Prompt # 28

Last night I slept in a bed. A simple thing but after three years of sleeping in a chair and waking up constantly in the night, to shake out stiff limbs and wrestle that small upright space with a cat- this is a miracle. The cat thinks so too. He's curled up on the end of the bed, and I'm sitting on it, cross legged, typing to you now. This is a bed that belonged to a writer and a friend and so it is full of writer dreams. It belongs to my collection of talismans now, another little bit of writer magic. I have a collection of visible and invisible talismans, bits of inspiration and things that I have around me that remind me to write. I have rocks and seashells, pictures and post cards, There is the post card from years ago with a picture of the members of Dirty Ink- A Dyke Writing Collaborative with the words Fist. Muscle. Bone next to our picture. I look at it and remember. I  remember  how we came up with that name for the performance. I remember the stories we wrote and read. I can see and touch it and remember:. It happened then, there was writing and performing. It can happen again.

My talismans are always with me, even if I can't see them and they are part of what I hold on to, those things, or people that remind me just who I am and what I do. I need that reminding, those good luck charms, that magic, often. I use them when the doubts come, as they did this morning when I woke up wondering if this book is going to work as one book or if I need to peel it down and turn it into two. I count on all this magic when I get stuck like today looking at the moment of prompt writing and feeling a panic as not a single word came to mind. I live with the fear that the writing will disappear at any moment. I don't know if all writers know this fear. I only know that it is a constant, as constant as the certainty that I write, that I will write, that it belongs to me. Both ends of the same stick that I hold in sweaty hungry hands. Writer. Not writer. So far I am finding that if I show up to the page so do the words though sometimes it feels like writing through molasses or as J said yesterday, like digging in gravel. Hunting for the words. 

Merriam- Webster defines Talisman as

1. : an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune

2  : something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects

Do you or a character have a talisman? Are there objects you hold sacred? A rosary, a river rock, a lock of hair, an old locket? 

Write to an object that holds meaning for you or a character. You can imagine one if there isn't one already coming to mind. 

or 

Imagine opening an old, cracked cigar box resting on a table. What's inside? 

***

If that doesn't work, switch it around. Maybe there is something you or a character doesn't have but longs for: a red dress hanging in a store window, a beautiful pearl handled knife in a pawn shop, a set of oil paints at an art store. What is that longing like? What is it like to want something you can't have- an object, a memory of what didn't happen, a person. 

Write for ten minutes today if you can or longer. Write in sentences or fragments or single words. Just write. 

I hope this day is good to you and your wishes,  your writing, your art.