Seeds

It turns out that I’m very good at seeds to get other writers unblocked. I thought it would be nice if I posted a few. If I add to this, new additions will be added as chapters, so if you’re struggling with writer’s block, you can put a story alert on this entry and get more seeds.

In the meantime, I’m posting a few below to show you a sample. I have no problem with anyone using these verbatim. I only ask that you send me a message when your work is posted so that I can read what you’ve done with it. If you don’t post the finished work because you’re hoping to send to a publisher, I understand. No strings.

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It wasn’t like I expected anything. Not really. I learned long ago that the only person a girl can count on is herself. I hadn’t gone there to ask for help, and I certainly hadn’t gone there asking for a handout. I just wanted a job – a chance to work for what I needed. I was qualified, after all. I understand computers and they understand me. Together we can do powerful things. So why not get paid for it?

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“You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Rogelio,” Nathan said. I looked at my watch – four a.m. – that’s pretty early. Nathan crept across the floor on his tip-toes, as if that was really going to make that much difference, especially with me waddling behind, carrying a ten gallon bucket of warm water and trying not to slop. If we managed to follow through with this plan, it might be pretty funny. Well, funny to everyone except Rogelio.

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They say this city never sleeps, and it’s true, though not in the way that one might generally expect. There is probably someone up at every moment of the day – surely I’m proof of that. What they don’t realize is that the city, itself, has an attitude. You can see it in the way the buildings seem to grow menacing in the latest hours. Too many trucks barreling through the predawn glow make the brick monsters on Fifty-second Avenue sit up and take notice. The windows seem to dim, and the hulks seem to tilt, reveling in the steam off the asphalt, the smog in the sky and the general discord of the sleeping bodies within, until the whole thing turns ugly. It’s the reason there are gargoyles guarding the architecture of the past, though it is a truth that has been forgotten with time. That is unless you are also a thing of the past, like I am.

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Gina dipped the paint brush, and slapped more color onto the white canvas that was her kitchen wall. The store had called the color “peaches and cream” and it carried with it a warm and cheerful tone that she hoped would be her future. On the radio, a hip hop tune played, but she didn’t dance as she worked. Instead she seethed and cried alternately. This house was supposed to be their place, but Dan was not moving in, and the Gina could only be grateful that she hadn’t had to kick him out of her home as well as her life. Her feet were set a shoulder’s width apart as she painted – a silent, defiant symbol of her refusal to lay down and sob, no matter how much she may long to do it. A lot of women had caught their man with another girl, Gina had just never thought she’d be in that position. She had thought she and Dan were the perfect pair and that they’d have a fairytale romance. Turns out, life was a bit too much like a soap opera for her taste, but she’d be damned if it would define her.

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Dawn announced itself in a swirl of pinks and oranges that settled over the sleepy town of Claremont. Life there was simple and predictable. Already Timmy Calhoun was organizing his papers in his shoulder bag. Soon he’d be aboard his ten speed, tossing bagged copies of the Claremont Daily onto porches and front steps. In an hour, Sunday breakfasts would be cooking, the smells drifting through the quiet suburban streets like a heavenly specter, and tempting Mrs. Roberts and Miss Dample as they jogged away the calories they’d consumed at the club the night before. Two hours from now, the good people of Claremont would dress up for churches in their Sunday best, and Granny Sophia would pack up her goodies for the after church social, bringing far more food than she could afford to prepare. Ah, the simple life. But every town has a secret, and Claremont’s secret was watching the morning with delight, preparing to upend the routine with a mischievous rub of callused hands.