Chiseling Creativity
If you read my newsletter in December, you can skip this paragraph, if you didn’t shame on you and now you have to read the next one hundred and four words. It’s about the word I claim to strive toward each year. Some years, I’ve been AWESOME and remembered it 365 times. Sigh, and then there are the years I’ve packed the word away with the decorations. My word for 2023 was CREATE, and after reviewing my day planner, I’m reclaiming it for 2024. I’m recycling it because something exciting happened in my monthly writing workshop a few weeks ago. In this class, we write to prompts based on a passage our instructor selects. Usually, I work on whatever scene I’m about to write in one of my books, but something unusual happened that day.
The Passage: “Let’s Say,” a flash fiction piece by Julia Strayer
The Prompt: “I’m being robbed.”
Time: 10 minutes
I feel a hard push between my shoulder blades and fly forward like a superhero, arms outstretched, anticipating my fall on the dirty pavement. Gravel pushes into my knees, but the pain isn’t from the rocks now embedded in my skin. It’s in my heart seeing the two half-dollar-sized holes in my brand-new sparkly fishnet stockings. The pain in my palms and knees is minor compared to my heart which is constricting. I worked an hour of overtime last week to buy those tights. Not to mention the fact that I almost got fired today because the line was long, and the salesclerk was painfully slow—picking up the package, looking at it sullenly, sighing and scanning it with her little laser gun, and then placing my new tights in a bag. I had gone on my lunch break, and by the time I made it back to the time clock, where my supervisor stood, tapping her watch, I was out of breath and sweating, with the neck of the plastic bag crinkled in my fist like a thief stealing a chicken. Glaring at me as I placed the vanilla-colored card under the dial, I heard the guttural stamp and placed the sum of my value to the company in the gray metal rack. I could feel her eyes boring twin holes in my back, which meant I had to go directly to my station and couldn’t sneak over to my locker to get my sandwich, and all afternoon, my stomach alternated between growling and stabbing me with tiny, hot forks. I’m snapped out of the past and brought back into the indignity of the present when I feel the chain of my purse biting into the soft flesh under my arm. “Give it up. Don’t make me hurt you,” my ears, wearing wide, golden hoops that kiss my cheeks, hear an anxious, high, thin voice. I swear the links around my arm are going to sever my limb, but then the pressure releases as the strap snaps, and a yelp bounces off the brick walls of the alley. Hah! It hit him, I think, with smug satisfaction. I liked that purse, and I like it even more now, knowing it fought back. Yes, it was a knockoff that I bought out of the back of someone’s ratty old car, but it was beautiful, somehow glinting through the dusty, clear plastic bag in the sunlight. Putting it on my shoulder before I walked out tonight, I decided it was worth the two hours I spent babysitting my neighbor’s whiny brat, but now the strap is broken. Maybe I can use some pliers to fix it. “Stay down,” the adenoidal voice of the young teen barks, but now there’s the slightest tinge of nervousness in it, like he’s suddenly realized he may have bitten off more than he can chew. But all I can think is…I’m being robbed…me…of all people. Right here, one block from where I am supposed to meet my friends. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m usually invisible to punks like this twerp who pushed me down. At six feet and two hundred and twenty-five pounds, I resemble a refrigerator decked out in bright blue eyeshadow and a Dolly Parton wig. Looking at my bloodied palms freckled with sharp, tiny stones and the torn black mesh that has changed in size from a half-dollar to the lid of a gas station fountain drink, my brain clicks, and something primordial takes over. I feel a ruby-red smile lifting at the corners of my lips, and I kick out, swinging my booted leg around. I’m glad I chose the thigh-high gold boots with the chunky heels to go with my leather short shorts. I had debated which shoes to wear—sexy stilettos or the boots, and sliding the zipper up, I knew the boots were the right accessory, especially after gazing at my reflection. I liked what I saw—a hunk of woman going out on the town—prowling. Nothing and no one was going to stop me from dancing to the loud, heavy beat of the music pulsating from the club’s speakers while the strobe lights flashed across my sparkly fishnets, that is, until this little freak tried to ruin my night. I hear a crunch as the heel of my boot connects with something, and the twerp lets out a hyena-like yip of pain that echoes as I scramble to my feet. “Not today,” I roar, feeling all seventy-two inches of woman coming out of my throat as my fist connects with his jaw. “And you are going to pay me back for my torn hose, my purse, and for trying to ruin my night, you little creep.”
The Passage: “Let’s Say,” a flash fiction piece by Julia Strayer
The Prompt: “I’m being robbed.”
Time: 10 minutes
I feel a hard push between my shoulder blades and fly forward like a superhero, arms outstretched, anticipating my fall on the dirty pavement. Gravel pushes into my knees, but the pain isn’t from the rocks now embedded in my skin. It’s in my heart seeing the two half-dollar-sized holes in my brand-new sparkly fishnet stockings. The pain in my palms and knees is minor compared to my heart which is constricting. I worked an hour of overtime last week to buy those tights. Not to mention the fact that I almost got fired today because the line was long, and the salesclerk was painfully slow—picking up the package, looking at it sullenly, sighing and scanning it with her little laser gun, and then placing my new tights in a bag. I had gone on my lunch break, and by the time I made it back to the time clock, where my supervisor stood, tapping her watch, I was out of breath and sweating, with the neck of the plastic bag crinkled in my fist like a thief stealing a chicken. Glaring at me as I placed the vanilla-colored card under the dial, I heard the guttural stamp and placed the sum of my value to the company in the gray metal rack. I could feel her eyes boring twin holes in my back, which meant I had to go directly to my station and couldn’t sneak over to my locker to get my sandwich, and all afternoon, my stomach alternated between growling and stabbing me with tiny, hot forks. I’m snapped out of the past and brought back into the indignity of the present when I feel the chain of my purse biting into the soft flesh under my arm. “Give it up. Don’t make me hurt you,” my ears, wearing wide, golden hoops that kiss my cheeks, hear an anxious, high, thin voice. I swear the links around my arm are going to sever my limb, but then the pressure releases as the strap snaps, and a yelp bounces off the brick walls of the alley. Hah! It hit him, I think, with smug satisfaction. I liked that purse, and I like it even more now, knowing it fought back. Yes, it was a knockoff that I bought out of the back of someone’s ratty old car, but it was beautiful, somehow glinting through the dusty, clear plastic bag in the sunlight. Putting it on my shoulder before I walked out tonight, I decided it was worth the two hours I spent babysitting my neighbor’s whiny brat, but now the strap is broken. Maybe I can use some pliers to fix it. “Stay down,” the adenoidal voice of the young teen barks, but now there’s the slightest tinge of nervousness in it, like he’s suddenly realized he may have bitten off more than he can chew. But all I can think is…I’m being robbed…me…of all people. Right here, one block from where I am supposed to meet my friends. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m usually invisible to punks like this twerp who pushed me down. At six feet and two hundred and twenty-five pounds, I resemble a refrigerator decked out in bright blue eyeshadow and a Dolly Parton wig. Looking at my bloodied palms freckled with sharp, tiny stones and the torn black mesh that has changed in size from a half-dollar to the lid of a gas station fountain drink, my brain clicks, and something primordial takes over. I feel a ruby-red smile lifting at the corners of my lips, and I kick out, swinging my booted leg around. I’m glad I chose the thigh-high gold boots with the chunky heels to go with my leather short shorts. I had debated which shoes to wear—sexy stilettos or the boots, and sliding the zipper up, I knew the boots were the right accessory, especially after gazing at my reflection. I liked what I saw—a hunk of woman going out on the town—prowling. Nothing and no one was going to stop me from dancing to the loud, heavy beat of the music pulsating from the club’s speakers while the strobe lights flashed across my sparkly fishnets, that is, until this little freak tried to ruin my night. I hear a crunch as the heel of my boot connects with something, and the twerp lets out a hyena-like yip of pain that echoes as I scramble to my feet. “Not today,” I roar, feeling all seventy-two inches of woman coming out of my throat as my fist connects with his jaw. “And you are going to pay me back for my torn hose, my purse, and for trying to ruin my night, you little creep.”
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