Writing to the prompt: I am from...
So, for the first time twenty-something years, I'm part of a writing workshop. Woohoo!
Run by Caitlin Myer, it meets at the Mill Valley Library, in the meeting rooms where I have memories of playing Dungeons and Dragons thirty-five years or so back.
Anyway, we had a free-writing session on the prompt I am from...
She gave us fifteen minutes. Folks wrote all sorts of wonderful bits and pieces.
Here's what I wrote:
I am from Serenity Province.
There is very little serene about Serenity Province. The ruling clan, the Imagawa, have managed to anger every one of the neighboring clans - even more than they anger each other - and so, for most of my life, the province has been an armed camp. A fortress, waiting for the invasion that was always just around the corner.
It finally began in the spring of my tenth year. Though it was a dry year, the roads to the Imagawas’ castle were suddenly muddy from the frantic passage of the riders bearing news from the borders, and bearing the lord’s orders out.
I spent that spring climbing into the highest trees that I possibly could, trying to watch the horses as far down the valley as I could, till the steam streaming behind them faded into the mist of the hills.
One day, I watched one of the riders coming out of the castle’s gates; I thought perhaps I had seen him before, or at least seen the horse, whose coat was the color of pine wood, splattered with white sunspots. Instead of galloping down the valley, however, the rider took the right-hand turn into my village, the little nameless village that fed the castle, where I lived with my parents. Why is a soldier going into our town? I wondered, and scooted down the tall tree to the pine-needle tatami of the forest floor.
“What you see, Risuko?” asked my little sister, as she always did. She always wanted to know, but she never wanted to climb.
“Just a soldier,” I answered, “riding back toward the village.”
“Riding?” she asked, her nose twitching. “Why’d he do that.”
“I don’t know, Usako,” I said. Little sisters can be so annoying. “That’s why I came down.”
I was already jogging back toward the village, so Usako had to run to catch up. “Oh.” Usako might not be able to climb, but she can run all day. “Gonna buy a pig, maybe, for a feast?”
I snorted. “How would he get a pig onto a horse?”
That's a piece of writing that sprang out of who-knows-where, but that's set in the land of my novel-in-process Risuko. Huh.
Wanna give it a try?
Run by Caitlin Myer, it meets at the Mill Valley Library, in the meeting rooms where I have memories of playing Dungeons and Dragons thirty-five years or so back.
Anyway, we had a free-writing session on the prompt I am from...
She gave us fifteen minutes. Folks wrote all sorts of wonderful bits and pieces.
Here's what I wrote:
I am from Serenity Province.
There is very little serene about Serenity Province. The ruling clan, the Imagawa, have managed to anger every one of the neighboring clans - even more than they anger each other - and so, for most of my life, the province has been an armed camp. A fortress, waiting for the invasion that was always just around the corner.
It finally began in the spring of my tenth year. Though it was a dry year, the roads to the Imagawas’ castle were suddenly muddy from the frantic passage of the riders bearing news from the borders, and bearing the lord’s orders out.
I spent that spring climbing into the highest trees that I possibly could, trying to watch the horses as far down the valley as I could, till the steam streaming behind them faded into the mist of the hills.
One day, I watched one of the riders coming out of the castle’s gates; I thought perhaps I had seen him before, or at least seen the horse, whose coat was the color of pine wood, splattered with white sunspots. Instead of galloping down the valley, however, the rider took the right-hand turn into my village, the little nameless village that fed the castle, where I lived with my parents. Why is a soldier going into our town? I wondered, and scooted down the tall tree to the pine-needle tatami of the forest floor.
“What you see, Risuko?” asked my little sister, as she always did. She always wanted to know, but she never wanted to climb.
“Just a soldier,” I answered, “riding back toward the village.”
“Riding?” she asked, her nose twitching. “Why’d he do that.”
“I don’t know, Usako,” I said. Little sisters can be so annoying. “That’s why I came down.”
I was already jogging back toward the village, so Usako had to run to catch up. “Oh.” Usako might not be able to climb, but she can run all day. “Gonna buy a pig, maybe, for a feast?”
I snorted. “How would he get a pig onto a horse?”
That's a piece of writing that sprang out of who-knows-where, but that's set in the land of my novel-in-process Risuko. Huh.
Wanna give it a try?