Writing Prompt #1: Pick Six Words

I’m starting this new thing, where I post my writing prompts every time I feel like I’m doing a terrible job being a writer, which happens more often than I’m comfortable to admit.

Anyway, I’m using the 100 Creative Writing Prompts from Writer’s Digest. All I’m doing is generating a random number (Google has a random number generator), and poof!

So today, I selected number 44, “Pick Six.” Here’s what it says: Open a book or magazine in your reading pile to a page of your choice. Pick six words from the page that sound interesting to you. Write a piece that uses all six of those words.

The book beside me is Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (a thoughtful gift from a new friend), and I selected page 268. The words I chose were:

Intention, imagination, humility, tenderest, forbidden, honest

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My brain isn’t working.

I don’t mean that figuratively. It’s literally not working. There’s nothing in here but darkness and smog and some weird flicker of light floating around.

“You’re new, it’ll adjust,” someone says in the tenderest of voices. I whirl around too fast. The woman looks like any ordinary woman, with red hair that flows to her waist, and eyes so green they rival the trees. What strikes me as odd is her clothing. She’s wearing tight white overalls–actually, it’s more like a skin suit–with a green belt.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “And who are you?” I look around, and take in the surroundings. It looks like I’m in some facility, with plain white walls, and a stainless table in front of me. “And where the hell am I?”

I try to rack my brain of anything, and somehow it conjures up a moment I remember all too well.

I was frolicking in the forest–a place my mother told me was forbidden. I didn’t care, though. I never listened. If I had, I probably would’ve saved myself from whatever waited for me. If I had even a shred of humility or respect, I wouldn’t have done what I did next.

I ran around the forest, expecting to find some plants I can use as inspiration for my sketches. I’ve been trying to make an honest living out of being an artist (it’s not easy). Usually, my imagination is enough to give me a good sketch, but lately I’ve been draining it that I needed to go out.

Anyway, I was sketching a beautiful sunflower when I heard rustling sounds behind me. I remember seeing a weird creature. At first I thought it was a fox, but as it came closer, I saw it had a bigger body. It still resembled a fox, but now it looked like it had every intention of eating me whole. Naturally, I did what any rational person would have done: I ran.

And then I’m back to the present. With running as the last memory I can think of.