For my birthday, Julia bought me a book of writing prompts. Each page starts with a short opening line or paragraph, and you're supposed to use the allotted space to write a quick story from that. It may be the best gift that I have ever received, and it will definitely keep my creative muscles working, as I start up my novel once again.
Anyway, instead of using the pages from the book, I've decided to copy the opening part here, and do my writing on my blog, so as not to ruin the pages for someone else. I'm not sure what kind of frequency I'll be doing these on here, but I'll try and get to them as often as possible.
Each and every one of these short stories will be dedicated to Julia, for being so sweet to me, and making me feel so loved. I don't know what I'd do without her in my life!
Any how, that's the intro to this. I hope you enjoy what I write in these. Some day I may go back and work on these a little more in depth, or I may just leave them as they are, but the first writing will be brief, and I won't take too much time on them. It's just a fun way to get the creative juices flowing. They're meant to be taken as fun, quick bursts of... "Rob Nuttiness", so please don't take any of these too seriously. Now, without further achoo (yeah, that's right, achoo!), here it is, my friends, "Writing Prompt - Day 1".
The Line:
It was different writing on a typewriter: the clatter and noise, the resistance of the old keys forcing her to really put some effort into each letter. She imagined she was...
...a larger than life Queen of some kingdom from a fairy tale of old, pounding out the greatest story ever written, that she would one day release upon all of the smaller people of the world, to their great adulation. She could see them bowing before her, as her words ending famine, war, and even petty Facebook arguments. They would worship her, and do her bidding.
The room that she was sitting ins, suddenly started to dissolve around her. The blue walls melted into the gray stone walls of a majestic castle. The old wooden kitchen chair that she had used as her office chair turned into a throne, decorated in beautiful gems, and jewels from far off kingdoms. The plain mirror that had always sat next to her on the desk turned into the most beautiful mirror that anyone had ever set their eyes upon. The emptiness of her small bedroom turned into a crowded banquet hall, where hundreds of her faithful subjects awaited more pages of her divine writing.
She could feel all eyes on her, as her plain dirty blonde hair, turned to a radiant red color, a color so vibrant that it was not uncommon for people to breathe out a sigh of amazement when they saw its beauty. Her somewhat plain, and face morphed into one of true beauty, and grace. Her innocent youth was replaced with the wisdom obtained by someone in their twenties. Her faded blue jeans, and AC/DC t-shirt were replaced by a gorgeous ball room gown, fit for a queen. But that's exactly what she now was; a queen.
She looked down as her fingers plodded ceaseless, and effortlessly across the keys of the typewriter. Each word flowing through her, like water through a fast flowing stream. The pages were being written faster than she seemed to be able to think. The words were jumping from her mind into her fingers so fast that she could barely keep up. She wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, or if smoke really was billowing out of her fingertips. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could feel a dull ache, but she kept typing, as if she were possessed by the spirit of some eloquent muse.
Page after page, she would fill it up as fast as she could re-load a new sheet into the typewriter. In minutes, she had a stack of pages a foot tall. And she knew each word by heart, as if she had spent her entire life memorizing the pages. As if she could see each word in her mind's eye, starting back at her from the page. And the writing was so good. She knew in her heart that it was the greatest thing that had ever been written.
She was enthralled in her writing that she didn't notice an unease sweeping through the crowd. They had sat patiently for so long, but still she had given her subjects no new words to read. One by one, each face in the crowd went from quiet adulation, to annoyed glare. As time marched on, and her pile of written pages grew ever longer, the glare turned to angry hate. Each and every soul in the banquet hall were slowly consumed by disdain for the person whom they had once admired so greatly. They hadn't read a single word of their new work, and yet they all hated it with a fiery passion.
Suddenly an angry shout rose from the back of the hall, which caused her to pause in her writing, and look up for the first time in... she had no idea. She raised a hand that was no longer young, and vibrant, but old, and covered in wrinkles. Her fingernails stretched out before her, curling down around her hand, like the dangling limbs of weeping willow. She tried to call out, but no words would come. Her voice had not been used in so very long, that the vocal cords were beyond use now.
In a panic she rose from her thrown and was rewarded with a hard fall to the floor, knocking . She tried to pull herself back up to at least a sitting position before it was too late, but her muscles didn't seem capable of responding. On the floor, all around her, were broken shards of glass, the remains of what was once her desk mirror. When she gazed into one of the broken pieces she saw an old woman. The face looking back at her was no longer recognizable.
A wind blew from outside the castle walls, a wind so strong that it came in through the windows and started blowing paper all around. The air was quickly filled with a tornado of written pages, a huge cyclone that started to circle the hall. Words that she had written in such a daze that most of her life had been sucked out of her were being picked up, and tossed all around the banquet hall. The pages were being thrown around so violently, that the angry mob cries of anger were soon replaced with shouts of pain. The people started to leave through the only exit as quickly as they could, many being trampled under the panicked throng of people.
The queen tried to speak up again, but was once more rewarded with nothing more than a hoarse whisper. The tornado of pages had reached a fever pitch, the sound so deafening that it drowned out all of the pained cries. The pages stopped their aimless direction, and focused on her, as if they were somehow alive, and hated the queen as much as her subjects had started to hate her.
She tried to move away, as the pages blew towards her with such ferocity that the castle walls started to melt away. She summoned all of the strength that she could muster, which was really very little strength at all, and shielded her face with her hands. She could feel the pages biting into her skin, but surprisingly felt little pain. It felt more like the teeth of her cat, Ham, than the ten thousand paper cuts that she had expected to feel. She closed her eyes, and braced for the worst of it.
Just as suddenly as it had began, the sound of the tornado of pages stopped, and was replaced by the quiet sound of a fan; the fan that sat in the corner of her bedroom. Cautiously she opened her eyes, and found herself once more in her plain bedroom, with it's ugly blue walls, and her wooden desk chair. Her mirror laid on the floor next to her, shattered into a hundred small pieces, otherwise everything was how she had remembered it being, from all of those years before.
She looked at the page of paper that was loaded into her typewriter, and shook her head incredulously. It had all seemed so real, the entire scene, and yet she had only dreamed it. The clock on the shelf by her bed read only 10:39. She must have dozed off, and what felt like hundreds of years was really only about fifteen minutes. Despite it having felt so real, it was only a dream. She breathed a sigh of relief, and rose from her desk. When she stood, she looked down in disbelief, at the beautiful ball room gown that she was now wearing.
Anyway, instead of using the pages from the book, I've decided to copy the opening part here, and do my writing on my blog, so as not to ruin the pages for someone else. I'm not sure what kind of frequency I'll be doing these on here, but I'll try and get to them as often as possible.
Each and every one of these short stories will be dedicated to Julia, for being so sweet to me, and making me feel so loved. I don't know what I'd do without her in my life!
Any how, that's the intro to this. I hope you enjoy what I write in these. Some day I may go back and work on these a little more in depth, or I may just leave them as they are, but the first writing will be brief, and I won't take too much time on them. It's just a fun way to get the creative juices flowing. They're meant to be taken as fun, quick bursts of... "Rob Nuttiness", so please don't take any of these too seriously. Now, without further achoo (yeah, that's right, achoo!), here it is, my friends, "Writing Prompt - Day 1".
The Line:
It was different writing on a typewriter: the clatter and noise, the resistance of the old keys forcing her to really put some effort into each letter. She imagined she was...
...a larger than life Queen of some kingdom from a fairy tale of old, pounding out the greatest story ever written, that she would one day release upon all of the smaller people of the world, to their great adulation. She could see them bowing before her, as her words ending famine, war, and even petty Facebook arguments. They would worship her, and do her bidding.
The room that she was sitting ins, suddenly started to dissolve around her. The blue walls melted into the gray stone walls of a majestic castle. The old wooden kitchen chair that she had used as her office chair turned into a throne, decorated in beautiful gems, and jewels from far off kingdoms. The plain mirror that had always sat next to her on the desk turned into the most beautiful mirror that anyone had ever set their eyes upon. The emptiness of her small bedroom turned into a crowded banquet hall, where hundreds of her faithful subjects awaited more pages of her divine writing.
She could feel all eyes on her, as her plain dirty blonde hair, turned to a radiant red color, a color so vibrant that it was not uncommon for people to breathe out a sigh of amazement when they saw its beauty. Her somewhat plain, and face morphed into one of true beauty, and grace. Her innocent youth was replaced with the wisdom obtained by someone in their twenties. Her faded blue jeans, and AC/DC t-shirt were replaced by a gorgeous ball room gown, fit for a queen. But that's exactly what she now was; a queen.
She looked down as her fingers plodded ceaseless, and effortlessly across the keys of the typewriter. Each word flowing through her, like water through a fast flowing stream. The pages were being written faster than she seemed to be able to think. The words were jumping from her mind into her fingers so fast that she could barely keep up. She wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, or if smoke really was billowing out of her fingertips. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could feel a dull ache, but she kept typing, as if she were possessed by the spirit of some eloquent muse.
Page after page, she would fill it up as fast as she could re-load a new sheet into the typewriter. In minutes, she had a stack of pages a foot tall. And she knew each word by heart, as if she had spent her entire life memorizing the pages. As if she could see each word in her mind's eye, starting back at her from the page. And the writing was so good. She knew in her heart that it was the greatest thing that had ever been written.
She was enthralled in her writing that she didn't notice an unease sweeping through the crowd. They had sat patiently for so long, but still she had given her subjects no new words to read. One by one, each face in the crowd went from quiet adulation, to annoyed glare. As time marched on, and her pile of written pages grew ever longer, the glare turned to angry hate. Each and every soul in the banquet hall were slowly consumed by disdain for the person whom they had once admired so greatly. They hadn't read a single word of their new work, and yet they all hated it with a fiery passion.
Suddenly an angry shout rose from the back of the hall, which caused her to pause in her writing, and look up for the first time in... she had no idea. She raised a hand that was no longer young, and vibrant, but old, and covered in wrinkles. Her fingernails stretched out before her, curling down around her hand, like the dangling limbs of weeping willow. She tried to call out, but no words would come. Her voice had not been used in so very long, that the vocal cords were beyond use now.
In a panic she rose from her thrown and was rewarded with a hard fall to the floor, knocking . She tried to pull herself back up to at least a sitting position before it was too late, but her muscles didn't seem capable of responding. On the floor, all around her, were broken shards of glass, the remains of what was once her desk mirror. When she gazed into one of the broken pieces she saw an old woman. The face looking back at her was no longer recognizable.
A wind blew from outside the castle walls, a wind so strong that it came in through the windows and started blowing paper all around. The air was quickly filled with a tornado of written pages, a huge cyclone that started to circle the hall. Words that she had written in such a daze that most of her life had been sucked out of her were being picked up, and tossed all around the banquet hall. The pages were being thrown around so violently, that the angry mob cries of anger were soon replaced with shouts of pain. The people started to leave through the only exit as quickly as they could, many being trampled under the panicked throng of people.
The queen tried to speak up again, but was once more rewarded with nothing more than a hoarse whisper. The tornado of pages had reached a fever pitch, the sound so deafening that it drowned out all of the pained cries. The pages stopped their aimless direction, and focused on her, as if they were somehow alive, and hated the queen as much as her subjects had started to hate her.
She tried to move away, as the pages blew towards her with such ferocity that the castle walls started to melt away. She summoned all of the strength that she could muster, which was really very little strength at all, and shielded her face with her hands. She could feel the pages biting into her skin, but surprisingly felt little pain. It felt more like the teeth of her cat, Ham, than the ten thousand paper cuts that she had expected to feel. She closed her eyes, and braced for the worst of it.
Just as suddenly as it had began, the sound of the tornado of pages stopped, and was replaced by the quiet sound of a fan; the fan that sat in the corner of her bedroom. Cautiously she opened her eyes, and found herself once more in her plain bedroom, with it's ugly blue walls, and her wooden desk chair. Her mirror laid on the floor next to her, shattered into a hundred small pieces, otherwise everything was how she had remembered it being, from all of those years before.
She looked at the page of paper that was loaded into her typewriter, and shook her head incredulously. It had all seemed so real, the entire scene, and yet she had only dreamed it. The clock on the shelf by her bed read only 10:39. She must have dozed off, and what felt like hundreds of years was really only about fifteen minutes. Despite it having felt so real, it was only a dream. She breathed a sigh of relief, and rose from her desk. When she stood, she looked down in disbelief, at the beautiful ball room gown that she was now wearing.
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