Slice of Life: Day 24: 3-Minute Free Write

I allowed myself to begin with an image before setting the timer. 117 words in 3 minutes. No edits except for spelling mistakes.

I'm kind of curious. 

I stepped out of the car, and the dust hadn’t even settled from my wheel’s disruption. It took hardly a second to see it was different. All of it. Everything in every direction that used to be there, symbols of childhood faded by decades of time and torment, had vanished. Tire tracks. That was it. From them. They burned the barn, the farmhouse and somehow sucked the creek dry. The why was easy to figure out. It was the how. How did they manage to come, destroy and depart in a short amount of time? Or were they here? Watching. I didn’t know if it was safe to be here. At this point, I didn’t care.

Give it a try! :)

With exercises like these, I automatically put my fiction writing into gear. Even with barely a hundred words, there may be one sentence, phrase or even a single word that inspires a short story. Maybe it'd be related to the obvious War of the Worlds/post-apocalyptic vibe. Maybe not. I like the imagery of sucking the creek dry and leaving nothing behind except history rising up in smoke.  

But I think this exercise can be therapeutic as well. By giving yourself a time limit, your soul is going to pour out (or at least begin to unearth) the troubles weighing you down. Think about if a therapist charged by the minute, and you only had enough spare change to pay for the first one hundred twenty seconds. You'd skip the pleasantries and get right to heart of why you're there.

Whether we're cognizant of it or not (maybe we're too aware), we wear facades. Our day-to-day masks hide emotions, troubles and irritants. It makes sense and it's social etiquette. I'm not going to stand in front of my third-graders and complain about gas prices, marital strife or how the administration continues to bully people. And it's not the time to shout how dumb it is not to shop at Target anymore. But we're all cracking beneath the surface. We're human and things affect us. Sometimes we aren't aware of what those things are.

When I wrote this, our family farm had recently been sold. And while memories can't be sold, it certainly felt like they were stripped away, boxed up and shelved in some far-off dusty corner. Writing reveals.

Taking three minutes out of your day may reveal surprising elements of your life. While it won't reveal and heal in one fell swoop, it will get you started. 

The next step is easy. Loads of courage. No problem, right?

-rg