Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Six Sentence Story blophop
Denise is the host.
The prompt word is:
RAMBUNCTIOUS
You stare at your computer, the week’s prompt word standing alone, half-way down the left side of bloghop host’s homepage, when you begin to feel something odd; it’s as if your thoughts are appearing somewhere behind your eyes in 12-point Times New Roman, with a one inch margin on all sides.
As the existential fear, the state of mind more commonly associated with one’s first semester away at college or the moment you realize your date hasn’t said no to anything since being seated at the best table in the most expensive of restaurants, grows, the thought ticker-tapes through your mind, ‘This can’t be happening, they’ll never buy a shift in POV’.
The man, his face a bas-relief carved in LED light and incredulity, looks at his reflection in the window of the second-bedroom-turned-home-office as if to assure himself the momentary sense of disassociation is nothing more than his over-active imagination daring him to stay the course, the thrill wrestled with reasonable fear, like teenagers driving on backroads with the headlights off; surely his syntactical vandalism would not result in any lasting damage.
‘Ignore the voices in your head and type the last two sentences,’ seeing the words appear on the screen, he smiled at the hint of an approaching metaphor; the anticipation of the words ‘was like’, made the sultry whisper of the most beautiful of courtesans, beckoning a suitor, sound like an acned teenager shouting from a drive-through window, ‘You want fries with that?’
“Dude, that’s my jam,” pushing back in my chair, I realized I’d copy-pasted from the draft of an entirely un-related post, and the sentence, from a narrative point-of-view relegated to the middle third of the post, was no longer germane; counting the preceding sentences, I decided that getting across the finish line was, to channel Vince Lombardi, the only thing that mattered.
Recalling the years of weekly Six Sentence Stories, and Thursday sunrises fashioning stories that, not infrequently, insisted on being published, quality notwithstanding, I felt like a child, determined not to eat the previous night’s vegetables, struggling to remain awake at two o’clock in the morning, his mother asleep at the head of the table, maturity surrendering to the irrational endurance of youthful stubbornness; I got up from my desk, the all-caps, bold-print word: RAMBUNCTIOUS on the screen calling to me like that kid in the Alan Ladd cowboy picture from the 1950s, ‘clark! clark! come back’.
About clarkscottroger
great six., but no Bogey…are you ok? ha
thanks, Paul. Gots to get back to see what Ian Devereaux and them are doing in ‘the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf’
A picture that stimulates appetite, then the poetic lines “seeing the words appear on the screen, he smiled at the hint of an approaching metaphor; the anticipation of the words ‘was like’, made the sultry whisper of the most beautiful of courtesans, beckoning a suitor”. Finally, calling it yesterday night’s veggies is an anti-climax.
thank you, Reena
not that I know anything about weaving or embroidery, but sometimes writing these stories feels like I imagine it must feel like to turn yard or thread into scenes and pictures
The multiple POVs nodded happily, each having earned their turn. The plural voices scowled: ‘we’ll get him next time,’ they muttered.
lol. whew! just made it out in time!
Mind you don’t disturb the peaceful pronouns. They’re hanging out by some admirably amorous adjectives at the moment. (Sorry, getting carried away…)
ayiieee! the pronouns! the shapeshifters of any narrative… or (to running with equal abandon), like all the Bruce Lees in the final mirror sequence of ‘Enter the Dragon’
Very fun reading.
Nice description: “maturity surrendering to the irrational endurance of youthful stubbornness”. I also sense an “existential fear” every Sunday wondering if this will be the week I can’t think of anything to say given the announcement of the prompt word.
It is good to know there are some options when a prompt doesn’t bring anything to mind. Very creative approach and kept your readers enthralled with where this was going. Smile.
lol yeah, sometimes it makes sense to stop running and freeze (and hope they don’t notice)
The mimi shakes her head as if looking at one of her children and says, pulling an all nighter is great fun while it lasts, then you have to get to work the next day.
smiles… but it kept hesitating at the corners, running away just slowly enough not to lose me!
Bizarre, Clark, even by your standards
Dude! What a nice thing to say!
(who is this, really)
lol
So often I sit and stare at a prompt thinking I’m chasing a lost cause, then words appear from no where – not always appropriate words, but hey-ho!
ain’t that the coolest part of this writing thing? (next runner-up: reading something, enjoying it and, only then, realizing that you’re the author)
Entertaining Six in a most engaging manner. I smiled and commiserated with the challenge of this week’s prompt and fervently applaud your POVs providing insight into said challenge. Bravo to all 3 of you.
we thank you
Writing is risk taking, and this is beautifully bold. And I can relate. I almost didn’t come out to play this week, as RAMBUNCTIOUS wasn’t loosing any stories for me. And now as I make the rounds others have made it look so easy, but that doesn’t mean it was. Good work here.
thankee, Ms Avry
it is the company of others of similar bent that adds the element of encouragement to the sometimes difficult path we are on