Writing Prompts Day 19

Day 19 of the daily prompts:

Crumpled

The crumpled letter was tossed at the side of the wastebasket. She was in tears on her bed, crying in big sops. There was no word; there was no sentimentality that would make her stop crying. He had been killed in action and that was all they were telling her. It hadn’t been his war. It wasn’t her war either. It was their war, and now he had died because men like him die for causes not their own.

She had begged him not to go. She had said they could hide him. But he had done his duty. He was such a sort of man, and now she was forced to live without him. There had been no choice. He could have been so much more than a body for the war. War no one cared for.

Superpowers

He zoomed up in the sky and made a sharp turn, landing in front of the queue to the post office. He straightened his glasses and tie and took his position in the line. Yesterday, suddenly, by the stroke of lightning, he had become invincible. He could walk without his cane, the muscles he thought he had lost to his youth had come back, and his eyesight was ten out of ten. He still wore his glasses, just without the lenses, because that was what he had done for fifty years. What the lightning hadn’t done was give his youth back, but being an eighty-year-old man with the ability to fly and blow things up with his gaze was better than being a twenty-some bloke.

Captain James Hook

Captain James Hook was his name. He had sailed the seven seas. He had wrestled the crocodiles. He had a boat full of treasures. Yet, he couldn’t defeat one boy and his fairy friends.

The Prompts are from the book: A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

Again, writing about already-established characters is hard. It feels like I cannot get into their heads and space, and the five minutes I give to the idea, isn’t enough to jolt me off from the freeze I have when trying to type in something. Or maybe I’m over-thinking it or start editing before any sentence comes up. I would love to push further, but I have to leave work soon. So today, I admit my defeat. A glorious defeat it is.

Writing these prompts has shown me where I need to improve and what comes easily. When I started, I didn’t think this would be such a good exercise in writing, but it has proved to be the best choice I have made in a long time.

Thank you for reading! Have a magical day!