Write and Don't Stop

On Saturday I went to a Time of the Writer writing workshop. It was good, interesting. It made me feel completely inadequate as a writer, of course, but that is to be expected when you find yourself in a room (a very small, brown room) with important real-life authors. Not just play play writers who write in blogs and on serviettes in Indian takeaways.

When the time came for the audience participation, I felt partly lame, mostly on my right side since I'm right-handed I guess. The instruction was clear: "Write and don't stop". Oh dear, I thought. But, I got over that (thanks to the soothing white noise of some unspecified light classical music) and ten minutes later I had a little something scrawled on my page. It's hardly anything, but here it is (cringe):

Untitled Story - Part I:

The hand that she followed down the path was her own. To her surprise it took her all the way to the apple orchard at the edge of the icy river. She had once stuck her feet in that water just to feel them go numb. On finding a tree, her hand followed the rough bark all the way up and she stood. Arm in the air, fingers stretched and with lowered eyes, she stood. Then at the moment when she jumped, bending her knees as though doing high-jump, her hand clenched. Pull. Tug. Free at last. She felt the twig snap under the weight of her body.
Immensely proud of her accomplishment, she cried out: “What a fine apple I’ve found myself,” rubbing the hard fruit against the pleated skirt of her blue and white pinafore, “what a fine apple, indeed!”
She turned toward the streaming water, bent down and lowered her precious prize into the crystal to wash off the things that were hardly desirable for little girls to eat – the ants and such that tried to lay claim to her apple!
“Hey!” something spoke from below the surface of the water, “what do you think you’re doing here, missy?”
“How dare you?” The little girl was shocked.
“I’ve seen what you did just there.”
She quickly drew her hand from the water, “show yourself!”