Prompts
Charlotte Rains Dixon  

The Return of Promptitude

Yes, I know its Sunday, and Promptitude usually runs on Saturday.  I actually wrote this post yesterday, but between free coaching sessions and a baby shower for my daughter, I never had time to put it up.  So here, you go, a day late, but just as relevant. Planet_earth_australia_264108_l

My son is now home, thank you God, but this past week was dominated by his incarceration stay at the hospital.  The hospital world is not a familiar one to me.  The only time I've been in the hospital was when my son was born and had a bad case of jaundice, and we both got checked into the hospital–him to be monitored, me to take care of him.  (I had both my children in out-of-hospital settings.)

Even though my grandfather was a doctor, nobody else in my family seemed to get the medical gene.  None of us have gravitated to medicine, and there's nary a doctor, nurse, or healer among the entire extended family network of aunts, uncles, and cousins.  So spending a lot of time at the hospital this week, I was immersed in a new and unfamiliar world.

And it strikes me that much of writing is about putting characters in a new world.  The Hero's Journey depends on it, for instance.  The new world is most often exterior, but it can be interior as well.  So today's prompts are all about hospitals and new worlds. And remember, you might be writing about something completely and totally different than hospitals, but sometimes writing to a prompt on an unrelated subject can do wonders for your creative juices.

Here you go:

She walked down the long hospital hallway.

"Time for your next dose," the nurse said.

At least there was a view.

The doctor had a terrible bedside manner.

Modern medicine is a miracle most of the time.

What a strange and different world.

Where am I now?

What happened?

How did I get here?

"Don't worry, it won't hurt at all."

Feel free to write responses in the comments.  When have you entered into a strange new world?  Did you end up writing about it?

Here are a few other Promptitude posts:

Promptitude: Summer Vacation

Promptitude: Super Moon Edition

Promptitude: Whiny Baby

Promptitude: Hair

Saturday Promptitude

Promptitude: Departing for Another World

Promptitude: What Makes a Good Prompt?

 

Photo by Monique72, from Everystockphoto.

0 thoughts on “The Return of Promptitude

  1. J.D. Frost

    I love the prompts:
    At least the room had a view. Looking left and sixteen floors down, Hollis could see the front of the Criminal Courts Building.

  2. Jenny

    She walked down the long hospital hallway. Passing room after room she was informed by peripheral vision that draperies had been shoved aside and morning had begun spilling in warm pools onto tile floors. She wouldn’t otherwise have known, for in the night, clock time for her had ceased to exist. Or at least to matter. Wall-eyed televisions chattered, emptying “news” into stale air as breakfast smells grew stronger. Loved ones, stiff from long vigils in uncomfortable vinyl chairs, stretched, yawned, and whimpered. As the elevator doors drifted soundlessly apart and she stepped into the claustrophobic space, she would have given all she owned to still be among them. But that would never be again because today? Today she had become what she would be for the rest of her life: a widow.

  3. Charlotte Dixon

    You guys are so great! Thanks for sharing. And if you love the prompts, I’ll keep them coming.

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