Creative Club #6

A writing exercise to do today, just because. Plus, an In Writing reader’s contribution.

This week’s In Writing Creative Club post is a team effort. Below, I’m sharing a great writing prompt kindly suggested by a subscriber, Tony Gallacher. And before we even get to that, I want to share something that another subscriber, Ben KL, wrote for the last In Writing Creative Club back in July.

I always love reading your contributions in the comments, and one of the reasons I like these writing prompts is that we all respond to them so differently. The last prompt was ‘A memory of hands’, and it gave me an idea for a short story about an ill-fitting relationship; others thought about death, or span off into crime stories or tales of chance encounters. This was Ben’s, which I found so beautiful, and incredibly evocative.

Like the skin of the figs that grow along the banks of the Po, my father’s hand, like the skin of the figs or like waxed paper wrapped around the skeleton of a small bird, and on the paper is a note written quickly, four words, the fifth crossed out. My father’s hand like the cloth of a child’s parachute or a note scribbled quickly and wrapped around the body of a bird, like the memory of a hand, like the place where a hand had once been and was no longer, a hand that gripped and pulled and tugged and held and let go, the tale of a hand, a story or myth of a hand, passed down from generation to generation. My elderly father’s right hand resting there like the fallen figs that rest in the warm sun on the banks of the Po, like the figs my father is dreaming of, imagining them warm and tough in his boyish fingers, back when the tale was first told.

Thank you Ben for sharing this and giving me permission to put it in the newsletter.

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Now to today’s prompt, and I hope you’ll be inspired to use it to do a short piece of writing today, and share that in the comments too (up to 300-ish words).

Here it is, with thanks to Tony: