Three years ago I taught a Creative Writing elective and decided Word Press was our publication platform. This year, I’m teaching Yearbook and thought, why create another blog? I’ll just add on to this one. So here it is. Enjoy the writing from the past; eavesdrop on our discussion this year as we respond to yearbook related content.
A virtuous woman, who can find? She is worth more than rubies…did she have that Proverb right? Well, close enough. She scanned the kitchen. Dishes, dinner remains, jug of ruby red grapefruit juice fallen from the trash. She glanced into the TV room where the kids watched “The Wizard of Oz” yet again because easier to just give in than find something else for them to do.
Her earrings were rubies…eight dollars and fifty-two cents off Ebay, shipping cost more than purchase cost.
Today she felt all of that eight dollars and fifty-two cents: the worth of a woman, indeed.
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The 100 Word Challenge for Grown-ups has hit the 40th Prompt…to celebrate, the task is to incorporate RUBY into the 100 words. You can read more entries here.
I pass through security with my John Travolta smile, but I don’t care to be here. I want to be home, asleep in a quiet house – not a noisy house and certainly not a house where my family lives a day shift life, while I work graves.
My own steps at work are quiet compared to the stomping of boys downstairs. The bustle around me is a whisper instead of screaming quarrels at home.
I make the gate, scan my card and am thankful I’m only jump seating today, because I’m exhausted.
“Shut the door behind you,” I hear from the cockpit. “You’ve got the plane today.”
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We’ve taken time away from the 100 Word Challenge this month to participate in Script Frenzy. But as April wanes, I’m back at the 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups ….I’m exhausted. Shut the door behind you….
You can read other entries HERE. … and check back next week as our student writers get back into the challenges, as well!
The rule is not to leave the yard. Ever. But Alice’s favorite ball – it has a bunny on it! – the ball careens into the puddle across the street, its freedom gained by a careless kick. Even now she sees droplets begin to mar Bunny’s ears, shining them up like popsicles too long from the freezer.
What a curious little adventure she was about to begin!
Should she dash? Should she creep? The ball slips further into the puddle; now Bunny’s eyes and nose disappear into the water because of gravity’s lazy pull toward the curb. Panic overtakes obedience; her eyes close and her tiny foot stretches toward the asphalt unknown.
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This week’s 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups is to take the last 10 words of someone else’s entry from last week, and use those somewhere in this piece As the last to enter last week, I took the last lines from the first poster; you can read that post here.
It was the writer’s call for how to use those last 10 words. I didn’t continue your story, Taochild , and I had a tough time deciding which adventure to send little Alice on! (I also had trouble with the verb tense for this piece. Tricky things, those verbs!)
‘What was the rabbit late for,’ wondered Alice, sitting in traffic, late herself. It never failed that when the baby woke up before the nanny arrived, Alice would be late. Funny how it worked, that leaving ten minutes late from the house meant having thirty minutes more on the commute.
And that made her late.
And late made her antsy.
And antsy made her forgetful.
And forgetful followed her all through her day and evening, and then who was it who forgot to feed the baby cereal before bed? Who forgot to close the blinds in the nursery?
No wonder the baby woke up before the nanny arrived.
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Read more 100 Word Challenge (for grown-ups!) here.
I couldn’t see his bracelet, not from this camera angle. He’d worn it since we were five and learned that “red means dead.” Most thought the bracelet a reminder; we all wore red: mine a feathered hair piece, my sister’s a beaded pouch. He let the world think that, and hid his efforts to match the color of his bracelet with other colors in the world.
How unfortunate to be colorblind in our world!
The camera angle changed, his unadorned wrists in full view. I watched his careful steps to the red box in horror, and heard his death knell in my heart.
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My 100 Word Challenge entry for “the red box” is in honor of “The Hunger Games”…read other entries written by grown ups HERE.
We make the last big turn on the drive home and I say to my second grader, “I need help with my writing.”
She perks up, awake from humming tires and drowsy daydreams. “What do you need help with?”
“For my challenge ‘…but I turned it off…’ I don’t know what…I need a list of everything that can be turned off.”
“With a switch? Like a car or cell phone?”
“Yes, but those are boring.”
“An engine?”
“A roller coaster.”
“A boat.”
“A fish finder.”
“A bilge pump.”
“A faucet.”
“A waterfall.”
“A waterfall?” She laughs.
One hundred and five words later, we are happy.
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The “Meta” for this…but I turned it off…only negative prompts came to mind. Not what I wanted to write, so instead my pre-write activity becomes my entry. She and I should make lists more often on the way home from school.
Step after step Horse and I stumbled, the horizon changing only with the sun’s shimmering mirage. Was this way a mistake?
Yes.
A mistake from the moment he sauntered in with dreams of open land drenched in the dappled sun of summer, and the mistaken words slipping from my mouth that his dreams…of course his dreams were my dreams. Why would I question?
Now he and his dream lay beneath the brittle stones of the wasteland as we pressed, the dryness of the desert creeping, entwining, embalming us in despair.
His dream? Only steps away from being my last dream.
Wait, what are we doing?
QuadBlogging!
And that is???
QuadBlogging is a project where we will blog with three other schools over the next months. Each school has a particular week to be “spotlighted” and we will go to their blog and contribute. Then when it is our week, they will come and visit us.
But there’s only two of us!
Three, if you count me. It will be an in-class assignment each week.
Why, Mrs. Stading? WHY?
Give a little, get a little. I REALLY want an audience for your writing. That’s why we’re using the blog to publish, to get some attention from the world. Only there hasn’t been much traffic here, and I haven’t done the best at moderating either. This will give us some traffic and hold us (me) accountable for publishing. Looking at the other sites, I think we’ll learn some things, as well.
And we’re posting….?
We start the 100 Word Weekly Challenge next week. Now it has an audience.
You really do love the Internet and social media, don’t you Mrs. Stading?
Oh yes. Life is SO MUCH MORE than what we have here in our school, our village, our state. Let’s be out there.
