Expectations, a WeWrite

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(Edited)

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This Week's Prompt
by @zeldacroft

"A first sentence is all it takes to get the story going. Just start writing and see where it goes," suggested Mrs. Mowry as she handed out the composition notebooks. Some of her students eagerly grasped them, while others reluctantly dropped it on their desk. With a shuffle they each pulled out their pencil cases, although Charlie already had his half-chewed pencil in hand.

The classroom was especially cheerfully decorated, from the colored pin boards hanging on the walls to the beanbags in the reading corner. Even the chairs the children sat on were varying shades of blue. Some of the students were shifting in them, mostly out of anxiety or excitement.

"Mrs. Mowry, do we need to write in pencil?" asked one of the younger girls, Alicia. Her utensils of choice were falling out of their case in a myriad of colors.

"So long as I can read it you can use whatever you want." The teacher smiled as the girl excitedly picked up a bright blue pen, and then a green one. "But I do recommend one color at a time."


My continuation:

Great grandmother and great granddaughter surely had a special bond, and Alicia’s mother would have to cut off the yap yap yapping these two did in secret every single night since the old woman had come to live with them. What on earth did they talk about? The Mother knew her grandmother to be a silent and dour old woman, but here the two of them were, night after night, yapping. Alicia was devastated when her great grandmother died.

The Mother gleefully expected that the useless old hag's money would be hers now that the hag was dead. The Mother downgraded that expectation to a nice fat trust fund for Alicia after the letter arrived informing her that her daughter had been named in the will, but not her.

As it turned out, Alicia had inherited a set of colored pencils and nothing else, quite a let-down. The Mother vaguely remembered her grandmother's lecturing her about the famed pencils of her tribe. The Mother would sit not-very-patiently whenever Alicia rapturously spoke of the pencils, and told how they were made from the hollow stalks of a hallucinogenic lettuce that had been dried and then stuffed with colorful pigments of magical leaves, stems, roots, bark and stone. Great Grandmother spoke words of caution too, not everything was roses with these pencils; they were powerful. Yes, they could heal the sick but they could also do great mischief. The Mother thought that was all a load of bunk, and she would much rather have gotten a lot of money. She was pretty pissed.

Alicia used the beloved pencils at home to draw on the backs of discarded papers. The Mother would not pay for paper when there were perfectly good used envelopes just lying around. The Mother would scoff whenever she saw her daughter's drawings and mutter “some magic that is”. The Mother did not object when Alicia asked if she could take her precious pencils to school. "Good." The Mother said. "The both of you will be gone for the day."

Great Grandmother's magic pencils spilled themselves onto Alicia's desk as soon as the teacher approved their use. And that’s when things got all wonky.

One by one the pencils lifted into the air and began floating around the room, hovering over student desks one to a student, a purple one headed for the teacher. Everyone lifted their hands into the air, carefully grasped their respective pencils, and began quietly to write in the composition notebooks.

For two hours, the only sound in the room was the scratch scratch of pencils making their marks on paper. Even the teacher lost track of time. The buses had all come and gone by the time the pencils stopped writing.

Pencils let go of hands. Pencils made their way back to Alicia. Writing turned to astonishment. Alicia, blinking, gathered the pencils that had splattered themselves in a pile on her desk, and put them back in their box on her desk.

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This is my entry to https://steempeak.com/wewrite/@freewritehouse/we-write-9-the-classroom-last-week-s-winners-announced It's my first ever attempt at magical realism, which I found very hard to do, but here is what I came up with. I tried for fairy tale-ish too.

It also seems to be another of the only kind of story I can write these days, stories that beg to be continued but never are.


All images are my own unless otherwise stated.
The first one is mine of a painting by Chris Randolph of the Living Museum.


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49 comments
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Why what a nice surprise! Thank you!

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Goodness, I really appreciate that! I'm very surprised by the attention this little thing is getting. I'm not complaining though!!!! xo

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A most excellent continuation of the prompt, which is a very difficult prompt to "continuate." :)

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I still have to get over to reading the others. I like to write mine first, and it took me all week to get to it. Thanks for your comment and for reading!

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Love this story! Great job! 😊

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Thanks. I thought of you I as I wrote this! You write fairy tales. I' so happy you like it.

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I would have never guessed this story was hard for you to write! Great job!

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why thank you! I am very surprised by the attention this piece has gotten. Ya never know! Or at least I don't.

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Great write @owasco! I didn't want the story to end...please tell us more :)

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I tried and tried to get past that part, but couldn't. Thanks for wanting more. I do too!

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Neat! That was a twist that I was not expecting. I was honestly expecting the mother to get stoned!

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Stoned as in high? But stones thrown at her might teach her some lessons she needs to learn. My first time through writing this, the mother was barely present, then she came in as this monster. I had at first named her Peggy, then took all those out and replaced them with "The Mother".

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Yes, stoned as in high. I was picturing her burning the pencils in anger and inhaling the fumes.

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hahahaha. She'd have smoked one of the poisonous ones.

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What a great story @owasco. You have a great imagination.

It made me think of Harry Potter and all the magic at his school.

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Geez! Thank you! I was more in a Roald Dahl mood than Harry Potter, Matilda. I love that book.

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I love Roald Dahl <3 :)

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Me too! I think I may have read every book he wrote to my children.

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The story-telling was so enthralling I could actually picture these pencils gently floating in mid-air. Quite a sight! The narrative definitely kept me on my toes. One unexpected event after another :)

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Thank you! It was really hard for me to get started on this, but once I put the nasty mother in, it started to fall into place. I needed an evil mother to write the magic, as if the evil were a jumping off place. Weird.
Thanks as always for your support!

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@owasco, I really enjoyed your magical ending to the we-write story. I would never be able to tell you struggled with it. I'd like to read some of those stories written with the magic pencils!

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I hoped to have the children read out their first sentences, and they would have all turned out to be exactly the same, so that they all would have written the exact same story, or maybe installments to the same story. It would be a trouble making story. But I needed to stop with all the writing and do some housework!

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Amazing continuation and follow-on, really enjoyed where this took a turn with mother not inheriting, scorning what was rightfully hers and daughter ends up with all the fun, magical pencil, perhaps recap that to magical keyboard and imagination @owasco well done.

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Thank you! It took me forever to write and I thought it was decent in the end but I am pleasantly surprised by how well it's going over. Thanks for stopping in!

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Free yourself and imagination with the free write! Magical virtual pencils for all!

Neat story!

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Thanks! A successful freewrite does feel like I've used a magical writing tool, they always surprise me. But this one took me hours to get down. It kept switching up on me. Now I'm glad it did.

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Impressed with your imagination. Well done.

Namaste, JaiChai

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I loved this @owasco, you writing is so engaging, you really swept me up in your wonderful story and left me wanting more. Magical pencils, and what did they write, such a wonderful magical read.
Curated for CreativeCoin

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Oh thank you! I love this one - I went out on a limb and the limb held.

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Lovely freewrite - beautiful story! #pypt

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Oh thank you so much for stopping in! Loved your NYBG post.

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Ooooh, I love the magic flying pencils, and I love your first attempt at magic realism, but HATE the disclaimer that you never find time to finish these stories. You earned a mention in the Friday Favorites for this one. :)
It looks like an old post (due to a techno-glitch that flared up last week as I was rushing off to a four-day-weekend wedding four hours away), but it's new, honest, it is, updated, and You Included!
May you find more time to write ... it's not talent you're lacking!!!!

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Thank you! You know I love you!
I'm having trouble bringing stories to conclusions though. This one, now that I read it, finished off like a chapter would - what happens next? Now I'm halfway through a wewrite I just can't get anywhere else on and may have to post it as is.
Hey, two of the six wewrite entries got @curie's attention last week! (not mine alas) Go write one for us! And then if you have time pimp it on pimp your post Thursday, because I felt like a very lonely freewriter trying to pimp this one yesterday.

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Two we-writes curied in one week: YES!!
Me, we-writing: MAYBE
You, finishing more stories: YES! Maybe you should go first, and someone else should finish.....?
*Love you too

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Howdy owasco! I thought you did a wonderful job! Very fantastic and magical and it is indeed a great beginning. Too bad it can't continue.

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