The Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild hosts “free writes” in Millville, Lewes, and Rehoboth, Delaware on various days and times. It had been a long time, years actually, since I’d attended one. But I finally went back this past Friday.

For me, the free write is terrifying. But it is such a good exercise. The format is extremely casual. You don’t have to sign up in advance. You can use the prompt or you don’t have to use the prompt. You can read what you wrote or you can pass. It is as non-threatening as it can possibly be. All that said, it still terrifies me, but as the session goes on it gets less and less scary.

So here’s how it works: The leader reads a prompt. Yesterday Fran was, other than the first prompt, using a book of poetry written by RBWG member Ellen Collins. Fran would read a poem then choose one line or maybe the title of the poem as the actual prompt and then give us a time limit. It is amazing how long one minute can be when you are holding a plank pose yet how short it can be when you are writing a paragraph for “until the danger passes”.

The free write is so good for me because I am a slow, slow, sloooooow writer. I ponder, I stare out the window, I doodle, I write a sentence, I scratch it out, think, stare, doodle… So it truly amazes and surprises me when I can, in one or two measly minutes, write an actual paragraph. Of course it also gets the creative juices flowing, and I’m always inspired by the other talented people in the room, and it is helpful to practice reading my work in front of others. So it is all good. (I have to keep telling myself that!!)

Here is my best writing from 11/2/2018. The prompt was “until the danger passes”. We also were supposed to incorporate other prompts in the form of typed phrases that we had picked from a bag that we passed around the table (rectangle of light; utterly beautiful trees; tumbling through a gate). The actual writing time for this exercise was six minutes.

     She woke up and saw the rectangle of light coming through her open bedroom door. Had she left the hall light on? No, this light looked too silvery. Then she remembered it was a full moon. The clouds had cleared. The storm had cleared. How had she fallen asleep during that lightening – bright, spreading across the sky with branches like dangerously beautiful trees, the thunder crashing? She had curled tight under her blankets waiting for the danger to pass. The danger of the flashing and crashing, yet also the danger of her thoughts. Now it was so silent. She felt raw though, and, slowly at first, then suddenly as if tumbling through a gate, all of the terrible news of the accident came back to her.

Far from perfect but a definite starting point!

(Click here for an essay Ellen Collins wrote about the RBWG Free Writes.)