source: Ark-Vayo prom slay alert

Note:
Like @kaelci, I'm still in the world that would have ended on March Madness -Day 31 if I had finished a whole 50,000-word novel in 31 days.

---

Here's what I can do in 5-ish minutes:

Day 529: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: gold

The Snow Ball

used to be called the Christmas dance until political correctness-slash-diversity took care of that. My only dress was a Star Trek costume from a cosplay contest at a science fiction convention. I looked good in the black boots and short red dress with long sleeves, but Mindy posted a picture of me in it on Instagram and took a poll among her followers, who of course voted unanimously against it. If I had followers or social media of any kind, my friends would love me as I am. Breanna was in the same dilemma. She totally rocked the shiny gold space bimbo costume she'd worn in the same cosplay contest, which only goes to show that she and I were not girly girls, and dances were not our scene.

Ty's Aunt Velma had a closet full of dresses and loved playing dress-up. She even had her nails done at a salon and had drawers full of makeup and hair extensions. Most of Velma's dresses were African wax prints, like in the Black Panther movie. Ty and Breanna even matched, thanks to Velma's dearly departed husband. I was torn between the risque blue gown and the short little orange dress. The floor-dragger fit me better, so there we were, two girls in long evening gowns, on an official date for the first time in our lives.

If Jenny could see me now!

** FIVE MINUTE ARE UP **

And my son, who phoned home last night from New York City, said he doesn't read my 5-Minute Freewrites because I "violate" the rules and write stuff that takes him an hour to read. Stop writing when the timer goes off, he said. If you end up writing more, post a link to the longer, "finished" version.

You-Tubers do it all the time. Instead of one long video, break it up into several shorter videos that end with cliffhangers, forcing viewers to hit "next," racking up views for the creator.

Yeah, yeah, and Indie Authors will never publish one long novel if they can make it a trilogy, the first two books ending in cliffhangers.

Do I really need to follow these fads? I'm more than half a century old. My feet are firmly rooted in the 20th Century. My head is immersed in 19th Century fiction. The Jane Austen stuff. Yeah.

So there ya go.

In five minutes, I got Breanna, Kristy, Ty Christy, and Ethan dressed and ready for the school dance.

And I sneaked in photos from my daughter's store, Ark Vayo. Long before the Black Panther movie came out, she was designing her own line of African fashion with wax prints hand-made in Ghana. The process of using hot wax and vats of dye to create these fabrics is worthy of another post.

Maybe I should not be labeling anything I do here a "5 minute freewrite" -or maybe I should ignore my 29-year-old son.

Check Out The @FreeWriteHouse Prompt Of The Day By @MarianneWest

• Look For The 5-Min #FreeWrite Daily Prompt On @MarianneWest’s Blog