Write Now Prompt: Clouds

I’m going to take some liberties with the Write Now Prompt from yesterday.  It made me think of my NaNo novel in a roundabout way.

I’ve noticed, dear reader(s) that you aren’t much on commenting when I do prompts.  Are you too afraid to tell me I’m terrible and should give up my aspirations of being published?  Nonsense, I’m waiting for the trolling!  Please tell me what you think of this character and this sample.  This is not from my NaNo story necessarily, but is based on it.  Enjoy!

Prompt: The dark clouds rolled in quickly, casting strange shadows across the landscape.

Melissa stared absentmindedly out of the bus window.  The sun set earlier and earlier this time of year.  It was almost that fabled time all Alaskans talk about when the days are shorter than the nights, all leading up to days with no daylight.  Melissa could not say she looked forward to that with any anticipation.

As the sun set quickly, the shadows danced across the lawns on the side of the road.  She watched them become longer and longer until the sun was behind the horizon and it was pointless to look out of the window: she could only see her reflection.

There was only one other person left on the bus when Melissa got off at her stop.  The two had never exchanged words, but had an unspoken relationship as the two who took the same bus every Wednesday.  They exchanged friendly nods in passing and Melissa missed his smile when she was alone on the pavement heading to her grandma’s house.

She’d been in Fairbanks for about two months and was still not used to the bone chilling wind that came after the sun set.  Wrapping her scarf around her nose, Melissa leaned into the wind to offset the weight of her grocery-filled backpack.  The walk wasn’t long, but it gave her enough time to think over all the things that had to happen before her child was born.  She could feel the life inside her and instead of evoking excitement, it felt like a ticking time bomb getting ready to explode.  There were cribs to buy, diapers to learn how to change, and a house to baby-proof without moving things around too much.

The small ranch house came into view as Melissa rounded the corner and walked past her neighbor Julie’s house.  She could see the glow of the TV inside and the shadow of Julie on her treadmill walking in step to the beat of a reality singing show.  Seeing the show reminded her of her parents back in Georgia and how they would always rope her into watching with them.  She had disliked how viewers were encouraged to place so much hope in singers who had only the thinnest chances of ever selling a song in iTunes.  Melissa didn’t like having her emotions toyed with by a host in a sparkling suit.

She put the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, wondering what her grandma would call her.  The day before she had been Melissa, but just that morning she had been Janine, her mother’s name.

“You’re late, Melissa!” her grandma called from the kitchen.  “You’re never this late on Mondays.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

Her grandma didn’t respond.  She got embarrassed when her memory failed her.  Melissa knew that things were only going to get worse.

Melissa found her grandma sitting in front of the TV in the living room watching the same reality show Julie was sweating to.  It made her smile to see her grandma watching the same shows as her daughter.  Or was it the other way around?

“I’ll make dinner,” Melissa called over her shoulder as she headed into her bedroom to change, dropping her shopping by the kitchen door.

“Thanks, Janine,” her grandma said.  Melissa was too happy to correct her.

 

So now it’s time to interact, reader(s).  What could I have done better?  What did you like?  Please leave a comment and let me know.

Prompt Group: Statue

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.