Escape: A Micro Story
Cover art based on photo by DzidekLasek on Pixabay
Terror grabbed my lungs in its sweaty fist and squeezed. No stick curved like that thing in the sand.
A bite from a venomous viper wasn't on my bucket list. Panting, I moved only my eyes.
Black diamonds undulated and dry grass crackled.
Maybe I scared him too.
I have once again written in response to the weekly prompt offered by @jayna.
This time the little bonus to the story is about writer's block. We all get it from time to time. It hit me this week. I didn't write this story until last night. I'd tried--and failed--several times during the week to come up with something for this prompt. After we got a poisonous snake in our greenhouse, I tried to use it for inspiration but continued to fail.
I had given up yesterday, deciding I just wouldn't manage to do anything this week. I was frustrated, but somewhat okay with it, because I've been sick with a bad migraine and had to go to the chiropractor for treatment, which gives nasty backlash effects. So I was telling myself it was okay to fail.
Then last night, after I'd gone to bed for the night, inspiration struck when I was three-quarters of the way asleep. This story just popped into my head. I got my tablet down and scribbled. I did a little bit of midnight editing and ended up with a 48 word story.
This morning I shared my draft with my peer review group and a strange thing happened--the only change was to swap the order on the first and second sentence. The second sentence made a stronger opener and the swap prevented the image of the first from replacing the image of the not-a-stick.
So we need to accept as writers that sometimes we just can't manage a particular prompt in a short time frame. Sometimes we need some down time to recover from other things or perhaps our brain is just stuck in another story--a problem I was also dealing with all week. My brain is in another story I'm working on and didn't want to refocus. Brand and Spark are demanding I think about them.
But then when I accepted it was okay to fail, inspiration struck. I listened to it and got the words down, as you can see. Don't ignore inspiration, even if your first impulse is "This sucks."
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://www.rjeanbell.com/2018/07/29/escape-a-micro-story/
Reading the story I felt it so intimate... Like me being there my self feeling the snake presence.
It really is an amazing piece of writing. Love it. hugs
Really nice story, @bex-dk. I'm glad you let inspiration guide you! I remember seeing that you had a snake in your greenhouse. What a great inspiration for a story.
I also really stumbled this week. I wanted to write a piece about an event in history (one of my little passions), and came up with several possibilities. I chose what I thought was the best idea of all, but the words just didn't work. It took several rounds of trial and error and I was finally successful at completing a draft I was satisfied with late last night. I let it rest and did a few tweaks this morning.
I think it's especially difficult to capture terror. I hadn't thought about that when I chose this prompt, but danger and fear are really challenging because they are so personal, and words can fall so flat.
You did a great job of capturing that startled and terrible moment of coming face-to-face with a venomous snake. But I especially like the twist at the end, that perhaps the snake is terrified too.
The thing with terror and fear is that showing them can be wordy and we have so few to work with. It needs a character arc in which that dominates, so you don't need the words for other things. I suspect if you allowed yourself more words, you'd more quickly be happy with a story. But the challenge is good for us. We need to push ourselves if we want to improve.
The last line is the perfect line of inspiration for everyone.♥️ Following you now