Summer already? How did that happen?
I don’t know about you, but time just seems to be slipping away for me. Fortunately, despite my tenuous grasp on time, progress has been made on a few fronts this week.
I finally found someone to help repair my ailing sprinkler system. It’s still not fully functional, but that broken valve that resulted in a water-gusher has been taken care of. Even better, my neighbor finally hired someone to replace the retaining wall and fence that separates our yards so now his yard will stop sliding into mine and privacy has been restored. All I had to do was write a check for my half.
Better yet, I was able to hire that same repairman to fix a small retaining wall on the other side of my property and to replace some decaying house-trim. By this time next week, that will mean several of the major problems that had been on the “must take care of these” list for quite some time will finally be taken care of. Next up: time to replace the disintegrating back deck. Guess that means I’ll be taking a socially distant trip to the lumberyard this weekend to place an order for the necessary supplies. Good times!
For now, however, I’m going to enjoy my first day off work in quite some time. I’ll be spending at least part of the day at an online writing workshop. It’s a small $25 test-drive to see just how well a virtual writing workshop can work, before I register for the longer conference that I mentioned a while back. I’m sure the workshop will leave me bursting with creativity and ready to attack today’s writing prompt and random words.
Care to join me?
For those of you working away on a story (whether a first draft or a polished version on its way to publication), if you’re not feeling random, we’d love to hear a bit – whether it’s a scene, a paragraph, or even a phrase that you are especially pleased with and would like to share.
If you don’t have a story in progress, or just want to work on something new, I hope either today’s random words or writing prompt will catch your creative fancy.
Ready?
What if: “Your character finally takes care of a long-standing problem?
Feel free to interpret the “What” any way you choose (or ignore it completely) and include any (or all) of the following random words:
bodies magnet electric unsure
hotter liberating condemn appearance
classic amateur alcohol gloves
warrior adhesive exorcism buried
I look forward to seeing your stories in the comments. If you’re not feeling in the writing mood today, or don’t have time, feel free to post suggestions you might have for future “what-if” prompts. Ideas are always welcome.
Happy writing to all!
Eight Ladies Writing 
Congratulations on getting all that work done, Elizabeth! I look at my household chores and just turn the page. Got my sprint done, though—better late than never, I suppose…
The Practice
“Just try it.” Banksy twisted in a classic Warrior pose, the hottest body in a sea of hot bodies, if she were still in her class. On this day of quarantine, she was doing her practice in the backyard, observed only by her sister.
“Yoga’s liberating,” Banksy said. “It releases all your buried tensions. Exorcises them.”
“You know what else exorcises tensions? Alcohol.” Banksy’s sister Camber leaned back in the electric blue lawn chair and took a sip of her extra-dry martini. She might be unsure about yoga, but she was not unsure about martinis.
“Martinis,” Banksy sniffed, moving into Downward Facing Dog. “That’s amateur hour.”
“Said she who never tried it,” Camber replied. “Don’t condemn until you walk in the other person’s shoes. But if you ever walk in my shoes, you’ll need gloves and a strong adhesive to hold your thieving hands on your arms.”
“Just because that one time—” Banksy said, puffing a little as she moved into the Sun Salutation.
Her sister might give the appearance of enjoying this ridiculousness, Camber thought, but any fool could tell that she’d be heading for the gin like iron filings to a magnet before the afternoon was over.
And then the fun would begin.
Nice job, Kay. I loved the “she’d be heading for the gin like iron filings to a magnet” phrase. I foresee some very interesting sister-bonding time coming up.