

"Anyway someone will be here shortly to take you for your test. I hope you find the pillow selection to your satisfaction, and please help yourself to the minibar." She stepped out of the cell and closed the door.

Words Down Writing Prompts - 5th June 2023 - Kae Tempest week

Words Down 05-Jun-2023

Kae Tempest Week

This week was a good week. Often I find I have to really dig to pull something out of the speedwriting prompts but this time they all just sprang almost unbidden to mind based on what was provided.

Speed Writes

1. They crest the hill at last

The engines wailing as the wheels spin

Then it's all downwards

The race for the finish

Skittering sideways like possessed crustaceans

Chasing the last shrimp in the world

2. Jasmine on the wind

Or is it honeysuckle?

I was never very good at identifying

floral scents. Particularly overpowered

as in this case

by petrol and cordite and smoke and death

as the troops advance and we retreat

and our dreams fall around us.

3. All night I lie awake with it

This pain in my mind that taunts me

The things I will never achieve

The things for which I will always yearn

The things that they have, but which I cannot.

The pain sometimes drops

but overall

the increase is linear

It will take me eventually

4. I just woke up and it was here

An unassuming box in brown corrugated cardboard.

I do not know what is inside it,

Nor how it got here.

The sender label says simply "Schroedinger".

Do I hear intermittent quiet meowing,

or did I imagine that?

5. I feel you like a threat.

And yet I know you are the source

of all safety.

Perhaps my fear is of losing your shelter,

of you deciding to take your protection

elsewhere.

Deep inside, I know you are mine forever

but the primal chimp in my brain

fears you turning out to be 

someone I know you're not

SOURCE POEM : Sequence by Kae Tempest

Empty street beside the railway at night,

Spot-lit pigeons pecking at dropped bones,

Low houses lean in like a family

Portrait. Clapped-out van pulls up, the music

Playing loud. Drunken laughter from inside.

Woman clambers out with swollen suitcase

And goodbyes them all. She stops at her door

Looks up for a moon she can't see. Her eyes 

Rank milk. The good times cling to her shoulders.

Long features, like a stretched mirror.

There, on the doorstep, she has the flooding

Sense that she is nothing but a sequence

Of events remembered differently by 

Everyone involved. What she does not sense

Is the queue of silhouettes, stood behind,

Who pick up their right hands when she picks up 

Her right hand and kick out their left legs when

She kicks out her left leg. when she calls out

To a great power she does not yet believe in

And asks to be opened, they raise their

Voices in solemn chorus behind her.

Exercise: Set a scene like this, build a picture and add detail, set up anticipation

I started this then ended up turning it into a throwback to my "I just woke up and it was here" prompt above, imagining this as the unseen route to how it just came to be there.

Title : Undefined, Uncertain, Unseen

A liminal space. Grey tarmac, dark buildings.

Shutters closed, no movement other than when wind blows

Through the discarded wrappings and cigarette packets

Scattering them slightly, then gathering them back up

Into dense heaps. The sound of an engine approaching

Before the motorcycle comes into view

And stops. The rider dismounts, looking around

For something. They appear bloated, stuffed into their

Leathers and their armour, and their helmet

Which they now remove, their breath forming mist

in the cold night air. Steam rising from their 

Sweaty matted hair. Taking the key, they open

The plastic luggage carrier and remove a normal 

Cardboard box. It does not look heavy

But it does seem sturdy as the rider places it

On the pavement. One label adorns the top

Surface. "Property of E. Schroedinger."

The street lights form multiple images 

Of the rider on the road surface, all identical, 

All moving as one,

Facing in different directions. Of the box, 

There are fewer shadows as if half of the lights

See straight through. There is, 

And simultaneously is not, the sound of an animal.

A pedestrian walks out of an apartment block,

Picks up the box without a word

And is gone back into his building.

Or someone's building.

Words Down Writing Prompts - 24th October 2022 Unfinished

Most of the prompts this week were inspired by a letter from Rainer Rilke to a Mr Kappus, in Letters To A Young Poet.

1 Minute Prompts

I suppose it must be Autumn (check)

Something something about your mother (check)

It began as a meal

But the chicken reawoke,

The fish all swam for freedom

And we thought it was a joke.

When the eggplant started laying

We decided to retreat

To a place with less enchantment

So to get something to eat

And about hospitality... (check)

The thing about clocks is... (check)

20 Minute Prompt

The long prompt this week was to write a letter as part of a chain of correspondence between yourself and someone else, real, fictional or imaginary, alive or dead, inspired by an except from Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Rilke.

Explain what you have been doing since you got their last letter.

Say something about the physicality of writing. 

Imagine the person has shared with you some doubts about their something or someone in their life. Reassure them. 

Start a paragraph with ‘And about ___________” offer them some wisdom or advice. 

Finish by attaching a poem.

Words Down, 20th Feb 2023

Inspired by works by Charles Simic

"The purpose of poetry is to return that which is familiar to its original strangeness" - Charles Simic

The above points to quite a surreal week as it turned out.

Speed Writing Prompts

Prompts were taken from various poems by Simic. 

The prompt for each is also the first line.

Spider on the wall, 

sitting,

your many legs gathered tightly

around you, your attention

focused

arrow-like

on the signal strand. Waiting.

Still.

Waiting.

I appreciate your service.

Gods disguising themselves as

mundane items.

My chair a god of inactivity,

My desk a god of industry,

My pen and paper

the gods of communication in vain.

Over a darkening plain

flies the remnant of my motivation

destined for distant climes,

or for oblivion, who can tell?

The shadow passes over others

and robs them of their momentum.

Time to sleep now. Tomorrow

Is a new day.

The woman opening a red umbrella

The man beside her

brandishing a black patent briefcase

as if it were a talisman.

A flurry of activity from the hyenas

and their camera flashes

and into the leathery interior

and away.

On their sofa

sits the creature.

He sips his tea, finger extended

like Maud at the church coffee morning.

"You see" he says in his deep voice

"It matters not at all, 

that you did not intend it.

To summon me is its own reward

and punishment

like so many things in life and death."

15 Minute Writing Challenge based on "Fork"

Brief: Start with "This strange thing must have crept", come up with a metaphor to represent an everyday item, and lean into it.

Hairbrush

This strange thing must have crept

out from a long forgotten lair,

Its head both spiked and rough haired,

Its tail dragging along behind it.

Even now it lingers on the surface

waiting, for a human hand

to come close

and seize it by the neck.

Delighting in the terror and pain

of young girls

who are already late for school.

Afterwards it falls, discarded

but sated, 

for now,

back onto the dresser,

To enjoy its spoils

and await its next feed.

Words Down Writing Prompts - 12th Dec 2022

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.

Words Down Writing Prompts - 5th Dec 2022

Speed Writing Prompts

1. When they took her away

She was still protesting her innocence when they took her away. She was bundled into the van by two men each of which was twice her diminutive size and weight. They threw her to the front part of the cargo space and slammed the doors, abruptly cutting off her cries and her indignation. The two men put away their batons, got in the cab, and all that was left was the smell of exhaust smoke as it sped away towards the rectification centre.

2. You dream a hundred choices. Each one of them, you know, is no more successful or more likely than the last but you dream them anyway because your comatose body cannot achieve anything at the moment so all you have is the dream. Ultimately you can choose any of them, but it will make no difference as nobody will know. Maybe not even you. You vaguely hear the sound of a voice. They have come back. You're not completely sure who "they" are.

3. Dialogues you keep like train tickets pass through your mind. You have no use for them any more. If anything they clutter up the space and allow for detritus to hide behind them. The dust and fluff of unwanted thoughts hide between layers of dog-eared conversation, long gone and no longer changeable no matter how much you may wish to. They stretch the bounds of your mental wallet, reducing its stability for storage of more important things. Facts. Considerings. Logic.

Prompt 3 was from "Not everything is true" by Salena Godden

4. It's just you feeling feelings again. That is, after all, what you do best. You can always do that regardless of what else is going on. In fact you wish you could do it less. You never seem to stop. You have no control.

5. Pessimism is for lightweights. Look at all the true heavyweights in the world. We're not talking boxers or wrestlers here. We're talking giants of business. Of politics. Of social change. What do they all have in common? They BELIEVE that they can accomplish whatever it is that they set out to accomplish. They are optimists. Even in the face of failure, they set out to try again until eventually they succeed.

Fifteen Minute Prompt 

Based on Mrs Death Misses Death - a chapter from the point of view of a wooden desk.

Write something from the perspective of an object.
Suggested materials:
Sand/sea to glass
Wood table/guitar/ wood
Cotton / clothes/material
Stone / volcano
Metal in ore/ felt tectonic plates shifting

Suggested openings
I could have been …
I remember the tree that I once was …
I learned very early on that …
Over the years I have …
All I know is this, …

My Idea:

Fur coat. Sense of animosity towards the person wearing it. Ineffectually planning to harm them in some way. Memory of being a mink in a fur farm.

-----------------------------------

I suppose I would have been dead by now, had my life not been taken from me by them when it was. The existence I had wasn't a great one, if I'm completely honest, but it was a real life. I had a family. I had many many others of my kind nearby. I could hear them all day and all night as I grew into the creature I was destined to become, then suddenly, blankness. I have a window of time indeterminate during which there was nothing, then air and noise and warmth and the sensation of being touched by many ... somethings. A bit like noses, but longer and thinner and warmer and not wet, and lots of them with different smells. Well I say smells, but not having a nose, or eyes, or ... well any sensory organs, if we're being accurate ... the sensations of sounds and smells landed differently than they did when I was younger.

After a while the different nose-things disappeared mostly, and I was only ever touched by the same few, which I came to realise over the years, were something called fingers, on something called a woman. The woman who was always taking me places, she smelled of mothballs and bitter flowers and mint and old sweat. I hated her then and I still do. How dare she do whatever it is that she's done such that I'm now doomed to stay draped over her shoulders, getting wet in the rain while I keep her warm and dry. When it's not cold and not wet I'm confined to a dusty and stuffy wooden cupboard until it's cold enough for her to need me again. There's more to me than just me, but I cannot detect any sense of the identity of my, presumably similarly unwilling companions. I cannot decide if they, or I, are the lucky one. Maybe they are like me, and they too are lonely. Maybe they can sense me, but I just cannot sense them.

The place I grew up was a dirty place of concrete and steel with "people" around who were apparently charged with my welfare, and that of my fellow creatures. Welfare is a low bar in these places it seems. We had enough to eat, we were kept clean, but we never had space to run. My family were not my parents and my offspring but the chosen family I found within the place. They were like me, with the same fears and the same very limited joys. Sometimes some of us would be taken from our home and we would never see them again. We liked to think they had been taken somewhere better where they had more freedom. More happiness. More light. I now realise that this was not the case for any of them. The ones who constantly tried to escape, who some of us used to look down on for the chaos they caused, were actually the only ones with the right idea. My own fate likely awaited every creature I have ever loved. I am now bonded with an unknown number of the dead, and this one woman who now uses their corpses and my own body as a status symbol. If she needed us such that she might stay alive in the cold perhaps I would not begrudge her that so much, but she spends her whole life in the warmest places and I spend much of my time in those places hung on an uncomfortable rack, pressed up against various types of garment including some made of creatures, some of plants, some shiny, some soft and furry like me. Occasionally I can sense a consciousness there but we have no means by which to communicate so we just wait, peripherally aware of one another's existence, for our jailers to collect us and take us home again.

Here we go now. I am draped loosely over her form like a thick layer of snow on a bulbous mountain. I hear loud noises as something large goes past, belching out a choking smell that I can feel settling on my fur. She even steps back from that. As I always do, I sense the danger of the place where the loud thing moves. I try to push her towards it. I have no power, but I hear her talk sometimes of the power of thought. Of belief. If I can just work out how to use that, perhaps I can bring my own power to bear. Perhaps I can make her take just one more step, into the path of the loud thing, and then she and I will be done with each other forever. It may destroy me as well, but after all this time, I think that would be welcome. I push. I push. She seems to stumble... have I finally done it? No. She's stooping into something warm and fragrant and dark. There's a thud as the door closes then another one, and movement. I shall not have my freedom this day. 

Words Down Writing Prompts - 6th November 2023

 All prompts based on the work of Brenda Shaughnessy.

1 Minute Speed Writing Prompts

The baby's father is Sleepy

which makes him Happy.

It was delivered by the Doc

Dopey thinks that Sneezy is the real dad,

and he's not Bashful about saying so,

but I think he's just being Grumpy.

I suppose I could blame God

for making me do the things I do,

failing in the way that I have.

If I were a religious man

It's an easy get out,

But this time, me being me,

I can only blame myself.

What began as a wildfire

Became an adventure

Tables in the forest, tents in a field,

New friends and new challenges,

Games in an arena

Joy in our lives

I wish I had more sisters

Ideally younger than myself.

Someone to protect.

Someone who would look up to me

and I would keep them safe

Until they got older.

Then I'd just worry instead.

15 Minute Prompt

I am dreaming of a house, inspired by "Visitor"

I am dreaming of a house,

Perhaps in a similar situation to this one,

With life and light streaming from its heart.

A river of animal warmth 

flowing through every room

into the garden

around the furniture and the toys

and back, up the stairs

to bed and safety.

Come spend some time.

There is warmth to share,

Food to sustain you.

You are welcome

If you bring with you whatever

light and warmth you are able.

If you have plenty you can complement our supply.

If you have little or none

then we will try to send you on your way

with more than you brought.

Like our detritus,

our hearth's heat spills over through our lives

and our interactions.

Please gather some up

and carry it with you.