Getting unstuck

It's official, I'm stuck. The story has been in my head for several years. So far that's where most of it is staying. One strategy for moving past a block or a lull is to write something else. It's a means of freeing my brain. It can be a refreshing break especially when I find myself where I am now, running in place.

Start from scratch or return to something you have written and put aside. I am also interested in a young adult novel. My exercise is to write between 250 and 500 words about a youngster's walk to school. You can find prompts online at various writing sites including the Writer's Diget site. http://www.writersdigest.com/WritingPrompts/


The day was warm and golden as the sun glowed. This new morning sparkled and crackled. Everywhere she looked was warmth and life.

As the wind tousled her hair she knew it was a dinosaur wind, a wind that had blown a million years before perhaps across the flanks of a triceratops or brontosaurs, or maybe a marauding T-Rex. She ran, soaring, flying over the ground as her feet scarcely touched the ground. After all, she was nearly as fast as the wind itself, as light as air. Sometimes she ran faster than the wind and in those moments she became invisible, there was nothing she could not conquer.

Each morning the same magic awaited, the sun warmed her, the wind carried her setting her adrift in a universe of unlimited potential. The morning routine possessed a momentum of its own and then abruptly she would find herself staring at the sullen brick of Grady Elementary.

The building seemed amiss among the swaying pines and the swirling Texas wind. The school looked as though it had clawed its way up from the bowels of the earth and she swore most times it smelled like it. In her deepest reservoir of wishes she wished the earth would suddenly open and swallow the hideous place that demanded her attendance and precipitously snatched her form her world.

It wasn't that she disliked school, she was ambivalent at best. It was an aspect of existence over which she had no control, much like her cowlick. Much to her grandmother’s alarm, no amount of hair product tamed her dark wavy hair. Hair that her mother cut short with little regard to style or symmetry.

Just as she learned to accept the strands of hair that defied gravity, she accepted school. Early on she grasped that sometimes the best way to resolve a problem was to minimize its impact. She participated, made good grades, and was repeatedly patted on her cowlick by approving adults. Then sighing, the ever vigilant adults turned dour expressions to the problem children.

Her parents placed undue significance on her performance. Clearly they never understood her motivations. If they had they would not have strutted like vain peacocks waving the straight A reports cards as a testament to their superior parenting.

There was no honor involved but survival and sanity-it kept adults at a tolerable distance. Adults most outstanding and unifying characteristic was the ability to kill the magic that abounded, if one would look, move, breathe, the magic was everywhere.

"Good morning Maddie," Mrs. Grayson smiled at each child as he or she entered the room. Maddie called them graded smiles, each child began their day with the appropriate Mrs. Grayson brand. Maddie was greeted with her "A" smile while Dwight received the "C" smile. Susie and Danny were "D" smiles.

Mrs. Grayson barely kept the wrinkled corners of her mouth from turning downward when those two entered. If Mattie was very still she felt Mrs. Grayson's disapproval moving from her withered lips across the room like a cold wrinkled hand shaking the two children ever so slightly. More than once she knew Susie and Danny felt her palpable condemnation as she watched them both suddenly shiver before taking their seats.


I'll let you know if the exercise helps me to get back on track.
Until later -