source

"a filled in crossword"....?

Carol had no idea where to go with that one, but had to leave the house, and that was that - until

@mariannewest

reminded me I hadn't finished my 3-part rewrite.

Unlike @goat-girlz, who wrote her first-ever freewrite in five minutes AND tackled the three-part weekend freewrite as well, with dogs and cats underfoot, and she wrote a seamless and suspenseful little tale effortlessly. I accused her of being a famous author in disguise. She laughed and said, "It's true. I'm Don DeLillo." Then she recanted. I'm pretty sure the recanted part is the truth because from reading about her adventures, it's pretty clear @goat-girlz is not an 83-year-old man, even if he is “the chief shaman of the paranoid school of American fiction” (wikipedia).

My advice: read her freewrite, not mine.

Mine started here: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@carolkean/3-part-weekend-freewrite-6-8-2019 and ended like this:

For five days this man had lain here, no water, no pain killers, no food, no cell phone, no neighbors checking in on him, no family calling and wondering why he didn't pick up the land line in the kitchen.

My usual parter in crime, Jean,

had been ready to "accidentally" kill this alleged hoarder, especially when our attendance at the annual Bless the Beasts Animal Shelter fundraiser had been thwarted by news of an urgent situation with animals running loose. Some trucker saw a horse running across the highway and phoned it in, which led to Oliver finding other horses on the run and cattle rioting in the pasture at what looked like yet another hoarder's homestead.

Jean had been in trouble before, having "stolen" dogs who were starving at the end of a chain or infected with lesions in the neck where the log chains had rubbed. Who wouldn't steal a dog from an abusive "owner," anyway? Why was the Good Samaritan punished while animal abuse wasn't even a felony punishable with time behind bars?

"Jerry Smith," the old man said his name was, before he passed out. Five days. No food. No water. In a barn, surrounded by hungry animals. The cats had ignored him, but his dog, a cute little black and white border collie, tried to hitch a ride in the ambulance. Jean and I traded glances, plotting a visit to the hospital for this little furball. But first, he'd need a good bath and some tender loving care from us.

I left Oliver in charge of the livestock.

Jerry was old but tough, the way most farmers are. We visited him twice a day, in shifts, and he talked some about his kids, who'd left home and never come back. Off to the city, bored with rural life, the "Brain Drain" that plagued small towns and families all over the Midwest.

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More than Five Minutes Have Passed I am awful at this

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Jean and I got "Hawkeye,"the little border collie,

into Jerry's room for a visit. It didn't appear any of his human family had come by yet.

"Oliver said he got the neighbor boy over, and your barn roof is as good as new," I told him. "The cattle are being fed. We got the newspaper stopped, and the mail. Oh, and we found the list by the phone , so all your offspring now have messages in their voice mail."

One man living alone in on a dirt road, where nobody came by except the occasional meter reader once a month. Poor old Jerry was as abandoned as some of the animals we'd rescued.

He demanded to be let out before the doctors said he was ready. We vouched for him, saying we'd check in on him and all. Farmers make terrible patients. So independent, so self-sufficient, so unable to rely on others.

Jean and I drove him home with his arm in a cast and the rest of him just stiff and sore. Miraculously, the beam had merely pinned him to the hay, with enough "give" in the hay that no bones were fractured or broken, aside from that arm. Jerry kept looking on the bright side. Lightning strike could have burned the whole barn down, but it was raining hard and no fire ever took. The crashing beam could have killed him. The horses might have stayed put, and he might have dehydrated before anyone found him. The cows were old and he'd stopped milking them, or they'd have been in miserable shape after five days with full udders. The list of ways it could have been worse just didn't end. Me, I was always thinking of all the ways things could have gone better.

The old white house with the grove of trees and the red barn came into view, the pasture full of black Angus, the horses who served no apparent purpose, any more than the retired cows did. Jerry just didn't want to part with his companinons of so many years.

On the kitchen table, his mail had been stacked, along with the newspapers.

"Someone helped himself to the puzzles," Jerry said, frowning at a filled-in crossword.

"Just one," came a voice from upstairs. "And it was a herself, not a him."

A stout brunette with graying hair shuffled down the steps, a curved wooden cane in one hand, the other hand gripping the railing. Jerry had made excuses for a daughter who'd been in a car wreck and this must be her.

"Welcome home, Dad," she said.

)

I can't do it! I can't write tragic endings!

Thank you @mariannewest and all @freewritehouse members for reading and encouraging me in this madness. Writing. Imagining anyone will read this stuff--or care. When you do, you totally make my day!

Weekend Freewrite Prompt First Sentence:

"You don't have many options," Oliver said. "You already paid the registration fee for 12...

Weekend Freewrite - 6/8/2019 - Prompt 2 - The Interference

He threw her a nod. "I think my wrist is broken."

The Weekend Freewrite -6/8/2019 - Part 3 - The Dramatic Twist

a filled in crossword

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The several prompt approach to freewriting is an exercise to take us out of what our usual thinking pattern and open new neuropathways in a sense. It forces us out of our comfort level and we write in a style or genre or about topics we never would on our own.
This kind of freewrite helps to open the creative forces and let go of any restrictions we put on ourselves...