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.”