Impromptu: Weekly Writing Prompt #1
the introductory edition
Hello friends, I’m starting a new project. I’ve been wanting to get back into creative writing ever since I finished the querying draft of my novel in 2021. To motivate myself, I’ve made a list of 100+ writing prompts and will be using a random-number picker to select one each week. Each prompt is intended for at least 10-30 minutes of writing, and I’ll be sharing my responses under the Seedlings section of this newsletter.
If you’d like to participate in the project along with me, you can find all the prompts listed here. Set your timer and write for 10 minutes unless otherwise specified (you’re also welcome to write for longer if you wish). Feel free to adjust as needed to fit what you want to write about—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. None of these prompts are meant to be a box, so let your inspiration guide you and be flexible! When done, share a line from what you wrote and tell us how it went in the comments below.
Happy Writing!
Week #1 Prompt
Write about two opposites communicating. These can be objects, forces of nature, people, etc.
She stood in the neon glow of the bar lights, letting them stain her silver hair a glossy pink. Music thudded from under the windows, a hymn of lust, loss, and missed connections. The cross street was abuzz with late-night thrill seekers, twenty-something-year-olds out for a night of pretending they weren’t scared shitless about what they were doing with the rest of their lives. They looked like children, all wide-eyed and dazzled, laughing as they stumbled around empty beer cans and broken glass on the ground.
Underneath the car exhaust and city stench, she could smell crushed leaves on the air.
The woman approached the door slowly. There was a different bouncer here from last time. “ID,” he said in a bored voice, eyebrows furrowing as he glanced over the moon-white glow of her hair. He started when he looked at her face, his eyes widening then going slack. They slid past her without awareness to the person waiting behind her in line and she stepped past him into the beating heart of the bar.
Music thudded up through the soles of her boots and reverberated through her legs. She brushed her hand against her bare thigh, trying to warm it after the chilly night air. Making her way through the crush of people to the bar, she perched herself on a stool at the end.
He was already there.
The moving lights shone across the smooth, dark skin of his forehead, crowning him in a twinkle of stars. They crackled over him like the energy that seemed to spark off of his skin. Even a few seats away, she could feel it—that magnetic pull. The clubbers didn’t notice how they all seemed to pivot around him, their movements an unconscious orbit. She took in a deep and steadying breath.
“Hello, Daph,” he said without looking at her, taking a sip of his whiskey. Bourbon. That’s what he liked. Warm and sweet, with a candied citrus peel to garnish the edge.
“Don’t call me Daph,” she said. The bartender ambled over. “Gin, three olives, over ice.”
He waited until the bartender was out of earshot before turning towards her. Gold eyes, vibrant and bright, met her own silver-gray ones and she shuddered. She wondered sometimes if he could see it, the effect he had on her. She glanced down to her pale skin, but its luminescence was only due to the glow of the party lights. She wasn’t shining.
Not yet, at least.
“It was your idea to adopt that name,” he said with a slow smile.
“A decision I now fully regret.” Her drink arrived and she took a long sip from it.
The smile on his face grew, full lips dancing up at the corners as his bright eyes narrowed. He swung around, brushing the long braids he kept in a ponytail back over his shoulder as he leaned against the bar. Tiny gold beads were threaded through it and they chimed as he moved. A picture of perfect ease, one which still sent a stutter through her heart.
She hated him for being so beautiful.
“This place hasn’t changed,” he said, and she snorted. The bar that had once been a pub that had once been a tavern that had once been an inn had changed as much as any single location could over the years. But he was right that its core features remained the same, no matter what guise it wore.
A place for meeting. A joining of opposites. For decisions made at the crossroads.
“I liked it better in the 1600s,” she said, taking another delicate sip of her drink and looking towards the stage. A DJ dressed like David Bowie picked the tracks, pumping her fist into the air with every downbeat.
“No, those awful ballads? Horrendous. And the poets!” He scoffed, waving the hand that held his drink. “This is much better.”
“Some of us appreciate a little poetry.”
“You would, of course, when every verse was penned in your name.”
“I thought your god was the patron saint of poetry.”
“Doesn’t matter. No one wants Apollo when they can have the moon.”
She rolled her eyes at that and looked away. The kaleidoscope of lights turned the sequins on her shirt into a mirrorball, the tassels that tied it together in the front swinging gently. Her skin itched under the hem of her back shorts, and she wondered why she’d bothered to wear them. Maybe to enjoy the feeling of being young and beautiful for once, fleeting as it was.
His eyes dropped to her legs and she pretended not to notice. Tried to pretend she didn’t see him watching her watching him.
“If I remember correctly,” he said, leaning toward her so that the collar of his shirt fell open. “You had a certain interest in poetry yourself once.”
Her face burned and she glared at him. She didn’t know how he’d found out about the sonnets, but she wished she’d never written them.
“What was that one phrase you used?” he continued, swirling his drink lazily. “‘I from my height did fall, / Fall from obliv’on to him, lord of all.’”
“Stop,” she said quietly. The word was barely a whisper, inaudible over the din, but she knew he heard it from the way the gold in his eyes lit up at the challenge. “Just because I have to meet you here twice a year, doesn’t mean we have to be cruel to each other. I am trying to be civil. The least you could do is the same.”
“But you are so easy to tease.”
“And that’s all this has ever been to you,” she shot back. “A game. A diversion.”
“Well it does get boring sometimes,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “Being the center of the universe and all.”
“Someone has an overinflated sense of ego I think.”
“Don’t try to deny it. To these people, I’m the only thing that matters.”
Her jaw clenched and she took a strained breath through her nose. Breathe. Breathe.
“Just hand it over,” she said, not bothering to hide the anger in her voice.
The brightness in his eyes dimmed and she thought she caught a hint of disappointment there. He reached under the collar of his shirt and drew out a delicate gold necklace. A tiny key hung from the end of it.
“This what you want?” he said. The teasing note was back in his voice, but now it sounded strained. “And here I thought that you enjoyed the pleasure of my company.”
“You know better than to delude yourself that I’m here for any reason other than that.”
“You once were.”
“Those days are over. You made sure of that.”
He grimaced. Just barely, but she saw it. Still, she was surprised when he tugged the necklace over his head and passed it to her without further comment. As soon as the metal touched her skin it shimmered, all color ebbing away. Calm settled over her, like a refreshing tendril of autumn air, and she sighed as something loosened in her chest. Downing the rest of her drink, she slid off of her stool and turned towards the door.
“Want to dance?”
The softness of his words made her halt and glance back. He wasn’t looking at her, eyes instead trained down at the glass in his hands. There was a vulnerability in his expression she’d only seen there once before. He looked so young and so old at the time, as if a heavy weight pushed down on him. But it wasn’t real.
It wasn’t real.
“No,” she lied. Then she turned away as if the entire world did not revolve around him and left the bar alone.
Author’s Commentary:
This story was definitely not written in 10-30 minutes. When I first sat down to do this prompt a week ago, I ended up writing a sketch of a conversation between the Moon and the Sun inspired by Erin Morgenstern’s novel The Starless Sea. In her original vignette, the Moon and Sun meet at an old crossroads inn once a year to exchange stories. For my version, I decided to base the characters on a series of unrequited love sonnets I’d written in college titled From the Moon to the Sun.
I realized during my initial 10-minute writing session that I was very rusty and out of practice. My scene was more of a vague description of the inn than a conversation, devolving the further it went into bullet points and crossed out sentences. The out-of-time, fairytale setting was too similar to The Starless Sea and I couldn’t get a firm image of the characters in my head. I decided to give it another go the next night, this time with more intention and forethought.
What I came up with next I liked much better. I challenged myself to change the setting to a modern-day bar. This was outside of my comfort zone—most of the stories I like to tell are set in fantasy worlds or a fairytale past. I thought that the new setting would help me get more in tune with my characters and force me to see them in a different light. To my relief, the rewrite worked and I was able to drop myself into the scene. I wrote for 20 minutes, finishing just after the Moon sat down at the bar. I continued tweaking the story over the following week, finishing the conversation and refining the dialogue between the characters.
Once I got past that initial writer’s block, I had a lot of fun working on this story. It reminded me that creative writing is a muscle that needs to be worked to stay strong. The more I played with the scene, the more I felt like the part of my brain that thinks in stories was waking up after a long sleep. I’m not sure that I’ll put this much effort into every prompt for this project, but I’m glad that I gave extra time to this first one if only to remind myself that I can write in this way when I want to.