I could always go the fiction route, make up some bizarre scene involving an obese bank teller giving two knock-outs with flowing red hair a really bad time. When asked, I’d say I have no idea where any of it came from and I wouldn’t be lying.
If I diddle around for a sentence or two, today’s writing prompt: broken promises will inevitably bring forth a shift, a subtle stir, from that back drawer of consciousness where all surprises are born. Surely I can think of something to say about broken promises.
But here I am, entering the third paragraph and still no broken promises. I could always fall back on the most familiar route—revisit that old first marriage story, broken the old-fashioned way, a sneak affair with a colleague at work while I’m home mopping up spilled cereal, gathering up tinker toys lodged behind the sofa pillows. But I’ve written that story raw.
OK. Sit up straight. Time to try a new paragraph, fresh and clean, surely by now the infinite possibilities of broken promises will reveal themselves on this hungry page. Surely I will locate some flash form, some surprising twist, that will leave me breathless.
But instead I fall flat, because maybe I was trying too hard, forgetting to trust. The effort of writing has turned into a broken promise, becoming the very prompt it set out to be.