August 15, 2013
Overheard: An older gentleman sits alone sipping coffee and
looking out the window. A young woman, frazzled, comes in with a baby in a
stroller and sits next to him. The baby is shouting and banging loudly. The mom
apologizes to the man but he says the sound “is like music to my ears,” and
tells her about his wife “who has passed” and his children who are “much older
than you I suspect.”
Where it took me: I’ve been trying to write something from
this prompt for a while, but the result was very bland. So I took the scramble
approach to see what would happen when I reorganized the straightforward
telling of the story. I was extremely surprised at the musicality of the final
version. I didn’t know that was in there.
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