As they say, practice makes perfect

For a while now I’ve wanted a blog with a purpose and have done absolutely nothing about it – for fear, of course, of ruining the sheer original purpose of the spontaneous, un-critisized, unedited version of myself. Hence the current nature of my blog. Today, however, I’ve decided that it’s my blog, damn it, and I’m gonna do what I want with it. So, beginning in December I am going to do one writing prompt a day and post it on my blog. I had originally wanted to follow one prompt calendar everyday, no matter what but I also decided today that if I don’t like the prompt I am going to find inspiration elsewhere. (This is just a fair warning in case things go awry.)

In preparation for this feat of daily postings, I looked at Toasted Cheese today to check out their November writing prompts and I chose my favorite one. This one is from Friday, November 13 and says: “WP: He walked under the ladder on purpose, as always.” For fun (the way I define it), I am also going to make each sentence I write begin with each letter of the alphabet, in the correct order – and also am going to limit myself then to only 26 sentences, and no repeat letters.

Here goes nothin’…

As the sun went down, he walked slowly down the street leaving his car behind. Buzzing in his ears were the sounds of sirens rushing to his side and a woman yelling for him to come back, yelling as if she had the right to tell him to do so. Car crashes happen every day, he thought to himself, and I’m sure there are a number of people who just don’t care. Days like this are a dime-a-dozen, he was sure, and he wasn’t about to give into the hype.

Easily distracted, and even less affected by the situation, he continued walking and ignored everything behind him. Fear was not an option. Good for me, he thought. He was headed toward his favorite bar, and even though it was miles away, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he was going the right way. In case anything bad happens, and he naturally assumed it wouldn’t, he was secretly prepared with a folded up phone number written on lined paper in his pocket – a phone number that would help, just in case. Jack wasn’t a man that prepared, and he wasn’t a typical man in any sense of the word. Keeping up with the Joneses was not anywhere in his mind, he didn’t even know his neighbors names – though they made an effort to know his every single day he passed them by. Laughing to himself, Jack could no longer hear the sirens or the screaming woman. Making his way closer to his destination, he knew what he really wanted. No more work, he thought. Open spaces and freedom, that’s what I need.

Passing through the small crowd of smokers outside, Jack made his way in the door of his favorite bar. Quietly taking his usual seat, he nodded to the bartender who immediately poured him a double of the cheapest scotch they had. Rude to some and oddly casual to others, Jack spent his evening there and hadn’t felt happier in his life. So it goes, he thought. This was it, he had finally figured it out. Under the guise of a low-life with a mundane existence, Jack had actually found the real meaning and purpose of it all. Vulgar was his middle name, and he was going to bank on it. Why had he been holding onto his screenplay this whole time? XX was its current title, but who cares? You know, he thought, the right person will understand it, and it is what’s next for me. Zipping out the door faster than ever before, Jack left the bar where he planned to never return again, and running toward his second-story apartment just a block away, he went under the ladder on purpose, as he always did.