Recently a friend asked me how I can come up with something new every day. I said by relying on what’s not new. I tune in as much as I can to what’s going on around me, always toting paper and pen for taking notes, but I also review my idea file, use prompts of course, and scour whatever comes up in my mind when free-associating words and images. When fishing for ideas leads to childhood I have to follow, because I need everything I’ve got to keep this challenge going. Lately I’ve been alternating between a week of prompts and a week of random inspiration. Today marks the first day of a non-prompt week. Somehow I stumbled onto the memory of spelling bees in elementary school, and that inspired the day’s shorty.
Working Title: How To Bee
1st Sentence: She loved words and how they grouped themselves.
Favorite Sentence: Yet despite her love for the words, despite carrying them in her candy-pink purse, in her lunch tote nestled against the bologna sandwich and the brownie from scratch, in her coat pockets, tucked behind her ears, in the hollows of her elbows and knees, slipped into the back of her shoes between the shine of the patent leather and the sock’s lacy frill folded neatly around the ankle, despite brimming with words, despite trailing them, finding them stuck in her hair and clinging to her sweater, despite weeping words and sneezing words and finding words under her fingernails, that girl never, NEVER won a spelling bee.
Word Length: 726
Photo of Norman Rockwell painting, “Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus (Spelling Bee),” 1918, courtesy of the Google Art Project.
Daily Shorty 
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