Saturday, 8 February 2014

A Gripping Tale

So I've started getting the daily prompts from The Write Practice.
Today's prompt was to tempt us to go out and be a little adventurous.
I've figured I'm not an adventure writer.

....

I'm stumped. Adventure has slunk from reach. The possibility of a lurching, spine tingling tale has retreated in to a dark corner to suck its thumb and hang its pathetic scared tail between its legs.

I’ll push on though. Fuck  you tale. I’ve got spirit. I'm going to let these fingers find their way. I'm going to let them climb keys and space bar, seek new horizons, feel their way through the darkness and discolourations of an uninspired mind.

You’ll see tale. You’ll wish you’d decided to come. Taken a chance. Stepped out of your own shadow in to the sometimes shimmering, yet more  often flickering  light of risk.

I'm unsteady on this line. It’s a shakey ridge without clear direction. It crumbles as my padded tips step carefully among its worn out keys and dusty valleys. A whir in the distance spirals up through the metallic vista. I pause. Breathe deep. Consider its meaning. Is it telling me to retreat? Return to the tired and murky yawn of the uninspired mind? Retract my steps back across the qwerty desert into no-hand land?

My heart thumps. Ventricle fists pounding the thoracic cage like a crazed on fire literati might stampede much this same landscape.  It’s aching to be free, to soar into the danger zone, to  grip a tale.


“Alas my friend, my heart,” I quietly say “There is no gripping tale this night.”




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