WriTING my Way Through Lockdown.

‘Cause the Writing’s on the Wall.

pop quiz: the lyric above is from what song and artist? clue: my brother by other parents, spies a ghost.

WriTING Task Five: A piece of Flash Fiction max. 100 words. The theme is collective nouns for vultures; I chose a ‘wake of vultures’. With set structure: Opening sentence delivers place, point of view, movement; Dialogue; Power of three; Action; Fact; Action; * Jump forward in time; Where; Dialogue; Action; Dialogue.

As those of you who have read more than one of my blog articles will suspect: I quite like writing. So, with lockdown rules putting paid any plans for a ski trip this side of ‘sometime never’, I signed up to an online writing course.

It may surprise you to know that I haven’t written anything before where I’ve made it up. All my writing comes from facts and research and my opinions of it; to write something completely made-up, that’s a first for me.

The course was online and twice a week, for eight weeks, we were set a writing task. Sometimes long, sometimes short, sometimes odd. None were compulsory, but being someone who tends towards ‘completer/finisher’, I generally went for quantity over quality and tackled them all.

Here’s one…
There are a few collective nouns for vultures – who knew? A wake, A kettle, A committee, A venue, A volt; so many options.

My WriTING Effort:

A Hand to Upset the Wake of Vultures in Paradise.

The sun touches the horizon, the fingers of one hand creating ripples in the pool, she gently rubs her swollen belly.

“Hey, pretty lady!”

A scruffy, little kid. A bright wide smile. A heavy weight beyond his years.

Scavenging; selling bracelets, hair braids, henna tattoos.

Gangs control 30,000 Thai street children.

She gives him $10 for a red bracelet.

The sun touches the horizon, twiddling her favourite red bracelet, she watches her granddaughter splash in the pool.

“Hey, pretty lady!”

She takes the hand of a scruffy little kid.

“I’m going to get you out of here.”

(98 words)

pop trivia: ‘Sam Smith’ co-wrote and performed ‘Cause the Writings on the Wall‘ as the Bond theme for 2015’s outing, ‘Spectre’. The single made it to number 1. Who knows when we are going to see Bond’s next outing.

The writing course was called Zoom with a Brew, if you’d like to read more of my efforts, they can be found here. East Midlands Arts funded the course and created a website containing the submitted work of all the writers.