picking strawberries

I’m reaching into the STRAWBERRIES box. I’m digging down deep for the odd little scraps of paper. I’ve got two… okay, that made me smile in a different way than I expected. Because they’re notes I might actually use myself someday. But I know there’s stuff dumb enough to share in there. Try again. Ah, here’s an old spiral notebook missing its cover; most of the few pages that remain long ago had their least bad lines surgically removed. Yes! We have a simile:

It had a hole in its side, like a black olive pitted wrong.

Poor it, whatever it was. We also have a freestanding bit of dialogue:

“That’s exactly the way I feel about honey mustard!”

And an exclamation point, no less. Because there’s nothing more exciting than honey mustard. People, this stuff is literary gold. Better than that: it’s literary honey mustard!

when life gives you strawberries

Before the vast majority of my scribbled-on drafts and random jottings go to the great recycling bin in the fictional sky, they tend to spend at least a few years in my strawberries box. This is a long cardboard tray from one of those pick your own strawberries farms; I know this because it says STRAWBERRIES on the sides. And so I’ve come to think of the stuff in the box as my strawberries. (Even if raspberries is more like it.) I just went through the tray for the first time in quite a while, promoting some things to the top of the box and throwing many more things out, including two mid-to-late versions of a piece that I did recently finish and find a home for, but otherwise complete garbage. And I found a rich supply of randomness that I’m never going to turn into fiction. But maybe you will? I don’t know what I was thinking. But now I’m thinking I’m going to pretend these are writing prompts, and helpful ones at that. These are actual notes that I wrote to myself and set aside and saved for years. Today’s strawberries:

Somerset Maugham’s frown

ack-ack

HAPAX LEGEMON

Don’t you worry. Plenty more where these came from.