Writing prompt #1

Writing prompt #1

Hello! Some folk and I were talking on my Facebook page about flash fiction, and how super fun it is, but how it can be hard to get started.

Ergo, I’m going to put up a weekly writing prompt. There’s no pressure to share what you write, at all, but if you want to, please do pop a link in the comments!

This week:

• Natalie rocks some tactile realism
• Erin Marie gives a beautiful sense of place and space
• Lisa shares something truly disgusting and delightful
• John James sends some people on a mission
• Liz punches us in the heart with some social realities
• MJ has some familiar smells at her place

Read all the writing prompts »

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Here is mine. I just did ten minutes of writing whatever popped in, which for me is the beauty of a prompt, but there are no rules obviously.

On weekdays the morning smells like the darkness; that vast undercurrent of night. When it is dark, I can smell him. He always smells like dirt and leaves, and a bit like rough soap and just a bit like man, that kind of nondescript hair and testosterone and erection smell. The weekday mornings smell like secrets, when he slides out of bed and into the shower and the house is full of warm children curled like fat caterpillars, and steam from the bathroom, and then the rush of crisp air as he escapes to work. But mostly of him, of the place in the bed he has evacuated, damp with his sweat and dreams.

On weekends the morning smells like bacon and pancakes, and the ringing laughter that is part butter and salt, and part that chalky, rubber balloon smell. The weekend mornings smell like raised newspaper ink hot in the sun, and pulpy orange juice spilt on the table, and usually a bit like the couch as well. The couch and books, the smell the spine makes when it’s cracked open; cotton and glue and tree. But mostly of breathing, of the stillness of the air where the urgency has been sucked out.