"There you are! Graham Wild came out of nowhere like a gremlin. "We are in a private room."
Lucy was madly trying to finish up her semester project for creative writing class. Having put the dang thing off for the very last minute, she'd dropped quite a bit of speed the night before, and was writing furiously. The story was not making any sense.
To make matters worse, came a knock at the door.
Nobody was there. A tiny whoosh of something or other brushed against Lucy's calf. She suddenly felt like she was no longer alone.
Back to the typewriter she went. The clacking started up again, but now a bit slower, less frenzied.
"Make that ball hit the boy behind you."
Was that tiny tinny voice in her head? Or was someone, something, else in the room with her? After a moment's distraction, she went back to writing her story of a medical exam gone terribly wrong.
"Make that ball hit the boy behind you." Again.
So she wrote it into her story. Why not?
Graham picked up the dietary guidelines that twerpy know it all dietician had left for him, wadded it up, and tossed it over his shoulder at his buddy Tom, who was trying to find some way to plug in his phone to charge it. This was always one of the most difficult tasks in a hospital room, finding somewhere to charge your electronics.
"Totally lame darling. I suggest you give it up. You are soooo going to fail that course."
The tiny tinny voice again. It was early morning, she'd been writing shit for 7 hours straight, and she was coming down from her high. Some mischievous imp had entered the room and wanted her to fail the class. She started looking around. She would find that little fucker and strangle it, even though she was tired as all hell.
"Here!" She darted to her right. "Here!" She spun to her left. "Here!" she lunged at her bed.
More softly, "here..." her head hit her pillow. "Here, here, now, now" the tiny gremlin in her dream smiled, and explained in its tiny tinny voice that it was fine to not turn in the story on time. She would come clean with the professor, try again sober, and write a great story.
This is my entry to @mariannewest's daily freewrite challenge. Saturday has a special three prompt option, each prompt allotted 15 minutes. No peeking at the prompt coming up. Today's prompts are in bold. Lucy's story is in italics.
My story is throughout this story, as my story usually is in my freewrites, and I ought to be listening to my gremlin's advice myself. Imagination to the rescue!!!
I switched up my method a bit this time. Normally I write for 4:30, then take as long as I like proofreading but not changing the content. This time, I wrote for three minutes, then spent two minutes proofreading. Very few changes have been made outside of a total of 15 minutes.
Come check out the @freewriters community if you haven't already. There is something here for everyone. We are a fabulous entry point for newbies. Anyone can do this! Actual humans read and support your posts! Cool contests to win everlasting upvotes!
I love it! A curious and refreshing story.
Thank you. Freewrites, ya know? I have no idea what is going to come out, but it's always something about me.
What an interesting way of writing, it seems to start from chaos towards recomposition. A kind of a free flow of consciousness that knows where to go by experience, rather than by knowledge of cause and effect.
Congratulations Frewrites.
Well said, Zeleira: it seems to start from chaos towards recomposition. And Owasco:
You remind me why I need to get back into the *daily freewrite habit! So many stories (mostly in 2019) came out of "nowhere" - and they were about a me that I wanna be, or a me I might dare to be if I fell into the dark side.
Someone told me how terrible my freewrites are and how it isn't necessary to POST our freewrites. I know better than to listen to voices of negativity, and yet, and yet, the inner muse internalizes this stuff and shuts me down. I stopped freewriting!!!
Thanks for the inspiration, #freewriters! This really is the best community for restoring hope in demoralized writers - the first step to recovery. For grammar, editorial rules (or battering rams, as too many workshoppers employ), we can find other writing communities, but the first step (again) is to WRITE without fear and without trying to please an audience. "Write for yourself" is not bad advice. (And I could quote the workshoppers who say otherwise, but I'm done thinking like a critic.)
It knows where to go by magic. I can't explain it any other way. I do not know where I'm going to end up. It's often a revelation.
Wow, reaching a deadline for an assignment is hard enough without a gremlin talking! Ha ha! The excerpt from her story was intriguing, though. I believe you could write the rest of her story for another freewrite some day!
Oh I could write a five part series about hospital stays! I was really happy when the prompt put Lucy to sleep.
Oh yes, part of the fun of freewrites!
Don't you just hate it when thoughts get in your head and you wonder who is saying them. lol
Those are the best thoughts. I listen to them. It's when I'm not listening to my inner voice that I make bad decisions.
so true, I have kicked myself many times for not listening
Oh that gremlin!
First, I'm floored at the synchronicity of your writer staying up all night (thanks to a pill) to write for for 7 hours straight. (Coincidentally, I was contemplating an abandoned bottle of Adderall I had quit taking because it didn't help me focus anyway, but after two years off the stuff, maybe it'd work!).
The irony of her head hitting the pillow, and the fittingly evil coaching from the gremlin: don't worry about deadlines and assignments; it was fine to not turn in the story on time.
She should have grabbed that gremlin and hurled him out of earshot!
Poets like you can pack so much into so few words. What a gift!
Hey thanks for the close read! This one was especially surprising, yet came out easily. I stopped freewriting for a long time. It just took one. Like that one adderall, but that would not be a good thing. Freewrite instead!
YOUR FREEWRITES DO NOT SUCK. YOUR FREEWRITES WERE THE REASON I GAVE IT A SHOT.
I think the first might have been about a woman who crashes a house full of young men and they let her mother them, even though they have no idea who she is. It was amazing.
Omg, YOU are amazing!
Yes. Yes. The housewife with the critical, demeaning, manipulative husband spraypainted the van in burgundy (because that color was on clearance), drove off, sneaked in through the kitchen window, and cooked dinner for an apartment house full of college boys. I never did post the sequel: their girlfriends say wake up idiots, she could be a serial killer (or a cougar, ewww). From there she went to Arizona, seeking refuge with her mom's cousin Lenna, but Lenna is gone, and her son, that weird cousin Rory, is the only one home... you remind me of the crazy stuff that emerges from a freewrite prompt. Things I might never dream up, if not for setting the timer and WRITING NON-STOP for 5 minutes, then wondering "where did THAT come from."
Thank you, THANK YOU, for not hating my freewrites. :)
You already know how much I love yours. And the haikus! I'm in awe.