2026 Writing Challenge: Write On Prompt - I Remember Part 2 (My last first date)

 Note: This is the second writing exercise from Tuesday's Write On meeting. I took one of my "I Remember" statements and developed the fiction piece below. 

My Last First Date

 

We decided to meet on neutral ground, that’s the way we put it in the emails. A truck stop off I-80. Actually, the “World’s Largest Truck Stop,” according to the billboards I had passed over the last twenty-five miles. Is that what Iowa is known for then? Gone are the days of feeding the world with their corn, now they can wear T-shirts proclaiming they chowed down on a hamburger at the stop where the most truckers pause to sleep, eat, shower and do whatever else happens in such places. Enough of that already, it was neutral ground for us two old goofs, to hell with its size and standing in the grand scheme of things. 

Wanda is from a little town in Nebraska. Someplace with a couple stop signs, a gas station near the interstate and a handful of folks getting by the best they could. 

I still work in Chicago, if you call it working. It’s mostly staring at a computer screen and pecking at the keyboard to answer inane questions in emails. I remember the glory days when the customers called and screamed in your ear. Now, they just use all caps, failing to realize that such practice guarantees their correspondence won’t be read. When I’ve pecked enough for the day, I go back to my dingy townhome in Gary, Indiana.

We agreed to meet in the emptiest part of the parking lot. Her in a green Toyota (I am too old to care what kind of car she drives), and me in my black F-150. I would have preferred blue, but they would have had to special order it, and you can just guess what that meant for the price. “Any color you want, so long as it’s black,” that old nut Henry Ford shouted from his grave. 

I suppose if we had thought about it more, we could have picked a classier place to call neutral ground. There were probably dozens of weirdos arranging all sorts of mashups in the parking lot of this truck stop at this exact time. Druggos passing bags of pills. Perverts meeting to do pervie things. Animal owners walking their dogs, waiting for the mutts to poop. All the worst kinds, basically. Perhaps, we mislabeled it “neutral ground,” when we really meant cesspool. 

“Knock it off,” I say. “Be positive.” 

Yes, I talk to myself. That’s what seventy-year-old bachelor’s do. No one wants to listen to us, so we just hold conversations with the one set of ears we know can’t get away. Yes, I am an old dog with old tricks, trying something stupidly, giddily new. I am meeting a woman for the first time, and we both have agreed this will be our last first date. Quite the promise, isn’t it? Well, we’ve never been married to each other or anybody else for that matter, and we’re going to take a few looks at each other here, grab a bite to eat, and then it’s either full-speed ahead to the altar or thanks for coming and have a nice, lonely twilight to your life. I hope it’s not the later. I’d like to have a few golden years with a good gal. 

No pressure, right. 

Of course, I arrived a half an hour early. That’s the old baseball player in me. If practice started at 4, you came at 3:30, so you could stretch and then warm up for fifteen minutes. Not that my baseball career ever amounted to much. The best I did was draw a walk in the third inning of some meaningless game that my team lost by eleven runs. I never even swung the bat. Yet, baseball trained me to be early. What I didn’t think about was it meant that I had thirty minutes to really think about this woman. 

Wanda. Was she a fish? Why did I start a conversation with a fish? She’s sixty-eight. If she ain’t lyin’. For all I know, she could be lying about all of it. A single woman. Retired teacher. Physically doing OK, considering her age. She can see. She can hear. She line dances on Tuesdays. She once changed her own tire in twelve minutes. All lies, a panic rising in my throat. She’s probably a nineteen-year-old Asian boy named Phong, who drinks too much Mountain Dew while playing internet tricks on lonely old men. 

“Phong,” yes, I say the name aloud. Where have I ever heard that name before? 

A green Toyota pulls into the parking lot. Well, someone was coming. Perhaps a fish. Perhaps Phong. Perhaps my future wife. 

2026 Writing Challenge: Write On Prompt - I Remember (Part 1)

Note: Last night at Write On, we accepted the "I Remember" Challenge as described below and then completed two prompts off that exercise. The first was to write a poem off one of our "I Remember" statements. I will post the second prompt in the next day or two. 

The “I Remember” exercise.

Joe Brainard wrote a novel called: I Remember

It contains a collection of paragraphs all starting with “I remember”.  This is the inspiration for this exercise, and if you’re stuck for what to write, is a great way to get the mental gears turning.  Simply write “I remember” and continue with the first thing that pops into your head.

Spend 5 minutes writing a short collection of “I remember” statements.

Here are a couple of examples from Joe Brainard’s novel:

“I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off.”

“I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.”         

 My "I Remember" statements:

I remember falling 12 feet from our barn’s hay mow.

I remember standing in a beehive.

I remember walking the gravel road from my grandparents’ house to my uncle’s house.

I remember driving on I-88 to move to DeKalb.

I remember breathing a sigh of relief for drawing a walk in a meaningless at-bat in a random little league game.

I remember my last first date.

I remember a toothpick sticking out of my foot, and a van door sliding over my thumb.

______

After that exercise, we were challenge to write a poem inspired by one of the statements we wrote. We spent about 15 minutes on this.

It takes a bit of courage...

Go play in the road, they would say

Just a funny expression, indicating get away.

Down the driveway, gravel under toe,

Another place to be, just a mile or so.

It takes a bit of courage, finding a path.

 

Go be a young man, they would say,

A throwaway direction, then see you in May.

The foot on the pedal, down the fast lane,

There’s no way of going without any pain.

It takes a bit of courage, finding a path.

2026 Writing Challenge: NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest Entry

Note: I entered the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest last weekend. I had 48 hours to write a 1,000-word story based on the following prompts: 

Genre: Fantasy
Setting: A Snack Bar
Object: A Flyswatter

The idea below came to me almost immediately, and I liked it, but not sure it fit the flash fiction requirements well. 

Two Old Heroes at the Edge of the Festival

 

The Tallow music carried across the festival grounds as the daytime games and contests relented to the evening revelry. Baldir grimaced, and for Galadrin, it was still bizarre seeing the dwarf’s facial features so clearly. Baldir’s once plush beard was gone along with so many other aspects of their former adventurous lives. The dwarf travelled the festival circuit these days, selling ale and various seasoned meats on skewers at an outdoor stand. Patrons didn’t appreciate the famous beard dipping into their ales or brushing against their chicken or lamb, so Baldir shaved it shortly after becoming a food peddler.

“Seven Dread Lords have forsaken FarHaven over the last thousand years, and every time, the cursed Tallow have followed them while the rest of us have fought against the evil, but at every blessed festival, there’s nothing but the pounding drums and blasted horns of the miserable Tallow music!” Baldir seized his flask, chasing his bitter thoughts with a healthy swallow of dark ale.

“When this valley was filled by a forest and fantastic creatures, the jubilant anthems and sorrowful laments of my elven ancestors echoed here,” Galadrin said. “Now the forests and the creatures and the elves have vanished from this place.”

“Aye,” Baldir didn’t say anymore. They were friends, more like brothers, but neither could fully erase the deep-seeded resentments felt between their two races. The great elven realm of Noltha Fey once ruled this region and often quarreled with the dwarves of the Wolf Fang Mountains to the north. Both races did things to dishonor themselves during those conflicts.

A DragonFly landed on their table top. The split-wing bug had a body the size of a baby’s fist that appeared to overstress its skinny six legs.

“Remember when these damn things used to spit fire?”

“I am old enough to remember when they talked.” Galadrin remembered how DragonFlys were once intelligent and often devious, but now they were empty-headed nuisances scavenging for crumbs. The world was changing, and Galadrin wasn’t sure anymore for the better.

Before it came near Galadrin’s skewer of chicken, a wooden mallet with a wide face and pointed barbs smacked down atop it.

“Damn buggies,” Lara said. She was the wench of Baldir’s food stand, and Galadrin suspected their business relationship extended beyond that. She lifted the swatter, the DragonFly’s body was impaled on one of the barbs, and wiped the table with a rag with her other hand, removing the blotches of green and yellow innards.

They were the only three at the stand, which was arranged on the outskirts of the Anniversary Festival. The crowds were enjoying the music and temporary taverns in the center of the activities, leaving the two friends alone in the torchlight.

“Twenty-three years,” Galadrin pondered aloud the anniversary of Arturo’s coronation.

“Aye, about twenty-five since we vanquished Darorath Bloodstone,” Baldir snorted, “Not that it’s talked about anymore, and most say the Doom of Alecsandri or the Velkan Trolls or the Charge of Zaelwo Hill are figments of old soldiers’ imaginations.”

Galadrin sighed. Thousands of elves, including two of his brothers and one sister, died at the Charge of Zaelwo Hill, but in the end, they had broken Darorath Bloodstone’s eastern forces, allowing Galadrin to march his remaining force straight to the palace. Concurrently, Baldir’s regiment overwhelmed the Velkan Trolls at Metahischoo.

Now Baldir shilled skewers of meat, and Galadrin was part of an exhibition that celebrated elves’ customs and culture. He and his remaining kin were curiosities for women and children to stare at.

“Arturo has brought prosperity and peace,” Galadrin said.  

“And compromise.” Baldir’s bitterness was once again clear, as one of the most notable compromises was deploying the Wretches, the deformed former soldiers of Darorath Bloodstone, to the mines. A move that had undercut dwarf society, forcing most to scatter for work. Like the Tallow, whose culture had thrived after being enemies to man, the Wretches were said to be flourishing in the mines. Arturo believed this sort of progress would undercut any future rebellions by the two groups.

So far, it had worked: No war in twenty-five years, the proliferation of stone roadways and increased trade and commerce, and improved health and wealth. But, the elves and dwarves of the FarHaven with their thinning numbers and lost homes were diminished, and old adventurers like Baldir and Galadrin were relegated to the fringe and to lore.  And the magic, once so prevalent in FarHaven, was dissipating. Everything was turning to stone, steel and gold, choking the mystical and miraculous from the hills and valleys.

“I have heard whispers that an Oracle has foreseen the rise of another Dread Lord. Could be tomorrow, could be a hundred years.”

“Aye, I am already too old to fight, and if it’s a hundred years, I won’t see it at all. We dwarves live a long time, but not forever like you elves.”

Galadrin eyed the two empty skewers before him; elves traditionally hadn’t eaten meat, but now he couldn’t seem to get enough. He wasn’t positive that immortality was a guarantee anymore. A bright flash burst across the sky, followed by a thunderous boom. The pyromancers’ fireworks show was starting.

“Will Arturo’s heirs withstand an evil uprising?” The dwarf grabbed their empty mugs and skewers.

“I imagine a new hero will be required.” Galadrin had met both heirs, noting they were accustomed to comfort. They might have the old blood of Arturo’s line, but they lacked their father’s honor and grit.

“Another man sent to save us,” Baldir snorted. “The Gods should choose another race to rule next time.”

More fireworks blasted, and the two old heroes watched silently. They were removed from the story now; they could feel it.

“It was good to see you, my friend,” Galadrin said. Baldir nodded.

Galadrin journeyed toward the darkness, away from the fireworks, the festivities, and the memories. He wished there were a true forest near, one where he could hear the birds and echoes of old elven songs.

 

 

2026 Writing Challenge: Gotta Have It!

 

Note: Well, I haven't been keeping up with my 2026 Writing Challenge, but I promise I will keep trying/writing. Last night, Write On - my local writing group - had our Writing Workout session. I provided each person with a blank shopping list. Each person created a character name and then a list of things that person needed or wanted. The curveball was that I then had each person fold the list and place it in a hat. We then did a blind draw and had to write a story about the character and list we received. I recieved the list in the picture and below is the story I started. I think it could be a fun one to finish. 

Gotta Have It!

Day 1

The studio apartment was Evelyn’s dream. High ceilings with skylights. A bay window overlooking the village square. A refrigerator, a cute retro looking oven colored sky blue, a microwave, and dining table. It was walking distance to her new office job, and down the street from the corner grocery. Best of all, it was above a book store. A book store! She couldn’t believe it? She was mere feet from thousands of books and magazines.

She danced around the wood floors in her bare feet, doing pirouettes she learned in ballet when she was four. She needed no music, as the sun set over the small town. Her new home. Home. She had finally found one.

It was getting late, all the stores were closed, and she had so little. Just the suitcase, three pairs of dress slacks, tennis shoes, her two favorite blouses, and the framed picture of her parents. The one in front of the farm house taken in 82. Mother in her flowered dress, short and stout and scowling, father in his bibs, wearing a goofy grin and the one hair that always pointed straight up.

“If only they could see me now!” She sang, and then thought. I need some things.

She went to the stainless-steel fridge door, stuck to it was a note pad with the word “Gotta Have It!” in green letters across the top and below a series of green lines spaced just far enough apart to add words.

On the first line she wrote: A mattress and a dresser.

She knew there had to be more, but she didn’t really know how she was going to buy those. Hopefully, she could find cheap ones at a garage sale in the coming days and weeks.

Day 2

Evelyn woke with a start and a cramp in her neck. She’d slept on the floor below the bay window, using the suitcase as a pillow. The room was covered in shadows, a gray morning light spilled across the floor. She thought she had been dreaming about Charles, the version of Charles before the war. The Charles who wrote her fun, but sometimes raunchy sonnets. The Charles, who loved to run and make things with his hands. The Charles she wanted to pluck from her dreams and bring into life, casting the post-war Charles into some nightmare to stay.

She sat up, raising her arms to the air, her elbow popped. It had never healed properly. How could it? She hadn’t been allowed to see a doctor about it. Before she stood, something caught her eye.

Jutting from the corner of the room was a mattress, next to it a wooden dresser with four drawers.

Day 3

The bowl of berries was on the counter. They were plump, red, in-season berries, even though the season was well-passed. She had taken the berries from the fridge after returning from work. The same fridge with the note pad that said “Gotta Have It!” in green letters on top. The same notepad she had written berries on before leaving this morning below her first request of a mattress and a dresser.

She had spent the day before pacing the apartment, racking her brain on how someone had snuck a mattress and a dresser in while she had slept. It didn’t make sense. Sleeping on a cold wood floor with a suitcase as a pillow didn’t lend itself to deep sleep. It couldn’t be the case.

It had frightened her so much that she had left the apartment in a hurry for work and then used some of her precious money to stay in a motel that night. The whole time telling herself she was being silly or perhaps going crazy.

So, she returned to the apartment early on the third day, expecting that the mattress and the dresser had been an illusion, a figment of hope carried to her by the delirium of leaving Charles and finding a nice secluded town with a perfect studio apartment to start again.

But, they had been there. A sheet over the mattress, the dresser standing beside like a dependable sentry.

What was she to do? She switched her slacks and blouse and before going off to her second day of work, she scribbled berries on the list.

Charles had hated berries, forbidding them from their house.

Day 4

She asked Joanie, her broad-shouldered cubicle mate, if the village had a welcoming committee or something. One of those groups, maybe a church group, that delivered goods to new members of the community. An act of good faith, type thing.

“Maybe forty years ago, we did.” Joanie rummaged into her purse for a pack of Slims. “You want one?”

Evelyn shook her head. On the way home, Evelyn realized she knew very little about this village, or even how big it was. It was too late to venture out at this point, but she was eager to find a way to survey her surroundings.

The first thing she did when she entered the apartment was go to the fridge, grab the pen, and write “a bicycle” on the third line.

That night, she gave up on the hard floor, and tried the mattress. What’s the worse thing a mattress could do? She sat on the corner for a long time, like sitting on the edge of a pool dipping her toes into the water. This is silly, she told herself, the darkness looming around her. She sank back and waited a long time before closing her eyes.

It was like being embraced by a cloud, she thought, as she drifted to sleep. She dreamt of Charles dancing at their wedding. He was wearing a dark tux, with a gray bowtie, and his hair was neatly parted.

In the morning, a yellow bicycle was standing next to her door.

2026 Writing Challenge: A First Line Challenge

 

Note: The Write On Writing group met on Tuesday night, and it was a writing workout session. We were provided three first-line prompts to choose from. I picked the line: "Lawrence was the last to arrive." I didn't complete the story but focused on creating characters and details. It has a bit of a "It" by Stephen King vibe, so if I continue, I might need to bend the tale a bit. 

Lawrence was the last to arrive. No surprise there. If a million dollars had been offered for the first to arrive, Lawrence wouldn’t have changed his walking pace, or the time he set his alarm clock, or the number of times he jiggled the handle of his front door to make sure it was indeed locked to assure himself the fortune for being early.

Erik still pictured Lawrence as that skinny, skittish kid with freckles on his nose and his T-shirt tucked into his khaki pants. Even as a kid, Lawrence needed everything a particular way from the part in his hair (gelled tight to his scalp with only a few bangs dangling on the right side of his forehead) to the precise loops of his black shoestrings in his white tennis shoes. He was an odd duck at fourteen, and Erik suspected still dependently odd at thirty-four.

Lawrence carried a brown satchel over his shoulder, and he had swapped T-shirts for a short-sleeved collared shirt with white buttons down the front and a blue-and-green checkered pattern. He still had the khakis. The shoes were brown, but with black shoestrings. What was the deal with the black shoestrings? Erik couldn’t quite remember. The precision of his hairdo was marred by a receding hairline, which he balanced with a well-manicured goatee. He circled the room without greeting anyone and took his place behind a lectern.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he hadn’t bothered to verify if everyone else had arrived. Of course, they were all here, they wouldn’t have missed this. They congregated at Lincoln’s Library conference room at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, October 10^th, just as directed by the letter they had each received three weeks prior. “We are here because twenty years ago we made a promise, and while we didn’t use blood or anything quite so barbaric, our word was sealed as a bond that we guaranteed and redeemed with our attendance here.”

“Eh, can you say that in English?” Javier Montero said, a nervous laugh followed the statement. Javier was as round (very round) as he was tall (not tall at all) with a scruffy beard, a soiled T-Shirt, and a pair of basketball shorts that drooped too low below his knees and on his backside. It was hard to believe he’d once been Lincoln soccer’s all-time goal scorer. He looked like he might break out in a sweat standing from his chair.

“He’s saying we promised to come back and we did,” Polly Ryman said. Always the conciliator, Polly patted Javier’s hand. She was smartly dressed in a purple pant suit with a lavender top and dark shoes. She had always been an overachiever in their school days, class president, drum major, and so on. Erik wondered where all that had led her. He hadn’t kept up with his peers after graduation, especially the group of eight in the room. After what they had gone through together that fall of their freshman year of high school at Lincoln, he had wanted to forget them all forever.

Even Kate, who he still loved, and watched closely since she had arrived. She hadn’t said a word to him when she had entered minutes earlier, choosing to stay on the opposite side, making small talk with Gwen and Mike, the unbreakable couple.

“Yes, precisely. We promised to come if the problems started again, and I am here to tell you, that they are starting again,” Lawrence said. He clutched the satchel to his side. The weight of it seemed to sag his bony shoulder down. The image brought back a memory, one that Erik couldn’t chase from his mind. The room drifted away, time evaporated, and it was 1995 again. It was midnight, the sky brightened by a fat orange moon. The air was cold; it was October in Illinois after all, but Lawrence was in a T-shirt, which was untucked and soaked in blood. They were standing on the train tracks that ran along Highway 9 east of Lincoln. From here, they could see the river beyond a field and a grove of trees. The river, dark and looming, rolled by without marking time.

“It killed them!” Lawrence cried that night. “It killed them all.”

2026 Writing Challenge: Three Things About Billy

Note: This is part two from last week's Write On "Writing Workout" session. We had to choose from one of the below prompts. I actually had a couple false starts before going with the first entry. 

Fiction/Nonficiton – 30 minutes

Write a flash fiction piece featuring a non-romantic relationship between two characters who love each other.

Write a nonfiction piece about a nonromantic relationship in your life.

Write a book report-style essay about love. 

Three Things about Billy

I met Billy when I was seventeen. He was tall and lean, but never really mean.

 

I worked at the library back then, reading to children on weekend mornings and blind seniors during the late afternoon after school. When Billy found out, he said: “You know, I think I once heard of a book.”

 

I thought he was a blockhead. This lumbering giant of a boy that moved in next door. Not handsome, necessarily, but he had an honest look that was charming. I was bookish, not meant for beauty pageants or the prom queen. He never asked me out, and I never wrote his name in my diary with a heart around it. But until Billy died a few weeks ago at the too young age of thirty-six, I never met anyone that made me happier. 

 

Here are three things about Billy and Me: 

 

1.     Billy chased his dog around the yard like no one else in the world could see him. You know the phrase: “Dance like no one is watching.” Well, that’s how Billy played with his dog from the time I met Billy when he was seventeen, until that cute little spaniel died when Billy was twenty-six. He first noticed me while playing with his dog. I couldn’t help it, it was like trying to catch a glimpse of a car wreck, I couldn’t look away. He waved me over, and that’s how I met Billy and his dog. 

2.     He called me every Sunday night at 8:15 PM sharp for 16 straight years. His first words every time was a lewd question about if I was regular. He stole that from his grandmother, who asked the same question every time she called anyone in the family. Apparently, bowel movements were important to her. We talked for exactly fifteen minutes each call. The first calls were mostly Billy, prattling on about silly things that happened at school or a face his dog made. Later, I told him about books I was reading and how I dreamed of writing the next great novel. And, you know what, he never laughed at that. In fact, he made me tell him about stories I wanted to write. Which made me think about stories I wanted to write. Which led to me writing stories. It’s funny how someone can spur you on by just taking an interest. 

3.     When he became engaged to Laura, he threatened to call the whole thing off when she refused to let me be his best man. I was his best friend, he told me, and if she couldn’t have me be that in the wedding party then how would Laura ever be able to handle me being in his life. They fought about this for weeks, I know, but he never budged. Laura eventually gave in, and I walked down the aisle in a mint green tuxedo that Billy had especially made to fit my female frame. If I had known about the tuxedo ahead of time, I would have rejected the entire notion to begin with. Not really. I never felt more comfortable having every eye in the place on me. Who was this woman in a green tuxedo claiming to be a best man? My first novel borrowed this premise, and it sold three million copies. 

2026 Writing Challenge: Picking a Flower

 

Note: At Write On - our local writing group - we had two writing sessions last night. The first challenge was a to write a poem based of one of three prompts provided. I decided to use the third prompt. I will share the second writing exercise in the coming days.

Here are the prompts: 

• Write a love poem, but not romantic love.
•  Write a poem where the first and last word is a color (doesn’t have to be same color in both places).
  
•  Write a poem featuring a flower in a vase.

Picking a flower

When she was three, she picked a marigold because she was wild and free.
The colors were orange and yellow and sprinkled with glee.
She used an old Coke bottle and filled it with water;
Placed it on the windowsill, so she could remember it later.

When she was thirteen, she picked a violet, the leaves shaped like her fragile heart.
The petals were purple, the middle still yellow, that was her start.
She found an old Mason jar, and filled it with water.
Placed it on her nightstand, hoping the fragrance would find her dreams later. 

When she was thirty-three, she picked a lily, even though doing so kind of felt silly;
Pink was its petals boarded in white, seeing it reminded her of Billy.
She found an old milk jug and filled it with water.
Placed it on her kitchen table, hoping he might stop by later.

 When she was ninety-three, she picked a rose, for the smell tickled her nose.
It was proud and red, with a thorn on the stem, that’s just the way life goes.
She found an old vase, dusty and broken, and filled it with water.
Placed it on a tray they used for her breakfast, never expecting to see it again later.