"Leaning In" (Prompt Flash Fiction Content Written In 15 Minutes)

Description: A woman takes a journey to a lagoon where she hopes to experience a healing, and experiences an emotional connection once she arrives.

We were at the lagoon: the one that is known for its magical healing properties--the one spelled with a capital L--the one that is Negra because of the dark water that represents the Void where all answers and solutions reside.

I almost didn't make it to the mid-line of the mountain where Laguna Negra makes her home, grounded between two large stone formations looking like the face of the Incan ancestors from whom the legends about her were passed on from generation-to-generation.

Anemia choked my chest, and the breath became strange and stranger to me as we made the climb to reach her sacred space of tears that flowed from the heavens down the mountain into her liquid womb to fill her up: the largest cup for the seeker.

I was so breathless that the best I could do was to lay down my burdened body over a flat rock and lean my face in as close as I could, darkness regarding darkness.

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You can also LISTEN to the reading of the story (1:18 minutes)

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Note: Leaning In was written while participating in a writer's group with about 11 participants in Northern, NJ. A number of  writing prompts were provided, "leaning in" was one of them, and we all had fifteen minutes to write a story using that prompt.

Creative writing, storytelling has been (and continues to be) an extremely strong healing channel for me (journaling, short stories, flash fiction, poetry, songwriting, blog writing, and now, moving into screenwriting). There's nothing I can't touch, explore, release, imagine through writing.

Check out Elizabeth Levine's "The Writer's Rant" online publication. She describes it as . . . For all aspiring writers, follow the journey of memoir writing and the therapeutic process of writing to heal. Elizabeth Levine, M.F.A. Candidate in Creative Writing documents her process of writing What Remains, a memoir addressing issues of bereavement, loss, PTSD, AIDS and substance abuse and the redemptive process of documenting both her own story and that of the AIDS community. 

"Back Up the Truck" (Prompt Flash Fiction Written in 15 Minutes) by Valerie Michele

Description: Two kids are up to some pay back against an adult who hurt someone they love.

"Back up the truck," I whispered under the shade of night.

It was about that time when the moon was up in the sky and the sun would have its turn soon. It was April Fool's Day and O'Neal wanted to play a trick on his Uncle Charlie.

My best friend O'Neal (whose real name was Maurice, but he hated it and liked the name in the middle) asked me to help him. I snuck out of my house and met him at the side of his house in the alley like he asked.

I didn't want to do it when he asked me earlier, and then I asked him: "How are you gonna move his truck into the middle of the street?"

"I know how to do it. I learned how to drive a truck when me and my mom lived at our farm in North Carolina," he said in a way that shut me up. So I did what he asked and made sure there were no cars coming down the street, and ran up to the truck door where he sat at the wheel with a fuck-you-Uncle-Charlie-for-beating-my-mom-yesterday look on his face.

He looked down at me and asked, "Back up the truck now?"

I looked both ways again and saw only parked cars and street lamps and some cats knocking around something.

"Yeah, do it now,' I whispered.

I caught his here we go look.

He put the truck in reverse.

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You can also LISTEN to the reading of the story (1:38 minutes)

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Back Up The Truck is the word prompt used to write this story. Prompts can be very useful when experiencing writer's block, to get straight to the heart of the matter, and as a way to get the creative juices flowing.

Creative writing, storytelling has been (and continues to be) an extremely strong healing channel for me (journaling, short stories, flash fiction, poetry, songwriting, blog writing, and now, moving into screenwriting). There's nothing I can't touch, explore, release, imagine through writing.

Check out Elizabeth Levine's "The Writer's Rant" online publication. She describes it as . . . For all aspiring writers, follow the journey of memoir writing and the therapeutic process of writing to heal. Elizabeth Levine, M.F.A. Candidate in Creative Writing documents her process of writing What Remains, a memoir addressing issues of bereavement, loss, PTSD, AIDS and substance abuse and the redemptive process of documenting both her own story and that of the AIDS community.