Hey friends,

Welcome to (or welcome back to) Writing Prompts &, my series where I share a writing prompt with you from one of the many writing courses I’ve taken over the years and the zero draft it inspired.

All zero drafts were written in the span of 10-15 minutes and completely untouched, so you are getting the truest draft before the draft.

What’s Today’s Writing Prompt?

Writing Prompt: Road Trip

This is what I wrote.

The long winding road lay before us. Our ’98 Honda Civic clucking down the road. Thick forests stretched on either side of us. Narrow streets with haunting names like Noose Hollow Road and Gallows End Court hid between the branches.

We listened to one song on repeat. She downloaded more than that to her computer before we left Connecticut. The first stop on our impromptu road trip. But this was the song that spoke to me.

“Star so light, and star so bright,” Kimbra called. “Keep him by my side.”

I tapped away at the keys, typing some story I knew would never get published. My cellphone sat silently beside me.

“Do you mind if we listen to this one more time?” I asked.

“Go for it.”

We arrived in Newport and drove down Ocean Avenue. The majestic turquoise waves licking the cliffs.

We walked around The Breakers. If I had just one good idea. If I could make money. I looked at the painting of Cornelius Vanderbilt the second and all the wealth around me.

If I could create a world like this one, I’d get the man who kept my phone silent to love me.

A Little Background

I wrote this during an LA Writer’s Group meeting in August of 2020. The pandemic was an incredibly prolific time for my writing. And a lot of that writing was centered around trips I had gone on in years past.

This was one of those trips.

2012. Spring Break. My teacher friend and I bought a group-on for an inn in Connecticut. When our overnight was finished, we decided to continue our trip.

I believe it was me who said, “You know…Newport is only an hour and a half away from here…”

I was dealing with some major depression brought on by the relationship I was in. I remember walking through The Breakers and thinking, “He’d love me if I had money or beauty or something worth responding to.”

We broke up two years later, but at the time I thought that his coldness was an indictment of me. It wasn’t. It never is.

But it was interesting to return to those emotions being so far removed from them after all that time. Turns out my true love wasn’t him. It was Newport.

Until next week, friends.