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. 

2026 Writing Challenge: Write On Prompt 02/04/2026

 

Note: Last night at Write On, the Rock Falls Writing group that I belong to, we had a prompt to write a scene that focuses n an emotion without specifically naming that emotion. Below is the scene that I wrote.

The water dangled from the mouth of the faucet, elongating like a slinky before gravity won and it dropped to the sink below. It smacked against the aluminum echoing louder in Theo’s head than it did in the empty kitchen. The sink leaked for seventeen minutes after each use, just one of the things he had measured over the last three years living in this house where echoes drowned all other signs of life.

“Do you have everything?” Calvin entered from the living room, a tall, improved version of Theo, who was twenty-seven years younger with a full mop of brown hair and one of those silly goatees.

“I don’t know if I have anything,” Theo said. On the table were three paper sacks of books and knick-knacks, next to the table leg a suitcase housing the fading remains of his wardrobe.

“Come on now, Dad,” Calvin put his hand on Theo’s shoulder. Such a bold gesture, Theo thought. Theo would never have touched his own father in such a way. Things like that just weren’t done.

Theo shrugged him off, turning his attention back to the sink where another drop fell and reverberated in his brain. This is why Mary should have outlasted him. She would have aged with grace, with style, with a verve even if it meant living in a place called Golden Acres surrounded by the infirmed and decrepit. That’s not how it went though. Mary followed God up that ladder three years ago, and Theo woke every morning since expecting to see the same ladder greeting him. God must have forgot about Theo.

“You know that Roger Handley is there,” Calvin said. “And Doris Mayberry, and that guy Frank you used to bowl with. It’ll be so much better than sitting around this old house alone all the time.”

“Roger Handley owes me seventeen dollars and fifty-six cents from the time I filled his daughter’s gas tank when she was stalled on the side of highway in 1986,” Theo said. “That’s not adding interest.”

“Dad.”

“If I was the IRS, I could take it straight from his Social Security check.”

“Well, then you can hang out with Doris and Frank.”

“Doris’s mind is gone, and Frank never had one.”

Theo put his thumb under the faucet, temporarily plugging the drip.

“Well, there are other folks you probably know, and others you could get to know.”

“It ain’t kindy-garten, son, and I ain’t looking for a new best friend. My house is empty, I’m just ready to go.”

2026 Writing Challenge Blog: Backtracking to get ahead

 

January 30, 2026

I devoted an hour or so last night to working on this story, but I was still unsure about how to progress. I had an idea for the next scene, but I didn’t have the entry part.

I still didn’t have the flesh of characters developed nor a notion of the upcoming conflict to delve into it.

So, I decided to backtrack into the sections already written and look for places that could be expanded, hoping to find more footholds for my story.

It turned quickly into a productive night where each of my characters started taking more shape.

Here are a couple of the additions:

In the first section, I mention that Peter had a successful first book “Carnival of Screams.” I didn’t have much more detail than that, but I liked that it established that Peter was horror genre writer. Near the end of the section, I have a list of questions bouncing around Peter’s head placed by his agent. One included the latest numbers on his first book. So, I thought I’d shed a bit more light on that.

He barely remembered writing “Carnival of Screams,” the words appeared on his screen like it was a fever dream. As a story, it was a pretty predictable slasher plot, but the character Cleet Tate elevated every word. His stunted vocabulary. His hobbled gait. Those eyes. Green. So green Peter sometimes dreamed about them, just like his readers. He had a stack of letters from fans who had nightmares where a pair of green eyes followed them through a poorly lit carnival midway. The only sound an occasional smack of a hammer banging on the metal of ride frames.

Maybe Peter should fill out some character sheets. Maybe find one that interested him and go from there, worry about story later. He worried though that would just lead to a bastardized version of Cleet Tate. The character that birthed his career and so far, he couldn’t top.

Another part from the section from the point of Peter’s son Cal, I had hinted that Cal’s vocabulary and reading skills were years ahead of his peers. I decide to build on that thought in these couple paragraphs.

“Hypocrites.” He’d learned the word in September, part of Dad’s vocabulary builder lists. Maybe Cal couldn’t do math, but he read at a sophomore level. His spelling and handwriting were impeccable. Impeccable had been a vocab word at least a year ago. Hell, he could rattle off grammatically correct sentences in English in that his peers couldn’t even fathom. Fathom, that was from last week. Yet, his Mom was worried about math and science. What was she, the government?

Well, he liked science, but Mr. Suman hated him. Cal didn’t know why, but Cal could feel it anytime the teacher called his name in class. Elongating the vowel just so, every, single, time. “Caaaal Modjeski.” If Cal answered correctly, Mr. Suman… guffawed (from last March’s vocabulary builder), noticeably. As if a correct answer from Cal was just as likely as hitting the right numbers on the lotto. If Cal’s answer was wrong, Mr. Suman sneered, obviously content all was regular, normal, and as it should be in the world. The sun came up in the east, set in the west, and Caaal Modjeski still didn’t know bupkis about science. There were words that Cal could use to describe Mr. Suman, but they didn’t appear in Dad’s vocabulary builder lists (although some of the words Cal could use did appear in Dad’s book. Cal had read half of “Carnival of Screams” last summer. Halfway was as far as Cal could get through the book, and he didn’t stop because it was overly scary).

Cal was stretched on his bed with the lights out even though he had another hour before his bedtime. His hands were behind his head, the fingers laced together, his eyes focused on the dimpled texture of his ceiling that he could see where the street lights shone through his window.

He often watched his ceiling, imagining it was the dimpled surface of some distant planet. The surface was stark, devoid of things like trees and grass. Rather, it was covered with rocky crags and cracked hardpan soil. A real hellscape, Cal imagined. One where the worst kinds of things could happen, but there was some hope.

2026: Writing Blog Challenge - A blank screen and four characters

 

Last week, I started the story that I mention in the previous post. I was hoping to develop a story based upon some sort of possessed CPAP machine. 

Well, I got about 1,400 words, and I still haven’t introduced the CPAP. LOL. 

When I write, I almost always dig into characters before I worry too much about plot. I always feel like if I find the right characters that conflict and story will follow. Does it always work? No, but that’s the way I do it. 

My first character had to be the CPAP user. My initial thought was to make this a first-person retelling of whatever mischief or mysterious path this CPAP puts him on. Yes, I figured the main character was a male. 

Sadly, the first-person idea left the screen blank for some period. So, lets switch to third-person limited omniscient. 

Thus, was born Peter Modjeski, a published writer who is struggling to write his second novel. Easy enough idea, and almost immediately, I was reminded of “The Shining.” Will this story mimic that, or pay homage? 

I concluded his opening scene – easy enough – here’s a guy in front of a blank screen. I know that feeling. 

Second scene, should I stick with Peter? 

No, who does Peter have around him? 

Well, he mentions a wife named Lana. Let’s go to her. While Peter ponders away in his writing cave, she has two children to wrangle. One’s mad at her for receiving some discipline for school issues, while the younger one screams her head off whenever the conversation of going to bed begins. 

Let’s keep Peter separated. Who else we got? 

Cal, the ten-year-old son, who resents his punishment for bad grades in math and science, is discovering his own place in the world and the powers of his own imagination. 

Finally, I rounded out my opening four parts by briefly getting in the head of four-year old Missy. 

It was her scene that changes the tone, paints it bit darker. That’s the part I will share below: 

Missy

Something lived in the dark. It didn’t like Mommy. It didn’t like Daddy. It didn’t like Cal. It didn’t like her. 

She thought Cal knew about it, or used to know about it, but he couldn’t remember anymore. 

It whispered, and only she could hear it. It stayed in the walls, or something, and it wanted out. 

It just didn’t have a way. Missy was sure of that.

It was trying to find a way. 

Before she fell asleep, she thought she heard it say, “I’ll find a way.”