I am sick, have caught my husband’s rasping cough My throat is scratchy and my ears are itchy I don’t feel that bad so I saw all my students They moved away as I coughed We are in the throes of AP term papers Beloved and Catch 22 How different can you get? Oh, and…
Tag: writing discipline
Flash Essay Prompt: Ash Wednesday and My Modest Lenten Plan…
It is Ash Wednesday, and, yes, I have the ashes on my forehead now as I write. I will go up and wash them off before I go to bed, but now they are there, dark black with a big +. That means Lent has officially begun as of today and this is my only…
Flash Memoir: Where the Love Was
I didn’t want to go to kindergarten when it was time for me to go. All my friends were going to Humpty Dumpty Play School, but I hated it. I much preferred to stay at home and play by myself or with baby Sam in our room, near Mama. I played school on my own,…
Memoir Prompt: Memories of My Dad
Yesterday was my father’s birthday. Here is a piece I wrote about him a while back, but still rings true for me. A window into my world with him: “Have I told you today how much I love you?” This was a question my father asked me every day I was growing up. “I love…
Flash Fiction Prompt: Three Weeks After
She woke up lonely. She knew it would happen. She’d been expecting it. One day she was busy and life was filled to overflowing and then it wasn’t. She could hear the silence bouncing off the walls in her now too big house; her only companions her dog and her cat. She sat down on…
Prompt: Haiku: Illness
Coughing punctuates The quiet LA evening My husband is sick Texas maladies Brought back to ail in LA Have him hacking hard Tomorrow may bring A trip to the Urgent Care Medicine to aid He is quiet now But only for a brief time Before the cough quakes I hope he can sleep He needs…
Prompt: The Word “Time”
Time is an issue for me. It has been an issue for a long while. Not when I was a kid. Then time stretched out like a relaxed cat, stretching long, and I relaxed with it. Playing outside up in trees and pretending each limb was a room in my imaginary house, and me climbing…
My Submission Plan
Today I submitted three of my pieces to literary magazines. I also followed the advice in the article I posted and actually took the time to read several magazines, especially the ones to which I submitted. My plan is to devote one day a week to submissions, something I haven’t done lately. It is time,…
Gas heater When I was a little girl, I spent many a night curled up on the hearth in front of a gas heater, listening to the hiss of the gas and staring at the orange and blue flames. Often I could hear my dad’s snoring in his nearby bed, the rhythmic cadence that told…
Prompt: Marcia Ball and the Texas Blues
We saw Marcia Ball and her band the other night here in Texas at a local club called Loose Wheels. They are a long-term Austin band and they play a combination of Texas blues and Louisiana rock. You could imagine yourself sitting in a New Orleans bar listening to her pound away on her piano…
20 Minutes a Day 