Every other Tuesday is my writers’ group that focuses on prompts. We did two as a group last night and I wasn’t happy with either of them. The first was “I’m feeling hot, hot, hot” to which I wrote a short account of someone who’s sick going through the overheating/freezing stages, but it was noting special. The second was to write an overly fictionalized account of someone in the room going to a museum of natural history. While Nicole and KK found what I wrote amusing, I don’t think it would appeal to the wider audience of WordPress.
So, Nicole and I stayed after and did an ‘Extra Credit’ prompt which, I can happily say, I am pleased with. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo prep, I used my main character from my NaNo.
I’d love to hear what you think in the comments, as well as how you are preparing for NaNo. Enjoy!
There was a statue of the founder of Fairbanks in the middle of town, E.T. Barnette. Unfortunately for him, the person who made the statue didn’t think about the climate of Fairbanks. The statue was porous and water could sneak under his skin. E.T. defrosted every spring and parts of his body fell off over time. By now, his left hand, left ear, right toes, and his entire forehead were missing. As Melissa sat there in the spring, there were bird feces covering the gouge in his head, dripping out like a boiled stew.
She sat down on the pedestal, breathing deeply and feeling the rise and fall of her stomach, knowing that soon enough, it would be mostly rise and not as much fall.
In only a month, the place she was sitting would be buried under a foot of snow and in just the thin sweater Melissa was wearing she would catch frost bite on 90% of her extremities.
Melissa realized that she didn’t know a thing about Fairbanks, Alaska, or harsh winters in general. In fact, she had never even seen a movie that took place in Alaska or bothered to read Jack London books about surviving winters north of Minneapolis. She was drastically unprepared for the Land of the Midnight Sun.
On top of surviving an Arctic winter, she had her grandmother to care for. Taking care of someone couldn’t be that hard, Melissa reasoned. People take care of old people and babies all the time. Granted, most of them probably don’t do both at once during one of the harshest winter in the United States. But somewhere, someone’s got to be doing it as well.
She heard her mom calling her from the hospital. “Grandma’s ready to go. You have to sign the release papers.”
Melissa got up: not excited, not dreading, but not quite hopeful.
Taking On a World of Words 