First writing prompt!
Welcome to the CU This Tuesday Writing Group! Every Tuesday, I’m going to sit down for 30 minutes with a writing prompt, then share the prompt and what I came up with with you. Right now, I’m using Monday’s Wordle as a prompt. If you’re a Wordler, you’re probably laughing right now because yesterday’s word was: GUANO. First, I needed to look this up. Yes, my suspicions were correct: it is bat shit. Bat shit used as fertilizer. Ok. The next thing I did was use a random number generator to decide what point of view I’d write in today. I got the RNG to choose a number between 1 and 4. 1= 1st person, 2= 2nd person, 3= 3rd person, 4= 1st person collective. Today, the RNG chose 1.
Writing prompt: Guano, in first person
What I’m hoping to do with these writing prompts is to get my head into the next novel I hope to write while I’m still finishing up the novel I’m currently working on. Loosely, I’m thinking of writing about an affair with a toxic man, a poet, from the point of view of the mistress. But there might also be ghosts involved. I set my kitchen timer for 30 minutes, and this is what I came up with:
Today, the poet must collect guano with his wife. For the garden. So they will grow vegetables together now, will they? Vulvic cabbages and potatoes they will dig like pearls from the loam. Their spawn will scamper round the little plot, hiding under their mother’s frumpy skirts, squealing when she swats them out.
I don’t understand how he can’t need me like he needs air to breathe. Do I need another lover to distract? That would only add problems on top of problems.
Perhaps I should grow a garden. Though mine would look more like a pig’s pen, a trough of sticky guano, a pit that belches and sucks good from the world. Hold onto your husbands! But her power fades.
What I see now when I look into shop windows is a slipping beauty. Where are my cheeks sliding to? The earth? Are they preparing to rest in peace? To become the guano that will feed more happy families, that will inspire poems?
I shouldn’t be so grim. She is grim, the poet’s wife. The poetess. He doesn’t like her moods, so I must not have any. Though if I came with only one pleasant mood, he would find me dull. What he wants, then, is impossible. What he wants is a woman who is attuned to his every tick, his every breath. A woman who knows when to laugh, when to push—ever so slightly, when to join him in his brooding, when to ignore. A woman who lives for him yet has enough of her own life to make interesting conversation.
I’ve asked myself before, do I like this man, the poet? Do I like him more than I hate him? Do I really want to live on lust alone? He is a black hole I wish I’d never encountered. Now that I have, I couldn’t exist without him. Who could ever compare?
In this way, I understand his wife, the poetess. We’re both trapped like flies in his web—could we not reach for one another? If only I hadn’t spent so many hours despising her. My hatred for her is as much a part of me as my love for him. All of it toxic.
I’ve studied her body as much as I have his. Her hips more matronly—the way they hold her skirts like little fists at an open curtain—the delicate slope of her nose, and her lips, always red and dewey, cinched into their heart shape.
But I have the smoldering eyes. Hers are sharp, discriminating, fearful and self-protective. My eyes welcome. Seductively, not kindly.
Goodness, why do I waste so much of my mind on this towering, brooding mass? Do I think I will find myself in there?
Afterthoughts
It’s so interesting to me what sort of voice comes out! This sounds a bit more formal and old-fashioned than I think I would want my next novel to sound. I wonder if it’s because I’m sort of basing it on real people from the past. I would never say “poetess” in real life! haha. I’ve never actually gotten into a new project in this way, by writing little snippets and character sketches and seeing what happens. I think this will be really helpful. Maybe I’ll even come up with a whole new idea for my next project.
I can’t wait to see what comes of this. Please subscribe and share! I’ll CU Next Tuesday!