SF Creative Writing Class Exercise, 3/6/2012

[Write a story where you are about to be operated on. Any kind of operation.]

It's too damn cold in here. I hate to be cold. I hate hospitals. My mother, my father, and my older brother all died in hospitals. Pneumonia, MRSA, and an anesthetic mistake. Will was supposed to be getting a hip replacement. Anesthetic mistake.

I hear my heart rate spike and cringe as Nurse Ratchet II pokes her head around the corner. "We're going to need you to calm down, Miss Jones. This is a fairly simple procedure, nothing to worry about."

"Look, lady, my brother died during a hip replacement because the anesthesiologist fucked up. I'm about to have my SKULL opened up so Dr. Fineman can screw around with a supposedly benign tumor. I'M ALLOWED TO FREAK OUT, HERE!"

Ratchet Jr.'s face pales, but her beady ferret eyes stay cold and hard. "We don't make mistakes here, Miss Jones. I'm going to give you something to calm you down."

"No, I'll be fine, just give me a few minutes." Panic bells are starting to clang and reverberate inside my skull.

The nurse ignores me and loads a syringe with a frightening, childlike smile. She looks like a little girl, pleased at how her dollies are in perfect order. My brain screams at me. I need to get the hell out of here. The only way out is through the nurse.

I lie still and let her inject the sedative into the IV bag, but I rip the needle out of my arm as soon as the frosty sting of the medicine hits my bloodstream. I catapult myself off the gurney and ignore a violent urge to vomit.


I have to get out of here. I can't let them get inside my head. 


I feel the nurse's talons clamp down on my arm. "No!" I scream it so loud I feel like my throat has been shredded by a cheese grater. I throw my full body weight against her and we both crash into a glass-fronted steel cabinet. The noise is painfully satisfying, as is her scream of frustration.

"I have to get the hell out of here. I can't let them inside my head."

I hear a piercing alarm and my whole body jerks like I've been struck by lightning. It sounds again and my eyes snap open. My bedroom. I can see glowing confetti in my peripheral vision and sunlight drives burning spikes into my eyes. I squint at my sheets. Bloody again.

New Prompt Book!

I recently bought The Write-Brain Workbook, and ADORE it. When I'm inspired to work on one of the prompts, I'll post whatever I get out of it in here. I will not be doing the exercises in any particular kind of order, and most will not be completed at first sitting, but I may come back to them later. I just want to work on whatever I can, whenever I have time to work on it.

The Process

So, I've decided that I'm not going to do prewriting for any of these fragments. I'm only going to let myself sit down at the computer and compose whatever comes to me from the prompt (or occasionally an unprompted idea).

I really need to work on my habit of planning something to death.

I also wanted to make the notation that the prompts in The Writer's Block: 186 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination does not give page numbers. So the prompts will have to stand on their own.

The Premise for This Blog

My fiction often comes to me in very random, sporadic ways. So, I'm going to catalogue my ideas and fragments of fiction here. Some pieces may stand alone and some may be continued. The continuance of pieces may well be influenced by the feedback that I get.

Also, many of these may be the results of prompts. When they are, I will cite the book and page number from which the prompt came.

So, here's to the creative person's non-linear way of thinking.