Writing Retreat Prompt

We spent Saturday morning participating in an art card activity, and each of you kept one of the cards to investigate more deeply and write more fully. At some point, please share your writing here. If you can repost the pic or at least a link to it, that would be great. If you do not feel motivated to dig deeper, go ahead and post your original writing. It would be cool to have this activity documented here.

It was a fun, one-of-a-kind weekend. This group is a blessing 💜

Prompt #22: Rants and Riffs

Rants and Riffs

In the spirit of Annmarie's fabulous post this week, I found this!  I already have some great ideas and think this could be a great stress reliever.  I hope you ladies enjoy.

Fiction

• Printable Version
 
• Log in to Send
 
• Log in to Save
 
• 
 
• 
 
• 

Craft a piece of flash fiction based on the art of the rant: What exercises you? That is, what gets you in high dudgeon? Who pisses you off? Be specific: not just “I hate that guy,” but a riff on the last three times he cut you off in mid-sentence, the poisonous glow of his smile, and the unfortunate fact that he’s your brother-in-law. Now invert the previous exercise: How would he rant against you? Provide plenty of ripe details along with an incident or two. 

This week’s fiction prompt comes from David Galef, author of Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook (Columbia University Press, 2016).

My Soundtrack

For Prompt 21

Ah music! We create a tapestry of song to make up the soundtrack of our lives.  There are love songs, break up songs, and songs that remind us of long ago.  We all have them; they throw us back to a certain branch of memory lane.  The heat and rush of a first kiss or the song that reminds us of a loved one who passed, our lives can be defined by song.

I used to lay credence to these memories and savored the flavor of a rhythm or a beat.  I allowed myself to get wrapped up in the memory, whether good or bad.  Mostly bad.  A Christmas song might throw me into childhood, where I sat around a lighted tree and sang along to the magic of the season.  But, that memory would be pushed aside to the tumult of a broken family and of being juggled from house to house.  Good tidings might hide the undercurrent of hostility, but the anxiety was there all along.

Ozzy Osborne sweeps me back to the late 80's and into the arms of my first love.  That love I thought I'd have for the rest of my life.  I'm returned to naivety and giving myself before marriage to the person I swore my life to.  The 90's passed and I lost my notion of true love.  When I gave up on men, and then God.  Even the hymns of old lost their meaning and turned my soul sour.  I no longer felt peace. The music was fading.

I turned to talk radio and comedy.  Where there is laughter the emptiness fades. The music gives way to voice, to encouragement, to strength.  Oh, the songs were still there, but they were other people's songs.  Music I borrowed from friends, and eventually, my husband.  I pretended they were mine, pretended they made me happy...fulfilled.

It wasn't until SHE came into my life.  This small bundle, her tiny hand.  She found my heart and the music found me!

 Baby mine, don't you cry. 
 Baby mine, dry your eye.  
All those people who scold you, 
what they'd give just for the right to hold you.* 

 She took hold of my heart, gave me life.  She guides my soundtrack and leads my orchestra.  I don't mind sharing the compositions she creates, the songs she weaves.  The joy, the happiness of her life, is my music to enjoy and to cherish. There is not one sour note, not one off-beat.

There is only the love of her song.

*Baby Mine from "Beaches"